What you're keeping inside of you that you need to share - anonymously. To purge.
like shakespeare tragicomedy but more semi-white trash
warning: high drama. long emotional purge of a messy situation, with context and flavor. additional warning for discussions of substance use, religion, Issues With Parents, and mental illness-- although nothing gory.
okay, here goes:
i'm an embarrassment as people go.
i vape. for the nicotine. i smoke weed as often as i can afford to. i'm Too Disabled to work, but not according to my parents, who i don't talk to anymore for a very long list of reasons that starts with "it's really bad for my sanity".
every doctor i've met agrees, and i'm only not on disability right now because...i'm an immigrant who doesn't want to take that from ontario, and i didn't agree or comprehend until this year that no, really, i really am too physically disabled to work in, say, fast food, or a reception area.
it turns out that spending your entire life in pain without the tools to communicate or address it, surrounded by people who insist it's imaginary or that you're somehow making it worse via mentioning it and asking for help and time and slack, is not beneficial in the slightest to a developing mind.
so i write fanfiction. i read tarot as a hobby. i read a lot in lots of genres. i find out what happens if i put olive oil and honey and herbs/spices on wal-mart frozen Eco-Friendly Salmon Fillets. (good things, and i prefer it with sea salt and/or some acidic citrus to balance the honey.)
i do nothing important or interesting with my life. i'm kind of poor and trashy. i keep houseplants and watch lots of cartoons and aspire to one day conquer the dread dishes.
my dad, who i haven't spoken to in years, is probably having a manic episode. he's always manic at least two months of any given year; he's got slight differences in his mental health problems, but we've both got ptsd and lots of similar symptom manifestations.
i found out tonight that he's driving from kentucky to ontario to try and see me. to "say goodbye". it could be that he's dying-- he's been dying since i was very young, of things that usually kill people faster, and seems a bit vexed and perplexed that none of them have worked-- or that he, uh, believes the apocalypse is Happening This Year yet again.
i have lots of mixed feelings about him. he doesn't acknowledge my name or gender. he thinks nothing good of the person i married and love most in the world. he hates any variety of being Gay, and associates it wholesale with child abuse.
chances are if i went to the god damned tim hortons with him, he'd just try to cause a scene about how i need to Return To Jesus.
i also kind of have actual out-of-the-house plans for once, which means i can't just passive-aggressively spend the day in bed and refuse to answer the door. no, i have a friend here overnight after hanging out, who also has work monday.
she doesn't drive and can't bus to get weed due to...location reasons. she does bus to work and back. i've known her for a long time and have seen her stretch a tiny amount like a champ, better than when she was on ativan; she's lived through some things that nobody should ever have to live through, so anything she can't accidentally OD on from sheer desperation during the ever-fewer flareups is good.
she's also a lesbian who is Very Goth. and i'm taking her on a weed run tomorrow. because even nearly ten years later, she still has episodes of flashback nightmares, and Medicating With Weed makes them go away the best out of anything.
she's one of only five people who i've met personally who have ptsd and bipolar that kicked in early, hard, young, and...basically mutated off each other. all are survivors of extreme abuse during formative years by publicly charismatic/sympathetic abusers, with strong sexual components for at least one consecutive year prior to age sixteen.
all of us also have such strong religious contexts and associations with trauma that around some Bible Verses, different for each, we all reflexively and uncontrollably dissociate on the spot-- the "this-isn't-real-i'm-not-here" defense mechanism crunches down our ability to emotionally connect, and we autopilot while still screaming a bit in the back of our heads, in a little box with a blanket over it that gets open and carefully soothed once we're at home and in sweatpants.
(not soothing the bits that your brain temporarily barricades away is a mistake, i've found. it will fester. it will come back for The Return Of The Revenge Of The Compartmentalized Emotion; better to have a friend who can tell when you're having a rough time, who'll help you make tea and pat your shoulder kindly as you get an embarrassed burst of tears out of your system.)
but anyway. i'm now my dad's mental image of A Fornicating Drug Addict Who Does No Good And Is Full Of Demons. i've got vastly less demon-esque experiences on the head meds and away from kentucky than i did before, which does not say positive things about their congregation's Holy And Protective influence, but i mean, you can't trust my word because i'm Crazy.
i still pray sometimes, although i don't know to who. a few times i've felt particularly answered, because i got some things i'd only ever asked for in my head, too nervous to even write it down, but always very specifically the ones that happened were not doctrinally approved by my surroundings.
i avoided the things i hated myself too much to let myself want, but i have seen more human kindness and compassion since getting out than i ever did while i was there.
i don't think i'll be emotionally ready to ever go to any kind of religious congregation ever again, though.
i wish i could believe we'd be capable of a civil conversation, but he's pretty staunch and devout. he will never find something that he could be proud of in me right now.
so i'll run my friend's weed errands and hide out from my own damned father who came up from kentucky to say goodbye one last time, because...we can't look each other in the face anymore.
and god, i hope i don't run into him, i hope i don't, because my friend deserves better than dealing with loud scary Man Drama if it happens. she's...not as sturdy or robust as me emotionally, and i've seen her worst mental health weeks, and any kind of confrontation like that would mess her up.
i do miss him and i still care about his wellbeing. i hate this situation and every bad-blood feeling involved in it. i've been crying on and off for four hours now, because it hurts.
but god, the first time i was prescribed celexa, because my total sum mental and physical health issues had evolved in awful ways and the walk-in took $200 of borrowed money to tell me i'm crazy as if i didn't already know--
my dad looked at me and said "everyone i've ever seen go on something like that leaves the faith."
within three days of taking it, i felt a lot less trash fire and a lot more human. i consistently feel vastly less trash fire and more human in general, these days. i haven't attempted suicide in years. even with intent at its highest, i no longer had the heart to really want to: i could see the light at the end of a very cold, very lonely tunnel that had started when i was three years old.
"everyone who takes it leaves the faith" was meant as a warning: you give over some share and stake in divinity, goodness, and immortality via Medication. that said, if faith is proven by its works, then ssris in particular have been very faithful to me, and my husband is faithful, and our lesbian friend, and at least dozen other people i know who are not my parents' denomination of christian. how they treat other human beings matters most of all to me, and as a standard to live by for friendship, it's been less damaging and more fulfilling than anything i've experienced earlier in life.
i have friends now who are patient and compassionate with me. i'm genuinely welcomed in my communities, when i'm well enough to be out of the house. growing up, there was an entire network of people trying to village-raise me into the perfect conservative christian, mostly through various prohibitory lectures; now i can write dumb fluffy YA stories that my friends seem to like getting in bite-size chunks as i work on them.
(i like fluffy things. i see the importance of pain in art, and of showing the pointy bits, and even of literary teen angst. i just...like the fluffy bits with less of the floppity-sloppity or the pools of blood and such. everything i write is still very Gay Agenda, entirely because i'm petty and would be ridiculously gratified if my Niche LGBT+ adventure floof got good enough to catch on.)
SO yeah tl;dr! i am a contented-with-my-marriage adult. my Found Jesus dad who hates my husband has crossed the border apparently and is turning up at my house after more than three years of no interaction whatsoever, to Say Goodbye, and i can't because i have to take a lesbian for medical weed.
and it's just as well, because i can't think of anything we could say to each other that wouldn't immensely upset someone, possibly a poor innocent canadian bystander who just wants their cheap coffee.




Hey, I'm disabled too. I'm 23, no GED, pulled out of school when I finished middle school. No SSI, but I'm working on it (the system has it for a reason). I'm genderfluid, abusive family doesn’t recognize my gender. Just know that you're not alone.
thank you. and-- good luck.
You know what? There are SO MANY people out there who are living lives just like yours, WITHOUT all the crap you've dealt with and are dealing with, and there's nothing wrong with that. If you aspire for more then yes, go for it, always strive for what you can get, but don't let that worldwide obsession with "I should have achieved more by now" because all that does is distract you from all the things you have achieved. And you, my dear, have achieved a LOT. You sound like someone who's managed to pull a pretty good post-awful life out of the awful that your surroundings gave to you when you were a kid. I mean seriously, that's amazing. I only dealt with a fraction of that (undiagnosed depression and a large number of people convincing me that the problem was with me, and also the religious upbringing) and that was bad enough.
I'm so sorry that your dad is trying to push back into your life and cause problems. It sounds to me like you're not interested in engaging with your dad at all, at least for this trip - which man, considering what you've said, absolutely understandable. "Family!" is no excuse to be an asshole to someone, and in fact is less of one. So yeah, you don't want to deal with him, I'm not surprised, and that's not bad. That's you exercising your right to not deal with someone who is damaging to you. Could you and your friend make arrangements to stay at someone else's place for the night and avoid it altogether? Or, and this is a bigger step but also might help not having to deal with this in the future, could you just make it clear to your dad that you're not interested in spending time with him and walk past him to continue with your day? Because here's the thing, if he starts getting aggressive or shouty, someone might call the cops (coughbyyouoryourfriendcough). If someone calls the cops, he's going to have to explain why he came over the border to come be aggressive and shouty. He's also going to have a hard time getting across the border ever again if he gets in trouble with the cops. I'm not saying start something, because you don't want it to get messy, but I am saying that if the fear here is that he's going to cause a scene - there may be a benefit in letting him. Stay calm, refuse to engage, continue about your day, and if he won't leave you alone, you or your friend could be the ones to make the call, or if you have a neighbor you trust, you could heads them up about the situation and ask that if they hear any aggression, they make the call. If you feel your friend isn't capable of dealing with this sort of situation even if you have planned ahead to call in the cavalry if/when he inevitably turns into Scary Man Drama, a heads up might be in order. Yes, it will suck if she can't get what she needs when she needs it, but it's only fair to let her know the situation in advance so that she can make the decision as to which is the lesser of two evils for her right now.
There's also a middle ground, but how much it will work is going to depend on whether your parents can learn to acknowledge that you as an adult person no longer have any obligation to listen to them making judgment calls on your life (or even MORE especially, not drive TO A DIFFERENT FREAKING COUNTRY to track you down WITHOUT NOTICE to INTERRUPT YOUR GODDAMN LIFE that YOU MADE WITHOUT THEIR HELP in order to EXPLAIN TO YOU IN GREAT DETAIL HOW MUCH THEY DISAPPROVE OF THAT LIFE YOU MADE WITHOUT YOUR HELP.
Okay sorry, done shouting now. Well not really, but if I get started I'll just never stop. So the middle ground (courtesy of Captain Awkward, who is WAY better than me at talking about this stuff, so why even bother paraphrasing) is: boundaries, boundaries, boundaries! It doesn't even have to be this visit. Your dad didn't give you any warning this time and you have plans. In the normal world, that is how normal things happen. You show up at a friend's door and say "surprise! I was just driving by and decided to see if you want to have coffee!" and the normal friend says "oh I'm sorry but I have plans today - how about if you call me this weekend and we'll set something up?" And as a normal person you will say "oh hey I'm sorry we won't get to spend time together today but that sounds great! I will totally talk to you then." So when your dad deviates from normality, feel free to end the conversation, because he's the one making it weird by acting weird, not you.
Another time, if you do make plans to meet up, despite your fear of a public scene, honestly if you meet up with him I would make it a public place, because then you can arrive by different methods of transportation, and you are not trapped somewhere by him because he's in your house and you don't want to kick him out, or he drove you somewhere and now you need a ride back. Now you have public pressure for him not to make a scene, and if he does start making a scene you can leave, letting him face the judgment of the strangers getting cheap coffee (trust me, nobody watching a scene in which one person is acting like an ass is doing thinking anything about you beyond, possibly "oh my god that poor person, stuck socializing with that asshole!" because all their attention is focused on the scene-making asshole being a scene-making asshole). And again, if he makes too much of a scene, he's risking someone in the Timmy's call the cops. Meanwhile, you can end the visit any time you want. Like the moment he doesn't call you by the name or gender you have made it clear you are and are to be called. Or the moment he starts up his "Return To Jesus" talk and you say "cool dad, [change of subject]", and he keeps steering it back. Or the moment he uses his 'imminent death'/the 'imminent apocalypse' to try and make this about how HE is trying to reach out to YOU and YOU are being the UNREASONABLE ONE here (because it's absolutely unreasonable to suggest that maybe driving from Kentucky to Ontario to verbally and emotionally abuse your child is not okay, right?) Maybe it's when he brings up ANY judgmental attitudes about your life - whether it's the place, manner or method of how you are living your life, or the loved ones and friends you are living it with (who all sound like people who support and love you as YOU, so holy hell, non-related people are outdoing the shit out of your dad in the loving-you department, F grade to him for parenting, and a side of "that's the pot calling the tube of white paint black" in the "child abuse" department).
Oh, and for that religious bullshit, I suggest you read this letter which is from a religious mom complaining about how her adult daughter is RUINING HER LIFE by not following her mother's DIVINE PLAN for that life which was apparently decided from beginning to end long before that poor daughter was conceived. Not because the mom has anything useful to say, but because CA's response is a beauty of a "what in the everloving hell is wrong with you?"
Also, if you want to read a whole hell of a lot more (HELL of a lot more snarky) responses to stupid letters like the above one, go ahead and binge on here's that bad advice you were hoping for. It'll let you know that a) you're not alone in having shitty relations who think it's their god-given right to dictate your life, and also, there are plenty of people out there who totally understand that, in the case of you and your parents, "it's not you, it's them."
Whatever you decide, good luck to you. And good for you on building yourself a life without their help. It may not be the amazing awesome one you thought you were going to have as a kid, but the thing is, most of us don't get that anyway. And in the meantime, what you made for yourself is a billion times better than what your parents built for you in their heads and tried their damndest to cram you into without your permission, because the life you built gives you things that make you happy. Your writing, your spouse, your friends, your medication, your experimenting with cooking - these are all good things for you, which YOU are doing for yourself. Good for you. Keep those friends close. Keep hobbying your hobbies (I thought I was the only one who loved honey on salmon, IT IS DELICIOUS). If you do try any of the above stuff with your dad, make sure you spend time with your friends and/or your spouse and/or your hobbies. Make lots of time for you time and treat yourself well, not just when you're setting boundaries in the moment, but afterward, because it's hard negotiating with parents who won't let you be an adult, and you need to practice self-care in order to keep that from taking its toll on you. It's awesome that you took it upon yourself to get medication that helped when your parents wouldn't, a spouse and friends who loved you when your parents wouldn't, and a home you feel safe and comfortable in when your parents' didn't. So remind yourself of that and be kind to you, and accept the loving kindness of the not-approved-by-your-parents spouse and friends as further proof that your parents and their church are not the good guys in this story, and covering yourself in the mantle of religion does not automatically make your actions good and right, and also, YOU are not the crazy one in this story whose word can't be trusted.
HEY apparently Imzy has a character limit! Guess I'm done. Last words before I'm out: take the disability. Accept that help.
thank you. this is-- this is more kindness and investment than i expected from an anonymous confession post.
i did succeed at dodging him, and i'm gonna keep all of this in mind for when it happens again. (i suspect it will.) the links are very helpful.
most of all this helps with...well, the shame. i know logically that i don't have control over another adult's actions, and that even if i was capable of being anything my parents would consider respectable or accomplished, i'd probably still be in the same boat. there's still just a lot of grief involved.
again, thank you. this is comforting and it means a lot to me. and you've included very helpful building blocks for a strategy i can use instead of just wringing my hands in overwhelm.
(honey on salmon IS delicious. in general, i really like salmon with sweet glazes.)