I am sure you will do this, and well. But, I hope that you have someone to be your emotional support. I am sorry for your loss, your pain, and your stress.
Take care of yourself, let someone take care of you. I wish I could type something that would make a real difference, but I’m just a stranger on the internet hoping that you find solace and consolation.
I believe that people all dip into the same well of grief when we lose someone we love. Many of us have gone to that well, and we know how you feel in a broad sense, even if the specifics are your own.
If you are your family’s emotional support, you are going to need support of your own even more. Once the emergency is over, do whatever you need to do. Self-care with ruthlessness. Whine if you need to, cry, rail, rant, sob… because if you keep that inside it will poison you.
I have a psychiatrist and a therapist waiting for me. I honestly do have a plan. And it does involve yelling, light flailing, and the occasional heretical statement
Besides, talking it out right here helps tremendously. The compassion shown by you crazy mutants is almost overwhelming in its kindness.
Glasses add visual interest, strength or drama around the eyes. Our culture is flooded with photos of women with eye makeup that creates a dramatic, visually striking eye area. Glasses do a similar thing, I think.
That was my main guess - they literally frame the eyes (and sometimes magnify them), making a focal point of your face and a source of microexpressions more salient.
Considering how my stepdad has been on me about ‘so how do you feel about LGBT’ and then accusing me of being gay simply for not answering because we do NOT agree on shit…
And then him saying ‘justice was done’ at that nightclub (then immediate retracting trying to act like he didn’t say that.)
That is shit i did not want to know about the man’s mind… because now i want nothing to do with him or my family but for now I have little choice other than stay or starve.
Also they keep equating transgendered with transvestite… and don’t give a shit that they’re not ‘politically correct, because that’s all they are. fucking perverts.’
I SERIOUSLY did not want to hear this shit from my family.
Barring extreme measures, the fact this place exists is about as much help as i can realisticly get.
And this is the kind of attitude that kept me quiet when I badly wanted to tell them about a transgendered friend I was sweet on. I wanted to do things right, get their support and maybe get them to help with me moving on to a new stage in life. Now? I’m heartbroke but glad i kept my mouth shut because I’m afraid of how it would’ve worked out.
Fucking sucks my family’s like this, and has been getting steadily more openly racist through the obama administration.
Important hard lessons I had to learn, thanks to my years in psychotherapy. Your statements ring true. My fam has some seriously dysfunctional dynamics as well… a gift that just keeps on giving. It’s intergenerational now. Ye gods.1
From firsthand experience, I agree with what you are saying. It took me years of recoding my brain (with professional help) to get a few things clear. Briefly:
I am not responsible for managing other people’s emotional states, no matter how unhappy they appear, or how closely related they are to me. I agree (as you said) that, if one is a parent of very young children, this guideline has some exceptions. I’m not saying I don’t try to be compassionate and diplomatic, but other people’s reactions are outta my control.
I am to listen actively2, to bear witness and answer questions my family members ask me truthfully. I am not here to solve every last problem my family members are having with everything. I am not here now to take on their bad karma, divine perfect sage advice, or Christ-like pick up every dang burden my friends/family are carrying. As my therapist once pointed out, my shoulders aren’t that big.
Having life throw a bunch of really heavy duty emotional/psychological shit at you will take up a lot of your energy and time. Jettisoning a lot of non-primary responsibilities will reduce the timesuck and energysuck. Delegating wherever possible is a big deal. If someone volunteers to do your laundry/grocery shopping/dishes/take your car/bike/computer to the mechanic because you can’t, say yes and be glad for the help. I even recall @japhroaig even volunteering to help out another poster in this thread some weeks ago. Dang how that wheel of karma turns wicked fast!
Ask for help. Hopefully there are IRL allies who can step in when and where needed.
Hopefully @japhroaig isn’t doing anything to harm his own mental health, and having Helping Professionals around can help, esp. if they will help continue therapy sessions by phone if in-person sessions aren’t an option, which I oh so very strongly recommend.
Truth. My well was plenty dry when I entered therapy. Sucked dry. And I had my part in letting it get that way. The grizzled wiseman Rick Nielsen of the band Cheap Trick said “surrender, surrender… but don’t give yourself away.”
(Having living family from the World War II generation who were on different sides still blaming each other at this extremely late stage of the game shows how long-reaching effects from war warp the crap outta family relations decades after the war has nominally ceased. In my fam, grandkids aren’t talking to each other because the grandparents are twitchy and angry; the grandkids barely know each other, sometimes not even with pictures. This is one time I will say Facebook and other social media may not be all bad.)
