I have been suffering from a sinus infection since about last Monday night. The odd thing was that I had run out of the SinuSoothe natural nasal spray that I have been using for months now (so I wasn’t able to use it for about a week). At first I definitely did feel the congestion coming back. For the last few days before it finally came in the mail I was surprised at how I actually felt like I was OK without it. In the early evening on Monday night though, I noticed that my nose was starting to run. I used my SinuSoothe nasal spray when I got home from work that night, close to midnight. Immediately I had a huge sneeze attack, tons of congestion, but also tons of drainage coming out of my sinuses. I found this odd because I didn’t even have that strong of a reaction the first few days that I ever used it. When I first used it I mostly had weird pain that radiated all the way up both of my sinuses and then went all the way back down my skull on both sides, where the pain settled at the base of my skull on both sides. I figured out that this was me actually feeling this natural nasal spray as it traveled through my lymphatic system and lymph nodes. As much as it hurt I was so happy to have finally found something that seemed to truly be attacking the actual source of the problem. I’m not really sure why my sinus infection came on full blown this time after using it after not having it for about a week, but I can speculate for sure. I think what really caused me to have this full blown infection starting on Monday night was because of the crazy happenings of the day before. My mother had pitched a serious fit and stressed me out to an insane degree.

My mother had been trying to reach me for a few weeks. She has this issue where she claims to literally worry whether or not I’m OK if she doesn’t hear from me. It is beyond clear to me that she has undiagnosed and untreated generalized anxiety disorder, and that she has had this for decades. All the while she has been completely denying that she even has an anxiety issue, when everyone in my family has told her this and she has been made more than aware about it. She is a very ego driven and ego centered person, so god forbid she ever admits that she isn’t perfect or that she has an issue that she needs to work on. My mother had been incessantly calling me, leaving me voicemails, and texting me for what felt like weeks. She was using every type of guilt and manipulation tactic that she could think of to try to force me to talk to her. This is her usual method and typically after a little bit of this I think “jesus christ ok I’ll see or talk to you just so you leave me the fuck alone”. I end up getting back to her and then going out to eat with her, out of what feels like pure obligation to me. I have read a lot about boundaries and about what are healthy and unhealthy boundaries. I have read that if you do something for a person because you feel obligated to, that is an example of an unhealthy boundary coming into play. I totally agree. So this time I did not allow her method to force me into doing what she wanted, and I stood my ground. She took it up another level in response. I had to work all day that Sunday. I got a text from my boyfriend telling me I should contact my mom because she called him, his brother, his workplace, and the main office at the apartment complex we live at. Apparently she was acting as if I had been kidnapped (mind you I’m fucking 25 years old), and she was trying to get people to actually go check to see if my car was parked somewhere. She caused a major scene and my boyfriend said that he felt like she was making him look bad because the way she was acting made it seem like he was being neglectful of me, or something ridiculous like that.

I was beyond embarrassed, but more than anything fucking livid. I texted her saying to keep the problems between her and I, between her and I. I said do not contact the people I live with and that she is causing a major scene. I told her how inappropriate and wrong this was. I told her she needs to see a therapist, because she is out of control. She literally expects me to fulfill her social and emotional needs. She has literally forced this into happening for years on end. Because I never wanted to deal with her ridiculous child-like behavior, I would eventually just give in and do what she wanted. I realize this is totally wrong and unfair to me. This is enabling her to continue to be a control freak, and enabling her to keep me under her thumb. I ended up texting her for about two hours while I was at work. I was very articulately describing to her what her problems are, what she needs to do to work on this herself, how her behavior was negatively affecting me and how it was poor treatment of me, and how exactly she could improve things for herself and for our relationship. As usual, and as she always done over the years, she entirely refused to validate anything that I had said, and continued to blame me for essentially being a bad daughter. She didn’t use those words but she said a few times “I don’t need a therapist, I need a daughter who cares and who will let me know once a week if she’s ok or not”. Round and around we went until I had nothing left.

I know what her problem is. I know that she is having an identity crisis because she lives alone now and because all of her kids have moved out. The only identity she ever had, was the identity of being a mother. She is freaking out because she does not have even a remotely close relationship to either of her two kids who live only a few towns away. The other kid lives in Denmark. She is freaking out and trying to control me because I would be the easiest choice. I am her youngest child, and I’m the only girl. I also live the closest to her. She will never admit this but she is just as much of a control freak as my father is. The fact is though right now I do not feel any resentment towards my father but I feel a whole shit load towards her. I’m only mentioning my father because he called me last Wednesday and I talked to him for about an hour. I hadn’t talked to him in something like a year because of issues we have had. This conversation actually went really well and he sounded like he was doing much better psychologically than he has been in years. He was very caring and he actually asked me a lot of questions for once. He told me that he loved and I told him that I loved him too. For this conversation I actually felt like I had a good, healthy father who treated me well.

My mother on the other hand, could not be treating me any worse at this point in time. She made the huge mistake of bringing up their failed marriage when she decided to text me *again* last night, to add in so more ridiculous behavior. She is now trying to take me off of her phone plan. She didn’t even say this shit directly but I figured it out based on how she’s been acting. She said “please call or text me when you have the time regarding your cell phone”. I KNOW she is trying to threaten to cut off my phone because I’m not meeting her requirements of checking in with her EVEN THOUGH I’M A FUCKING ADULT NOW. I know this is her last resort type method. Unfortunately for her, this isn’t working on me either. Before she could even start up her plan, I replied “I will get my own phone if that’s what you’re getting at, which I’m pretty sure you are”. I then told her she should know just how manipulative and controlling she is being because I won’t meet her requirements. I told her that she is proving the very points that I made before. I also told her how I have been sick essentially since she pulled that drama earlier last week. I have had to call out of work a few different times. I have spent the past few days (my days off mind you), sick because of how much she stressed me out. I think I may have been on the possible verge of a sinus infection again, but I don’t think it was going to fully happen until she created the catalyst for it surface. Basically, she is literally making me sick now. I am feeling the brunt of her tactics because I standing up to them. Emotionally and psychologically, my mother is a child. She’s a little over 60 years old, and she has had a successful job and has been successful with money mostly, but underneath that strong exterior is a weak, dependent child. I used to pity her and so I would allow her to treat me in this way. Now that i’m older I realize that this fact is no excuse for her to treat me like shit. I do not owe her extra psychological help and support merely because she refuses to work on herself at all. It is not my job to do this shit and it never should have been.

Basically what i’m getting at is that I honestly believe that her and my father, and the upbringing that they created for me and my brothers, is what has created my chronic sinus infection issue. I have had this issue for about a decade. It’s no coincidence that this fully started off right around the time that things in my family first started going to shit. My brother had a nervous breakdown when I was 12. My parents had an awful marriage, in which they fought on a regular basis, multiple times a day, for seriously as long as I can remember. I never saw it actually go physical but it *always* felt like it was right on the verge of turning physical. They’d fight a lot really late at night. Being the lucky one that I was, having my bedroom on the same floor as their bedroom, I was woken up on so many different nights, to screaming. I would immediately jump and run down to their room because I seriously thought they were about to kill each other. It’s again no coincidence that I developed severe insomnia later on in my life because of the years and years I had been subjected to this every single night trauma.

My house was also full of mold and dust, as well as dog danger and dirt. I was breathing in this stuff on a regular basis. I believe that I have fungus up in my sinuses from this, which is the physical cause for why I have had chronic sinus infections for over a decade. I have tried so many things to treat this, and only prescribed nasal spray made a *slight* dent in the issue. The SinuSoothe spray I have been using has overall worked a lot more than any other treatment I’ve tried. The trauma and stress that I dealt with for so many years, mostly at the hands of both of my parents, is what has caused this chronic condition. I also believe I have undiagnosed fibromyalgia. This is also caused by the traumatic upbringing that I had. My mother is addicted to drama and thus is still trying to keep the cycle going by acting like this towards me. She is insufferable. I have been reading about spiritual explanations for particular physical illnesses and one article said that the spiritual explanation for chronic sinus infections is “irritation to someone, usually someone close to you”. Hit the nail right on the fucking head!! How many years of my life have I spent stuck living with not just one, but often two to three different people who *all* irritate me because they are toxic people! This had to have had an effect over time. Ok I have a lot more that I wanted to write but once again it’s just too much to put in one post.

I feel pretty blah. Or something. I hate and feel guilty about the fact that I am not self motivated and that I spend many, many days doing essentially nothing and feeling depressed about it, but I also feel like I don’t have the mental or physical energy to do anything, and I feel hopeless. I feel like I have next to no support when it comes to the things that really matter like a person’s psychological health and views. It’s hard as fuck to feel there is any hope when I spend most of my time by myself in an super isolated town. I spend too much time in my own head and though I have a good imagination and need a lot of down time, I still feel like I get too much of it. I feel lonely way too often, but I also don’t want just anyone’s company. I guess feeling alone and different are some of the primary feelings I’ve had since I was a child. Even around the people that I feel similar too and close to, I still end up feeling alone. But yet at the same time when I’m not with other people I go back to feeling more empty. I just feel like so much of my existence has been comprised by this feeling of emptiness yet I also feel like I am full, too full. Everything is like a Catch 22 for me, so that no matter what I feel displeased or uncomfortable.

I know that so much of what is making me feel this way has to do with my attitudes and lack of action, because mostly I just need a fucking job so that I can try to then get out of this house. I feel like I can blame my mental state equally on my choices or lack thereof and also by my circumstances/environment. I guess one of the largest problems is that I don’t believe in myself. I don’t believe I am capable of getting and keeping a job that I can bare and get to without huge problems, I don’t believe that if I move in with my boyfriend that I could continue to do so because I feel I’d either lose my job or something bad would happen between me and him. And then if I had to move back in here with my mom, that’d be like the utter failure. I have so much ease imagining how things could possibly go wrong and how many ways they could, yet have serious problems in thinking optimistically or considering the fact that things could turn out better.

It’s not healthy for anyone to spend most of their time alone, I know this. But I also can’t immediately escape/change this. And that makes me feel even less hopeful because I know if I could secure the change it won’t be for awhile, and I need it to be now. For so much of my life I had way too much “guidance” from my parents and older siblings, to the point where once I lost that I realized I had no guidance of my own. I had things I wanted to do and changes I wanted to make, but had no fucking clue how to make them. I feel like I’m on my own and though I am used to that, I have no skill in being financially and mentally stable on my own. For some reason I’m thinking of that quote that says something like “You can’t love someone else if you don’t love yourself first.” I actually don’t really agree with that. I would say I love myself just as much as I dislike myself, yet I wholeheartedly love my boyfriend. And I’ve always felt like that. I could pick myself apart into tiny pieces and tell myself how unworthy and inadequate I am, yet I could be so in love with anyone I dated and I could really love my friends too.

The paradox is that I need to have faith in myself more often, but I need to stop believing everything that I think. I don’t know how to balance confidence with more skepticism towards my own thoughts. I don’t know how I can start feeling more sure of myself and more confident in my abilities while also having to learn how to stop falling for everything that my negative/pessimistic brain tells me. How can I determine which thoughts are real and which ones are just based in insecurity and self doubt? I feel like the lines blur between most things and I know this has to do with my lack of boundaries. I am more cognitively aware of when I am crossing a boundary or someone else is crossing a boundary of mine, but my thinking has no boundaries either. My internal world is rich with content but because I think so goddamn much and absorb so goddamn much, I can’t determine which information is to be believed and which isn’t.

My brother just got out of the psych ward the other day, he was in there for like two weeks. He told me about this thing called a support group that he was going to go to, and that they are supposed to help you find a job too. This sounds like EXACTLY what I need. I need a group of people or some sort of group in which I feel I belong and am supported emotionally, and a group that can help me actually make the practical changes I need to make. I need to feel like I’m not just floating around by myself all of the time, with no one to talk to except my dogs or myself most of the time. I need to feel like I belong somewhere and to be among other people that feel and function like I do, especially because I have so much trouble finding those people on my own. Or if I do find them I still don’t see them as much as I want or need to. My brother made an appt to go to this support group with me and apparently my cousin too for Wednesday. It’s early in the morning which sucks but I don’t care actually because for once it’s something that is truly worth waking up for. Something that I feel will strongly benefit me even if my expectations for it aren’t fulfilled as much as I’d like. I guess you go to this appt first and then you decide if you want to become a member or not. Yes of course I want to become a member. Just the name “support group” alone makes me truly believe this will help me.

I read something the other day about a company that ONLY hires people who have disabilities whether it be emotional, physical, or cognitive types. I have two out of the three of these since I have been diagnosed as Mood Disorder Not Otherwise Specified and I also have some learning disabilities. I am pretty damn sure I also have a mild/moderate form of Borderline Personality Disorder, and Bipolar (II). This company sounds fucking awesome! I mean if I could get a job at a place like this I would feel so secure, knowing that I fit in somewhere and I am actually wanted and valued in a job. In most ordinary jobs my personality, style of functioning, style of thinking, and skills are the exact opposite of what is wanted, and so that is largely why I haven’t even been trying to get a job. I have applied some places, I applied to a psych job which I filled out a super long application for and wrote a good cover letter for, only to not hear anything back from them. I applied to a few other minimum wage type jobs that I also did not hear back from. I have a serious phone phobia and so the idea of “following up” on an application is daunting to me. To the point where I will not do it because I fear it so much. Strangely enough I would feel more secure in physically going to the place and asking a person about my application. There is something about the phone that irks me. You can’t see the person, you don’t know the person at all, you can’t determine much of anything about them, you can’t get a grasp of how or who they are, and you can’t determine when to pause and when to talk because you can’t see their body language or be connected enough to the conversation to decide when it’s the right time. I am much more of a hands-on type person and that extends to my social skills for jobs or friendships. I thrive the most with one-on-one interactions in a fairly quiet location, where I can see the person and really focus on them, while also feeling they are focusing on me too. I need to be able to see a lot of things to understand them. Knowledge wise I need to see charts and graphs, I need to see drawings, I need to have something in front of me to look at or to be able to take with me to look at later. This is also the case with my social skills. I need to see people, see their faces, see their body language, see the expressions they make, and be able to pay close attention to the small details that express how they are feeling, what kind of person they are, etc.

I am excellent with faces, I can atleast be confident in that. I can see a face one time that I saw a couple of years ago, and recognize it again that much later on. And I can point it out. I almost never know the person’s name because that’s what I’m not good with, but I can always remember where it was that I saw them. If it’s a regular person, I can remember “oh hey that’s the woman that lead that math review like three years ago”. If it’s an actor/actress, I can remember “hey that’s the guy that was in Rush Hour and he was the one that played that lead gang member with the Sisqo type hair.” It can be the most obscure character or person, someone that was just in the background, and I will remember them right away. It’s the same when it comes to a painting or some other object. I can see it one time several years ago and then remember that I had seen that painting before a couple of years ago in this particular class I took.

Now if only this skill was more sought after in jobs. The only ones it’d be wanted for would be psych jobs. I am really good with recognizing other people’s emotions and identifying similar patterns between various people’s mannerisms. But this a limited, unappreciated skill that most employers would probably ignore or not respond to if I told them of this skill when they asked me about my skills in a job interview.

Essentially, I do love myself and I do appreciate that I have unique skills and strengths that aren’t that common. It’s just that who I am and how I am, what makes me, are things that this society shuns and ignores. There are hardly any places where someone like me fits in, and there are hardly any people that recognize and acknowledge these skills. On top of that, I have been criticized so much while I was growing up, to the point where I say and think negative things about myself because I’ve heard them so many fucking times. If someone constantly tells you that you are lazy, a baby, useless, a quitter, etc, you begin to believe them. Especially if it’s coming from your father and it’s been coming from him since you were old enough to even recognize what these insults meant. So I am aware of these things and why these have become my automatic thoughts, but I haven’t gotten to the point where I can get rid of those thoughts, or where I can stop believing them to be true.

I have so much to work on. So much of my personality, so much of my attitudes and beliefs, so much of my ways of functioning, so many of my habits to address and change. I don’t know if I’ll ever feel satisfied with myself. I wish I had more people that could repeatedly remind me or tell me the good things about me or what my strengths are or what they like about me, so that I could start to internalize that instead of keeping the same old outdated negative thoughts. That would make me feel like I have a lot more support.