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.

Ok so, coming from me this is somewhat of a rare thing for me to say and actually believe/act out at the same time. But today and yesterday I have been able to behave in line with what I think on this social comparison topic. A large reason that people are unhappy or feel inadequate is because they compare themselves to everyone else, go by only the face value information that they see or hear about, and then notice where these other people are thriving where they seem to be lacking. What’s mostly bringing up this subject in my mind is a thought I just had about two of my family members.

Today I had another really good day mood wise and socially/actively, and I know my brother and my mom could tell. I didn’t see either one of them for much time at all today, yet I was still able to pick up on their negative vibes. And my conclusion is (atleast initially) that they were jealous I was feeling so good and having a lot of socialization. Rarely do I ever feel like someone is jealous of anything having to do with me since I normally have extremely low self-worth, but this time I feel better about myself than I typically do. And I just got these same kinds of vibes from both my mom and my brother that were primarily negative–mostly resentful or something like that. My brother asked me to help him cut his hair into a mohawk thing and I did, but I messed up part of it. I think it still came out ok but both before and after that happened, he was being really antagonistic with me, in front of my friend too. He was criticizing how I was doing his hair and micromanaging it to the max, while continuing to ask for specifics and for me to do it better, along with bringing up his opinions on me moving in with my boyfriend. I was being nothing but nice to my brother, as I essentially always am, and he went on to find a way back to verbally abusing me. He started asking me tons of questions about the move in and what date it would be exactly and what our plan was money wise and yada fuckin yada. And then he also said- “I can’t believe you’re moving in with your boyfriend before I’ve ever moved in with a girlfriend.” That screams jealousy, and I guess the way he was acting makes sense to me now. But it still wasn’t called for, as I wasn’t bragging to him about the subject, I didn’t even bring it up myself, he did. It just really pissed me off because he continued to be a disrespectful asshole, and he does this so often after we have a short period of time in which we get along really well and he’s being nice and all. It seems he can’t go very long without self-sabotaging, especially within his relationships.

So what I want to say about social comparison in relation to this is that I think he is engaging in it a lot by comparing my FIRST move out of the family house to his experiences with moving. And by essentially comparing our relationships too, which doesn’t even make sense because him and I are very different in relationships and we choose very different partners. He seems to end up with ditzy, happy go lucky blonde chicks, and I end up with musical/artistic, depressive/moody, sensitive, deep guys. I know why I seek out the guys I end up with because they are a lot like me, like the male form of me. Yet my brother seeks out women that are not very much like him at all, and he holds people to ridiculous standards when it comes to relationships. If the person has any visible flaws (in his mind or physically), they are pretty much not even going to be considered as a partner, even if the vast majority of their personality/self is positive/good. He has this idea in his mind that he deserves an elite female athlete with a perfect/skinny/muscular body, a beautiful face, who has a strong interest in nature/the outdoors, and whose beliefs are just like his. It’s no wonder he hasn’t yet found a woman that fits that description. No one is perfect and no one is going to be a total copy of yourself or be a total copy of you and then some, because that’s just not the way it goes. Everyone has flaws, physically and mentally, and no one is totally balanced and great in everything.

If you truly want to have a meaningful and successful relationship with a partner, you have to see all of them and then still love them and want to be with them. You have to give them a fuckin chance to show themselves to you and you have to not focus on the flaws you see in them. If they have a good heart, if they love you unconditionally, if they have similar values in life as you do, etc, then it shouldn’t matter if they don’t have the perfect physical appearance. It just shouldn’t. If you really love someone, the more you get to know them the better looking they get to you anyways, because what you see as attractive in them is the good traits they hold as a person. They become more beautiful because their soul is beautiful and good, and it resonates through their eyes. Physical appearance is nice and dandy to have as perfect as a model, but if the person within that body is shallow or cruel, then their physical appearance doesn’t mean a damn thing.You can try to date them, but see how long it lasts before you see that their physical appearance is the best part of them, and think about how much a loving relationship cannot be based in that.

I feel I got off topic a bit but yeah, I’ll return. So I felt a vibe of jealousy and hostility/disrespect coming from my brother towards me, and I felt a vibe of jealousy/resentment from my mom when I saw her today. And all that I can really figure out is that they are pissed that I’m feeling much happier and more positive, and they are pissed that my friendships and my romantic relationships are thriving. They resent me for it, and I find it fucked up. It makes me feel like they don’t want me to be that happy, or that they believe I shouldn’t be having these good relationships or these good times. And I know for sure that people who are generally unhappy tend to be jealous of someone who speaks of something that’s going well in their life, rather than reacting by being happy that your friend or whoever is experiencing these positive things.

I have been reading a lot in this book The Highly Sensitive Person lately, and it’s been opening up my eyes, mostly in terms of self-love and acceptance, but also in the way that I view things. If you are able to give yourself credit for what you are good at or what your good qualities are, then you are better able to give others credit for what is good within them. If you really listen to people, if you show them that you will stand by their side even if they are going through a rough patch, if you express to them that you still love them or see the good in them, if you let them know how they make you happy and improve your life as well, your relationships become much better and more solid.

I feel for most of my life I have been much better at seeing the good in others and at making them feel good about themselves, but I’ve had the contrary in the relationship I have with myself. I’ve been really good at criticizing myself, at ignoring my strengths or overlooking them, at being hard on myself. And I think a large part of that is due to how many family members I have that were like that to me so often while I was growing up. I didn’t feel good about myself, I didn’t feel like anyone was proud of me or that I was adequate, I didn’t feel like I belonged even in my own family, etc. I feel that now I am getting better at that for a number of reasons and I hope to keep getting better with it, and to try to maintain self-love and acceptance.

Even though it’s not the greatest idea to ask other people who you are close to what they truly think of you, it can be really helpful. I asked my boyfriend this question a little bit ago when I was feeling really insecure and down on myself, and his answer was lovely. He told me I was smart, artistic, loyal, I have my own style and my own thoughts, trustworthy. and beautiful. It made me feel great. It didn’t sink in initially as I was hating myself at that point in time, but I think it’s set in lately. Sometimes it really helps to know how you are viewed by the people you are closest to, especially because it’s easy to forget what is best about you.

I know I can never depend on my family to be emotionally supportive regardless of what their personal opinions or judgments are on whatever the situation is, and I guess I know now that I can’t depend on them to be truly happy for me when I’m happy. So although it does bother me, I realize that it doesn’t really matter what they think, and what is most important is that I pursue what I know I need to feel fulfilled and happy in life. I need to remember not to personalize things, and to think about how their behaviors towards me are often just a reflection of what they are personally struggling with. No longer do I want to be in the self-sacrificing, emotionally sacrificing role. It took me a long time to even figure out that that was a lot of my role in my family, and that it’s still expected of me. This is one of the million reasons why I have to move out, and I am incredibly excited about it. I’m looking forward to it, and I’m not going to keep living my life in fear of what could go wrong or thinking how it will go wrong and all of that bullshit. I need to start expecting that things will go right, that they can go right and stay right, and that my personal effort and motivation are the things that I need to strengthen in order to achieve/maintain the life I want to be living.

My mom has been driving me nutty again. It’s like I can get along with her for a period of maybe a few days, but then she launches in to her same irritating ways of being, and makes me wanna duct tape her mouth shut. She’s like a human mosquito. Nagging the fuck out of me, starting at the first time she sees me, about shit that doesn’t matter, sucking my life force every time. It is very rarely that I can interact with her without her sucking life force out of me.

I want the fuck out of here. And Zak has told me I could come live with him soon since his roommate is moving out, and that it would be ok if I didn’t have money right away to contribute. I believe him in saying that but I also see the possibility that it could take longer for me to make money and that could put strain on the relationship. I just feel like the longer I stay here at my mom’s, in the same fucking room, for the 23rd year now, the longer I am going to stay in this rut and the more my anger will build up. It seems to have no limits, other than to eventually lead to me actually fly into a rage, but honestly it takes a lot to get me to physically acting out the anger I’m feeling.

I’m listening to Nine Inch Nails and I can’t explain how much I relate to the music and lyrics that Trent makes. It’s definitely super angsty music, something I originally related to a lot as a moody 14 year old or whatever age I was. I’m not that different than that self now, although now I don’t have as many environmental irritants/fights, and I’m on a psych med now that actually works. Although my mom is certainly an environmental irritant but it’s not the same as listening to/being a part of chaotic, chronic arguments within the family.

Regardless the fact that it was like like that so chronically for so many years on end, has lead to me being an angry person. I’m not the kind of angry person that will publicly start or engage in a loud argument with someone and I’m not the kind of angry person that has no patience and flips out over trivial shit like how many minutes I have to wait at a store for something. I have valid reasons for being irritated and it certainly has become an element of my personality, one trait that has been with me consistently for a long time. My mother and father have fed it very well, but so have many other things. Being controlled, being invalidated, being trapped, being prevented from developing my own individuality and autonomy, etc.

Anger isn’t the best thing but in a way it’s better than constant depression/sadness because anger is easier to channel outwards, it’s easier to express/dissipate. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be channeled into another person, but if another person is crossing a boundary or pushing your buttons and it’s really pissing you off, if you let them know in an edgy way that it isn’t ok, it kind of helps. Atleast then you are letting out the negative feeling and even if it grows for that period of time, if you face it it will fade away. But depression is something that tends to grow stronger and stronger because it is anger directed inward. When it comes to the fight or flight response, I think I fight just as much as I flight. I would rather hurt myself than hurt other people, but sometimes other people need to get the fucking message that they can’t continually walk all over you without some sort of backlash. They will have to feel the response to that kind of behavior. So it hurts both people, but sometimes it’s kind of necessary.

I guess I just feel like certain people know exactly how to trigger me. I’m not sure they are conscious of my triggers or that they are touching on them, and it may even be that they *created* the triggers to begin with. Those people generally being my mom and my dad, but also my brother. I guess it’s worse when it’s family triggering you, because then that’s just like chafing an area that has been chafed until it was raw millions of times over, only to be chafed yet again. When it comes to outside people, it doesn’t have the same effect. They aren’t able to get that same degree of emotional reaction from me.

So basically my mom triggers me really often. And I try to be patient and to learn how to deal with her more effectively, but it’s especially hard when she sets off multiple triggers at once and proceeds to do so even after she can see I’m really pissed off. Then she acts like I’m being unreasonable for responding the ways that I do, then she does confusing ass shit like asks me if I want to go out to dinner with her. Right after irritating the fuck out of me and causing me to storm around and slam doors and shit, right after getting an edgy tone out of me and short answers, she asks me if I want to go out to eat with her. Why. the fuck. would. she think. I’d want that.

So this is what happened a bit ago and when she asked if I wanted to I said no, not really. Then she says “Why not?” and I said Because I don’t want to and I just ate not that long ago. I don’t understand why she proceeds to ask me “why” when I give an answer that I feel is obvious and clear. What does it matter “why” I don’t want to? The only point of asking that is to get information to then use against me to continue trying to force me to do something I don’t want to do.

What’s even more annoying is that someone with her personality and someone as neurotic as her, is not even seen as dysfunctional at all. While someone like me, is seen as dysfunctional in a few ways. And why is that? Because being just neurotic is perfectly acceptable in our society, in fact since it correlates with things like OCD and perfectionism, it tends to help people make it in our society. But with someone like me, who is on the borderline between between Neurotic and Psychotic, I’m not accepted or seen as functional in this society. Because I have trouble getting and maintaining jobs, because I am highly emotional, because I speak my mind a lot about things other people are afraid to say, because I refuse to conform to the priorities and interests of the common person, I am viewed very differently than my my mom.

It’s absolutely fucked that if you appear outwardly perfect/functional, then that’s good enough for people to think you are on the whole ok. That there is no way you could be fucked up or have flaws, as if being able to hold a job and make regular income is adequate in proving your worth as a human being. All it means is that you don’t have trouble on a regular basis doing normal people things, and that you are good at molding yourself to be the way a workplace wants you to be. It means that you can control yourself pretty well in that way, and it also generally means you are good at faking things, unless of course you are the kind of person that doesn’t need to fake anything because the way you are does not disagree or conflict with society.

My point is that people need to stop discriminating against and judging people who aren’t busy bodies or working 24/7 and making money and having cars and houses and shit like that. I don’t know who decided that meant these people are superior human beings, and everyone else is inferior. It’s fucked. Why aren’t we focusing on real values like the kind of person someone is? How good of a person are they? What good traits do they have as a person, what degree of compassion and empathy do they have, how open and understanding are they? This is the shit that matters! Not how well you can be a puppet.