separate post for me rambling about my family and recent psychiatrist appointment uAu/
I sorta had some ramblings in tags (of reblogged posts) regarding me getting a new psychiatrist, and my family a bit I think, so this is me finally addressing those. (It’s more for myself, since I was wide awake in bed last night rambling to myself about some of this stuff smh).
(most of this is, like.. prologue to what I really want to talk about three paragraphs down. If you’re pretty well-versed as to what’s been going on with me the last few weeks/months then you basically don’t need to read the first three paragraphs. ..except for one great analogy I make about my relationship with my parents, holla)
Things with my parents have been, uh.. shaky. I’m 99% sure I never made any posts about it but uh.. Idk, things have been going better with my mom since she’s started calling me Rae/Razor sometimes (it’s still awkward and annoying when she says “it’s hard” etc. etc. but 40% of the time she corrects herself so I’m being more lenient I guess Idk). but yeah back in July I asked her, if I needed it, would she lend me money? she said no, which idrgaf about, but I was also kinda hurt. Then I asked my dad, and he said ‘ask ur mom’ and I explained what she said and we talked and he did say “I’ll talk to her” but he also said “we’re upset because you were disrespecting us” and “you can’t deny that your mom is a good mother” and shit which was very laughable but also made me 20% more fed up with my dad. (also I haven’t heard anything about them lending me money since then, but I also don’t need or want their money or help, so that means nothing to me).
I haven’t really talked to my dad much, but I’ve come to realize that’s just how our relationship is. Some sort of artificial closeness. Re. my mom, I can tolerate her when she comes down, etc. but it’s still not much of a relationship at all. ► My dad is like an acquaintance you feel obliged to talk to, my mom is like that coworker you can’t stand but you make it work because #business. ◄ that is the shortest way of explaining any of it I think.. And honestly, I’m having to interact with them less and less (thank gods) and also making a point to not dwell my shitty relationship with them. Which brings me to my psychiatrist appointment.
Monday I had my last appointment with the one I’ve been seeing for over two years. We talked about some things, but they’ve all been overshadowed by my appointment with the new psychiatrist. (One thing though, he said I’d come a long way since we’d first met, etc. etc. and it felt really good because yo he’s so right!) Oh, and I mentioned that, like.. my dad “wanted things back to how they used to be” and how I thought that was the stupidest shit bc I was miserable and not being respected, but w/e. ► The final note on that was basically.. even if my parents pulled a full 180 and became the best parents they could be, I still would want nothing to do with them. I told my psychiatrist, I’ve spent too much time and energy trying to sort out my relationship with them, and they’ve been difficult the entire way, so I’m done stressing myself out with it. If they were just ‘friends’ then I’d be out of this toxic relationship in a heartbeat, but because we’re *~family~* then I need to have a *~good~* relationship with my parents. Yeah, no. I might be able to forgive them for the shit I’ve been through, but I don’t even want a relationship with them anymore, so I’m done wasting energy on it. ◄
Anyway, the new psychiatrist is cool, and I had to sort of give her an overview of my life etc. which was.. eye-opening? By telling her about past events etc. I sort of reviewed them in a way I hadn’t for a long time, so yeah
(this is the only part very important to me lol, it’s my origin story //SHOT)
► basically, I started by explaining that I first really noticed my depression back in grade 6 after my dog died. cue: a bunch of realizations as to why I was so goddamn depressed (aside from that dog basically being another sibling to me, and also y’all know how much I love my pets). I was 11 and I was heartbroken. I tried to talk to my parents about it, but my family doesn’t talk about stuff. I basically just got “yeah, we’re all upset” or “you think you’re upset? Your dad had to bury her” so I had to deal with the grief on my own. This of course led to me being super depressed and angry because I felt like nobody understood how I was feeling, and nobody cared. Around this time I started fighting with my mother regularly, basically every day. (My dad worked away from home, so he was gone 5/6 days a week, and even when he was home he was usually out at the farm or something.) I was also already a self conscious kid with shit like my mom pressuring me to have good marks, and her comments on my acne, weight, etc. so arguments were really easy to start. Basically they always ended with me going down to my room to be alone. If dad was home he might come down and talk to me, tell me I was overreacting and that mom was doing her best, or shit like that (but at least he was patient with me and talked to me quietly, which helped so fucking much omg). It still sucked a lot though, and I remember a few times where I was yelling at them about wanting to kill myself and shit, and they a) laughed at me, b) told me I was over reacting and needed to calm down, or c) threatened to take me to the hospital (part of the reason admitting myself to the psych ward was such a big deal when I finally agreed to it - it had been used as a threat to me for 6 years). TL;DR my feelings were not being acknowledged, much less validated, and that’s just how my family was/is. ◄
that’s.. basically the main thing I’ve been dwelling on, because it helped me re-evaluate everything that’s happened since. My depression got worse every year, and I think a big part of it was because I would have these issues, and they wouldn’t get discussed or dealt with. I would cry about it for a month or something until I forgot about it (and then when I got depressed again, it would resurface with everything else, making me even more depressed, whoohoo!). Plus any time I had an issue with my parents, I was told I was overreacting/ too sensitive (I still don’t really like being called sensitive..) to the point where I didn’t realize how toxic my home-life was.
When I got to high school, I had the music room, where we all hung out happily and there was no fighting and I felt valued. I found people with whom I could talk about my life (Candy in grade 7, which is why she’ll always mean everything to me, and Charlotte, Sydney, and Danielle in grade 9 and onward) and they would listen to me and validate me. In general I learned to feel a lot better about myself. Then I got to University and got on Tumblr and stuff and learned a shitload more about myself and started healing myself, and I found a more and more people who were intent on being kind, and respecting everybody (everybody, not just friends, etc.), and I just met so many people who shared my values and helped me feel better about myself and who made the world brighter (and continue to do all of those things!). There’s been a lot of amazing people and it’s late and I don’t want to make a list where I forget people, but I can 100% assure you that if you’re reading this right now you are one of those people who has made my life a million times better with everything that you do. One of the main reasons I love London so much is because I met beautiful people like you since being here.
this did not take the turn I expected but I’m sorta glad it did. It is now 3AM and I must make haste to bed, but thank you for reading this, I love you and you mean so much to me <3
