Tag: no rebogs please

Just reminded of one instance of the old “Why would you ever think that?”

For a few years before they took off, my biodad and stepmother were living right up the road from his parents. Also my aunt, who he’d never gotten along with but totally despised by that point. I guess he still had more use for my grandparents, especially my Nana, because things were at least friendlier on the surface there. He and my Grandaddy never got along either, but he was always my Nana’s favorite.

Anyway, I barely got to see any of them whenever I was there, because I was told that my Nana was busy and really didn’t need me underfoot.

They were about as pissed off as you might expect, after it came out that he’d been lying and deliberately keeping me away. And quick to reassure me that I was always welcome.

My mother’s response? “Why would you even believe that?! That’s just ridiculous, and you should have known better.”

Maybe because he was anything but stupid, and could tell which buttons to push for maximum manipulation? Whether or not he was the one primarily responsible for installing that particular button?

Of course I couldn’t have said that to her at the time, even if I’d had the perspective to wrap words around it. When I was 10 or 11 and didn’t know to call any of it abusive.

My Nana was probably my biggest and most consistent supporter in this world, and she never made me feel that way. It still seemed totally plausible that I might be in the way, and I really didn’t want to put out someone I cared about. I had been getting enough messages that causing problems for other people was kinda what I did by default.

Still working on that one, yeah. Besides the part where avoiding causing problems for other people is supposed to be a reciprocal thing.

So, after the fun of that trip out yesterday evening?

Right now I’m trying to get it together to make it out somewhere on the bus, because pretty much everything is closed tomorrow. And I want some items I’m already pretty much out of–like bread and, more importantly, pain meds–enough to try and go after them. Instead of just going without for a couple of days minimum.

I’m also not entirely happy with either my partner for not going out shopping before he left like he said he was planning to, or myself for persistently downplaying and dancing around just the level of problems getting out I’ve been having. And frankly how sick I’ve been in general.

There are (honestly mostly PTSD-related) reasons for that, but it really has not been been doing me a lot of favors.

Of course I also feel terrible about even needing to put people out repeatedly, and cause myself all kinds of extra trouble trying to avoid that, as part of the same garbage. That doesn’t help anybody much, either.

It’s not that sustainable normally, but yeah. Turns into an even more obvious set of problems under circumstances like this.

Unfortunately reminded of one thing that happened recently.

I am aware that I do have some persistent ED-type dysmorphia shit going on. (Also not helped by the amount of harassment I run into here, or literally never seeing anyone who looks like me anymore.)

But, that was really brought home when I got startled on the bus. I ended up standing near the downstairs camera and monitor…and at first didn’t recognize myself at all when I caught a glance at my full-length image cycling through on the screen.

Besides looking even paler and sicker than I would have expected in that horrible lighting? The person on the screen looked actively thin, with their clothes hanging funny because of it.

Took a couple more monitor cycles to figure out that, yeah, they should be standing where I was and were also wearing the same clothes.

A more disconcerting experience than I wanted to think about, and it’s hard to describe exactly all the ways.

I would add that of course it wasn’t all lesbians acting like that. Just essentially the same dodgy political subset who still prefer to act crappy about assumed proximity/“availability” to men in general.

That nastier ramped-up version was just as hard to avoid encountering, though.

There are also reasons some of us still react very, very badly to the same old shit minus that specific embellishing touch. And apparently we’re not supposed to remember that ever happened.

Oh wow. I think it’s time to stop trying to catch those few male Endler babies I spotted for tonight.

Just had a terrible accident. As I probably mentioned before, the babies like to swarm in whenever I’m doing anything at the tank, in case there’s food or something else interesting going on. So it’s hard to catch just one of them. Even a small net just isn’t workable unless I want to scoop a bunch of them out.

Well, for the first time one of them managed to dart in just as I was moving the little catching cup to trap one of the boys against the front glass. So that her head got caught. Stunned or maybe dead 😦

And back in dense plants. I’m still too shaken to investigate much, and there’s nothing I could really do to help. Hoping for the best, but I don’t know.

Hard to see how that could have reasonably been avoided, but I can’t stop crying.

Not even going to try to catch anybody else tonight. Eventually going to have to, but maybe I can come up with something safer. Not right now though.

Seriously though, I got inappropriately parked on one university hospital’s adolescent psych unit for other reasons, for a couple of weeks the summer I was 16. (Long story I’m not starting into right now.)

And for most of that time, I was the only one there who was not put there by the local foster care system. That was apparently most of who they got over the summer, in particular: kids between placements. Not in any particular crisis or anything, just for somewhere to put them.

For that matter, I know for a fact that North Carolina was parking kids in the foster care system on psych units in the early ‘90s. Whenever they were short on suitable placements, and presumably the state and/or Medicaid would pay for “treatment” in the meantime.

And nobody seemed to have a problem with that, because foster kids. Who were probably fucked up enough to need psych treatment by then anyway, if they weren’t going into the system.

(Not my own view of any of it, to be clear. Other than systems which operate like that being highly unlikely to help anyone’s mental health.)

Wouldn’t be surprised if some other systems were doing similar, and/or if it happened over an extended time period. May still be the case, for all I know. But, they weren’t even trying to hide what was going on then, and I saw some of it.

Bad enough when it is legit “treatment” (for whatever diagnoses they could come up with to justify locking people up), in a less blatantly abusive setting.