hating this

i am so tired of this. tired of everything. tired of trying to cope with the other parts.

the adults haven't been around. every time we get close to the adults being around, something happens, and then... no more adults. so i'm stuck trying to fix things so the adults can come back. i'm stuck trying to hold our life together so that things don't fall apart completely. i'm stuck being responsible for a bunch of parts who don't appreciate me. but i can't rest, because every time i relax even a little, some other part comes out and starts f***ing things up. they get in fights with w, and leave the house because they know it pisses her off and makes her worry. i'm doing everything i can to prevent more extreme self-harm, and that's pretty much all i'm managing.

and i feel like i keep getting shoved back into the role i originally had, of the one who was stuck dealing with the garbage no one else wanted to deal with. when is this going to be over? when do i get to just be a normal person? i don't even mean "normal" as in "not having DID." i mean "normal" as in "not stuck doing a job i am getting thoroughly tired of doing." but there it is. i can't help taking responsibility, because if i DON'T, i know perfectly well no one else will either.

i know it's different from when i was a teenager. w is not abusive. but i can see that some of the parts who have been out will push her until she acts abusively. she is a human being, and if they push her past the point she can deal with them in other ways, it's not gonna be good.

so the not-abusive part is better. but in lots of ways, things are worse. because you know what? when i was responsible for my siblings and the house and all that? i still was *separate* from them. people could still see me, and even if my mother did pretty much nothing but criticize how i handled things, at least people outside the house could see that i was good and responsible and not a jerk.

but now the people i'm responsible for, the ones whose behavior i really have no hope of controlling, are inside my body. the ones who i'm trying to keep from running away or hurting themselves or wrecking my life? they live in my f***ing BODY.

and that's a whole lot worse. because 1, people see them and they see me too. they think that i should be taking care of this, keeping all of this garbage from happening. and 2, the life the other parts are f***ing up is MY life too.

i am so TIRED of this. i am scared of the fact that my safety relies on the ability of a 15 year old--and exhausted, frustrated, worn-out 15 year old--to continue being sufficiently responsible and persuasive and in-control. because i am the one responsible for whether or not i'm safe; it's not anyone else's job. i am the one responsible for whether i am able to get better. i don't f***ing know HOW. but it's still my job.

and then people will say to me, "oh, put that responsibility on someone else. let one of the other parts be responsible. let them take some of that." but the other parts DON'T. if i'm not in control, nothing good comes of it. and i can't be in control all the time. the reason they didn't lock me up along with the adults is that i can't keep other parts from coming out. so they know they can push me aside pretty easily. so they can get out and I CAN'T STOP THEM. i just get stuck cleaning up the mess after they have been here.

and i don't get to do any of the things that **I** want to do. because any time i'm out, it seems like i'm just trying to clean up the mess the others left. trying to keep w from getting completely fed up and exhausted and hating us. trying to clean up the literal messes. trying to get the others to even have a f***ing MEETING so we can talk about this, but no, they aren't willing to meet, at least not with me. they are refusing to get better, and i don't know how to get them to a point where things aren't so horrible, and i am just STUCK with this.

and the little kids haven't had time out for a long time, so i feel guilty about that, too, but i can't find a way of making that happen, because i don't actually know how to get other parts out if they aren't wanting to come out on their own and the little kids are stressed out about the fact that there are a bunch of furious teenagers. and they're upset that w doesn't remember to ask them to come out. and the other teenagers have been telling them that if w really cared she would remember to ask them to come out, so if she doesn't, they should keep themselves safe by not trying to come out at all.

I AM SO TIRED OF ALL OF THIS. i am FIFTEEN. when do i get to relax and just be me? i'll settle for getting to relax and pretend i'm an adult. i don't have to act like i'm fifteen. i just want to f***ing RELAX and not be responsible for anyone but me.

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sometimes i get tired of the pity party

this is going to be a fairly non-specific post, because i want to make it clear i'm not speaking about any one person or group of people.

but sometimes i get REALLY tired of the whole "pity party" that tends to happen when people are coping with having a history of abuse. sometimes, it feels like there's a culture of saying "oh, woe is me, these bad things happen and there is NOTHING i can do to change this, and now another bad thing has happened, and ANOTHER.... oh, woe is me. oh, i can't do anything to change this."

and then you look at the situation, and it really seems from the outside that there ARE things that person could do, but if you suggest those things, then you are being unsupportive and cruel and not validating how difficult things are.

i guess maybe part of this, on my end, is a reaction to my older sisters.

here's my usual example of the kind of thing i mean (no triggers, unless you get really freaked out by a lack of sympathy on my end, or by financial stuff):

my older sister has trouble with her finances. she tends to spend impulsively, and she doesn't budget. she is well into adulthood--she has spent more of her life over the age of 18 than under it. and she would keep having services shut off, and wound up having her house foreclosed, because of financial mismanagement on her end.

her response? to be upset that our mother hadn't taught her to budget when she was growing up. so it's not my *sister's* fault she had money trouble, because it was our *mother's* job to teach her to budget.

and i often see people (to my knowledge, not people who comment on this blog, in case you're wondering) who do the same thing with their abuse histories. they are like, "oh, i wasn't treated right when i was a baby, so now i am forever scarred, so feel sorry for me."

well, ok, yeah. we do get scarred. it totally sucks. but there are things we can do to change that. particularly once we reach adulthood, we have a LOT of options.

it's not like we can make things perfect, because we can't. yes, there are a lot of things that are hard. and there are days when i can't bear the thought of going on trying to cope and heal.

what i'm objecting to is the people who really do seem to be refusing to move beyond acknowledging the pain. the ones who spend a whole lot of time talking about how everything is so hard, and don't spend time taking responsibility for their own lives. with people online, i try not to say much, because i know that only a tiny part of who they are shows up, and it's entirely possible that they *are* doing a lot of things to improve their lives.

but sometimes, people online remind me so strongly of people in my non-computer life. the ones who, rather than sitting down and learning to budget for themselves, spend twenty or thirty years bemoaning the fact that they weren't taught to budget in childhood. the ones who refuse to take action on their own behalf, because they are still waiting for someone to come and save them.

and, yeah, i'm speaking from a place of privilege. i managed to figure out how to go to college, and because my parents weren't paying for it, that meant that when i left for college, they no longer had any concrete way of controlling me.

i was fortunate enough to not get into an intimate relationship until i'd done enough healing work to be aware of what a healthy relationship looked like.

i have been amazingly lucky in my friends. while we all have our issues, we do seem to be more likely to encourage people towards healthy rather than unhealthy behaviors.

i have also been fortunate in the therapists i've worked with (barring the idiots right after i was in the hospital, but that was two months out of my life, and i was able to see that they weren't doing me any good).

it's not that my life is perfect, or that i don't have hard days. and i don't know, maybe there are people who look at me and my life, and see that same pity party going on. i mean, i'm not working, because of the fact that between fibromyalgia and DID, it's just a struggle to get more than three or four "good days" in a row. and i'm sure there are people who look at me and think "well, if she would just ______ then she could be doing so much better."

so i do try to be sympathetic, and generally, i hold my tongue when people seem focused on having a pity party. sometimes, i even type words of support, trying to be compassionate and respond to their pain.

but then i get frustrated, and just kind of back off. because there are some people who seem to focus so much more on how other people mistreated them, and how they are wounded, than on figuring out how they can take control of their own lives, and change things for the better.

just had to get this off my chest. and apologies to anyone i might have offended by writing this.

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