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purlsandpearls Don't mind me, I'm just over here having one of those end-of-the-murder-mystery moments where the detective, Brilliant Genius that he (always a he, for some reason) is, has eighty-six different flashbacks that connect everything together and SUDDENLY THE MYSTERY IS SOLVED YAAAY.
So, for the last...forever, really, I've been stressed and exhausted and I've been blaming it on a lack of routine but it's been going on for much longer than I haven't had a routine, so that excuse doesn't really hold too much water. It's been getting worse, of course, but it wasn't caused by the lack of routine. I've also had basically no appetite for months now, too, which is very annoying because meatsacks do not have charging cables.
I've been living with my fiance & his parents for the past three years. Yes, three. The initial plan was I'd find a job and an apartment and...well, neither of those happened. So I've just kinda...stayed. And stagnated. And fallen into one mistake of a program after another. But that's kinda neither here nor there, where my current exhaustion is concerned.
I think I've been stressing about housing (whether consciously or not) for nearly three years, because I am acutely aware that me being in this house specifically was not part of The Plan, and his parents have been very gracious to let me stay here, but for my own sake, my mental and physical health, I need to get out of here.
I don't know why this hasn't occurred to me sooner. I know that housing stress can completely fuck someone's mind up, I've seen the studies, I know how it affects high school kids' grades when they're worried about Life rather than School. But I never applied that to myself, foolishly assuming I had no housing stress because I'm in a stable environment and I know where my next meal is coming from, etc.
However. I'm in a hot-and-cold relationship with my fiance's mother, where every single time I do something that my fiance gets grumpy or annoyed about she starts acting as if I am a horrible human being who is Ruining her Baby Boy's life (and do note that this does absolutely nothing to help my own supply of self-hatred) and she almost starts...berating me? for whatever it is I'm doing, and my fiance hasn't been stepping in nearly as much as he really needs to. I get scolded for not letting him do his work (well excuse me for wanting to interact with my fiance) or for stressing him out about the housing stuff...really, any time I'm not being the Perfect Girlfriend, it seems.
So I've been half-treading on eggshells for the last two-and-a-bit years because of this. She's also got her own deep-seated issues (which she refuses to get therapy for, another issue in and of itself) and will just go on and on for hours if you let her about her childhood and how much of a class-A horrid bitch her mother is (no, really, Nan is a piece of work, so I know she's not exaggerating there). She brings up stuff that happened 50-odd years ago, and it's clear that she's still not over it, and I'm here trying to work through my Daddy Issues (TM) and my fears of abandonment by my family and I literally do not have the energy to deal with her shit on top of mine.
It's not an abusive household, not by any means, but there's elements of it that I can see cropping up, in addition to general Boomer inconsideracy and conservatism with an added helping of religion-fueled puritanical ideas like not letting us even think about falling asleep in the same bed. Despite the fact that we've been engaged for a year. And we're pretty sure they know we sleep in the same bed when it's just on our own. But no, their house, their rules.
"So just move out" I hear you cry, and well, when you're unemployed, nobody's hiring you, you have a grand total of $8k to your name wrapped up in an American mutual fund that your own mother will be Very Mad if you take out...you're kinda stuck. The worst part is, my fiance and I can afford to move out. He's got the money, he's got an income, he's got savings. But he's not comfortable moving out, because he likes to make mountains out of molehills and beat dead horses til they're roadkill. I've been trying so hard to just Deal With It for his sake but I'm at my breaking point--actually I'm beyond my breaking point and I have been for MONTHS now--and I'm telling him that for my physical and mental health I need us to move out.
And I have a huge amount of guilt telling him this, because I don't want to rush him. He tells me that he'll do things on his own time and he doesn't want to feel like he made a mistake in moving out too early. He's nearly thirty, for chrissake, with a stable income! Why is he still living with his parents??? (These are the thoughts I cannot voice, because it's scarily close to the shit his ex was saying, and I don't want him to think he's a failure and I'm gonna leave him because he's still living at home. He's not, he's had perfectly good reasons, but I am just...so frustrated. So done.)
So there I am pulling the health card, and it feels manipulative, and I hate it. But I've been crying for help, begging to move out for months now, and I've been getting the equivalent of a pat on the head and "that's nice dear, please quiet down so I can work" for it.
I'm scared of going back to where I was in 2014. Five years ago I was heavily suicidal, unmedicated, in a beyond-dead-and-rotting relationship that wasn't healthy when it was briefly alive, laying on the bed staring at the ceiling thinking about jumping off the sixth-floor balcony but not wanting to ruin someone's walk with their dog. So I didn't jump. I couldn't take meds then, so overdosing was out. No guns, and that's messy, and so is slitting one's wrists in the bathtub. I can feel my thought patterns slipping back into that. I had to take a Valium last night just so I could sleep and all I could think was "maybe I should take these more often, they're nice when I want to stop caring" and I know that's the road to addiction, so if that's not illustrating my mental health I don't know what will.
I think all of the above is just a very long-winded way of saying "I'm exhausted because despite my living situation being fairly stable I'm under immense housing stress and it's only taken me three goddamn years to realize it." Yay.
So, for the last...forever, really, I've been stressed and exhausted and I've been blaming it on a lack of routine but it's been going on for much longer than I haven't had a routine, so that excuse doesn't really hold too much water. It's been getting worse, of course, but it wasn't caused by the lack of routine. I've also had basically no appetite for months now, too, which is very annoying because meatsacks do not have charging cables.
I've been living with my fiance & his parents for the past three years. Yes, three. The initial plan was I'd find a job and an apartment and...well, neither of those happened. So I've just kinda...stayed. And stagnated. And fallen into one mistake of a program after another. But that's kinda neither here nor there, where my current exhaustion is concerned.
I think I've been stressing about housing (whether consciously or not) for nearly three years, because I am acutely aware that me being in this house specifically was not part of The Plan, and his parents have been very gracious to let me stay here, but for my own sake, my mental and physical health, I need to get out of here.
I don't know why this hasn't occurred to me sooner. I know that housing stress can completely fuck someone's mind up, I've seen the studies, I know how it affects high school kids' grades when they're worried about Life rather than School. But I never applied that to myself, foolishly assuming I had no housing stress because I'm in a stable environment and I know where my next meal is coming from, etc.
However. I'm in a hot-and-cold relationship with my fiance's mother, where every single time I do something that my fiance gets grumpy or annoyed about she starts acting as if I am a horrible human being who is Ruining her Baby Boy's life (and do note that this does absolutely nothing to help my own supply of self-hatred) and she almost starts...berating me? for whatever it is I'm doing, and my fiance hasn't been stepping in nearly as much as he really needs to. I get scolded for not letting him do his work (well excuse me for wanting to interact with my fiance) or for stressing him out about the housing stuff...really, any time I'm not being the Perfect Girlfriend, it seems.
So I've been half-treading on eggshells for the last two-and-a-bit years because of this. She's also got her own deep-seated issues (which she refuses to get therapy for, another issue in and of itself) and will just go on and on for hours if you let her about her childhood and how much of a class-A horrid bitch her mother is (no, really, Nan is a piece of work, so I know she's not exaggerating there). She brings up stuff that happened 50-odd years ago, and it's clear that she's still not over it, and I'm here trying to work through my Daddy Issues (TM) and my fears of abandonment by my family and I literally do not have the energy to deal with her shit on top of mine.
It's not an abusive household, not by any means, but there's elements of it that I can see cropping up, in addition to general Boomer inconsideracy and conservatism with an added helping of religion-fueled puritanical ideas like not letting us even think about falling asleep in the same bed. Despite the fact that we've been engaged for a year. And we're pretty sure they know we sleep in the same bed when it's just on our own. But no, their house, their rules.
"So just move out" I hear you cry, and well, when you're unemployed, nobody's hiring you, you have a grand total of $8k to your name wrapped up in an American mutual fund that your own mother will be Very Mad if you take out...you're kinda stuck. The worst part is, my fiance and I can afford to move out. He's got the money, he's got an income, he's got savings. But he's not comfortable moving out, because he likes to make mountains out of molehills and beat dead horses til they're roadkill. I've been trying so hard to just Deal With It for his sake but I'm at my breaking point--actually I'm beyond my breaking point and I have been for MONTHS now--and I'm telling him that for my physical and mental health I need us to move out.
And I have a huge amount of guilt telling him this, because I don't want to rush him. He tells me that he'll do things on his own time and he doesn't want to feel like he made a mistake in moving out too early. He's nearly thirty, for chrissake, with a stable income! Why is he still living with his parents??? (These are the thoughts I cannot voice, because it's scarily close to the shit his ex was saying, and I don't want him to think he's a failure and I'm gonna leave him because he's still living at home. He's not, he's had perfectly good reasons, but I am just...so frustrated. So done.)
So there I am pulling the health card, and it feels manipulative, and I hate it. But I've been crying for help, begging to move out for months now, and I've been getting the equivalent of a pat on the head and "that's nice dear, please quiet down so I can work" for it.
I'm scared of going back to where I was in 2014. Five years ago I was heavily suicidal, unmedicated, in a beyond-dead-and-rotting relationship that wasn't healthy when it was briefly alive, laying on the bed staring at the ceiling thinking about jumping off the sixth-floor balcony but not wanting to ruin someone's walk with their dog. So I didn't jump. I couldn't take meds then, so overdosing was out. No guns, and that's messy, and so is slitting one's wrists in the bathtub. I can feel my thought patterns slipping back into that. I had to take a Valium last night just so I could sleep and all I could think was "maybe I should take these more often, they're nice when I want to stop caring" and I know that's the road to addiction, so if that's not illustrating my mental health I don't know what will.
I think all of the above is just a very long-winded way of saying "I'm exhausted because despite my living situation being fairly stable I'm under immense housing stress and it's only taken me three goddamn years to realize it." Yay.
