Blog 12 Thanksgiving ☠️🔫

Hello from the rough holiday week of Thanksgiving. There is an extra male family member visiting this week, so of course things are harder than usual. It’s not that bad though, because I have made extensive preparations for this extra war-like time (including setting up a place where I can “camp” and sleep in the living room if my cat decides to be downstairs, so that I can protect her at all times.)

I wonder why I have to do this. Nobody asked me if I want to do this. It is just... WHAT WE DO!!! A lot of people, mostly women, hate this holiday stuff and they have for generations. Why do we still have to do this then?

Anyway, I am familiar with this visiting male's behavior. Tv is constantly on in this house, and when he puts things on they are always gross and very loud. Watching tv makes you respected here, while sitting quietly and politely doing your own non-intrusive activity isn’t. People do not hurt you if you are watching tv and respect your space. And when men, patriarchy, and gay male homoeroticism is on, you are VERY respected. So the plan was, to control what goes on the tv and therefore maintain the mood and prevent weird stuff from being put on.

I put on the men’s soccer matches currently taking place in Qatar. Because it is the men’s game, not the women’s, my tv bubble will be respected, not belittled. When I've watched the women’s game, it was treated so poorly, and even worse, at the very end of USA vs. Japan, they all actually came to watch at the last. five. minutes. Same thing happens with women's Olympic sports versus men's.

I only need to look at the tv once in a while to make it seem like I am watching it. So far, the tv has not been accosted and something even more unbearable put on, like a concert or a tv show about men touching each other’s feet or eating cheese or testing toilets. Gay male sexuality is treated so sacred here, but women are treated like shit.

Remember the older female family member, who is the sole member of my co-habituating family that I care about? She has given me a lot of heartache over the years, more than I can describe. I dove into putting so much care into her... I am so sad thinking about her. She is such an amazing woman, but she doesn't treat herself the way she deserves. She is so much better than all of this and she means so much to me. She deserves so many good things. It makes me so sad when she acquiesces to all the males, sometimes to my detriment, then goes and says she cares about me, and genuinely does! What am I supposed to do with that?

She makes me really confused, and frustrated, and I am never sure what she is going to do next. I feel like I can’t take it anymore.

(Another day. Male relative in mid-20s has left.)

Like other blogs written during stressful times, I’m writing this in sections. To make it easier to read, I’ll mark when I started and stopped.

As I'm writing this, anger is coursing through me. Anger is a very very very familiar feeling. The immediate danger has passed, so that is not occupying all of my mind. Things did eventually get worse, despite my plans.

I am so angry. At her and the environment. Whenever I think of the sane, rational thing to think, feel, do, or say to move forward, my natural urge is to distance myself. But if I distance myself, the reality makes me more angry towards it. Kind of like how you wouldn't hesitate to tell a stranger to leave your house, but it's harder to say that to a relative. I am intertwined here, not entirely involuntarily, but not on my terms.

And I hate nearly everything here. The intangible but also the physical: objects, colors, set-ups. I hold my feelings in or else it’ll make life worse. My older female relative is very difficult sometimes, and I am not an advanced or graceful communicator, and if I push her too much in my clunky honest way, she will be hurt, and life will be so tough here we truly won’t be able to leave. Once, I read in a fiction lesbian book from the 1980s, Curious Wine, a woman remarking that women have a hard time hashing it out with each other, because we are so not used to it and we don't know how.

Holding everything in makes me more angry. It feels so unnatural, I hate it. But I have so little recourse (no other family, no friends, no home of my own) that I feel I have no choice. In the past, I have sometimes just BURST and just told her my real opinions on certain things, and it has not gone over well. Why does it have to come to that explosive point? Sometimes what I say is completely ignored, forgotten, or takes years to process. I wish I could reach her, because what I really feel is love and care and wanting to liberate her. If I could just take a wire and hook up my brain to hers, and show her what I know and how I feel, I would.

(Later in the day)

There is a type of exercise called isometric exercises, where you push against an immovable object like a wall. The last decade of my life has felt like I have hit an immovable wall over and over again. It builds character and strengthens the soul even though it bruises it badly. I have become so numb I don’t even feel or realize when I get slammed. Anywhere I could have turned, any route I could have pursued, I always faced blocks.

Wow, at first I said that things weren’t that bad. They actually turned pretty bad. Everything fell into the same patterns as when he lived here. It is very funny that the boy who lived with his family as late as possible, being disturbingly close to his parents, is the one who moved out, while I spent years waking up every morning and the first thought being, “I want to move." Typical, typical, typical.

That’s not mentioning how I have had to financially support him (and I am penniless now!), cook for him and his friends, and be intentionally triggered by him for years. My cat and I have sacrificed so many days for him, tolerating him, listen to his loud country music, deal with his other loud homoerotic music and tv shows, misogynistic behavior and sexist comments, lies, ruining of our stuff, meanness, bullying, and simply making our life difficult for crumbs of fun. I've watched him utterly exhaust my older female relative. My cat has been treated worse because she is female. I’ve had to watch him flounce into the world looking like a “nice guy” when really he was abusive and user-y to the people at home. He put on a good act of competence, when really he needed help with everything. With his connections connections connections with other males, everything went swell for him, and nothing he did was ever questioned even if it burned family savings. My older female relative would talk for hours on the phone with him about his days buying coffee out, eating out, and spending money with his friends. One time, the older female relative entered the poorly insulated room where I was so cold my brain didn’t work, but it was the one room I could work, and was worried it was too warm in there because the energy bill was too high.

But the full stories are for other blog posts. As you can see, I didn’t even know when or where to start! After writing everything out, I just want to move on… and here we are again!!!! Going in circles…. Too hard to work here, but need to leave to work. Cannot work in coffee shops, cannot leave Pussy Schemer, must make monumental effort to cook food in a difficult environment, must continue to try to stay healthy and exercise, do laundry, get sleep. Deal with older relatives and their sneaky, evil ways.

(the next day)

Another VERY angry day. It's like I am in a psychological trap. The more I try to distance myself, the angrier I get because I see the shit more, and the angrier I get. If I am not angry and can act like nothing is wrong with the older female relative, the easier she is to live with, and things go easier, but the situation NEVER evolves, and it NEVER changes, and it NEVER improves. So then I want to leave, but then same old shit... I am on my hands and knees washing the floor because something got dragged in from the outside that is toxic to felines.

Why am I so angry at the older female relative? I just want to perpetually scream, "WHY?!" at her. I have to control this desire or else, like today, it completely takes over. "How could you do this to me?" "I thought you were my friend." How could you?" "You see how much I suffer, so why do you continue do that?" The male relatives have hurt me a lot, but after I while, I just decided I was done with them and didn't care anymore. As horrible as the past week was, I wasn't personally hurt because this person was essentially a stranger to me now. I just knew he was going to be an asshole and what I had to do to protect us. And now it's done and I have no lingering emotions. But when she hurts me, it hurts and frustrates and angers me indefinitely because I care for her, and she cares for me.

I cried so much. I used to cry so much as a child, then tried to become numb to all feelings as a teenager. Then left home and came to live here, with my quasi-adopted family. Things were better but they were also really bad in different ways. But overall, my life was better here. I am lucky. Sometimes I still just don't understand: I can come out tearstained right now, remark, "Oh what lovely weather we are having!" and the response will be, "Oh yes it's so nice out! It is such a lovely day!" (You can only facepalm so much before you swear off it forever, fearing future brain issues.)

Overall, during the THANKSGIVING FAMILY FUN, I got so stressed that I had trouble seeing and my period is late. There were more physical things but I can't even remember them now. My cat suffered too, she had a lot of anxiety and didn't sleep a lot during the day. I feel like I stayed awake for 120 hours, even though I did catch some sleep after everyone went to bed. The light in my room stayed on at all times, so I could be ready for any attack at any time. After a stressful event like that, the recovery/detox period is always very painful too.

Thank you for reading about my week.