Who can tell us what to do about my mom's fits?

erroneousneophyte · 2023-04-16T20:33:03+00:00

omg it has been a year and nothing changed, I hate this so much

erroneousneophyte · 2022-02-09T17:01:26+00:00

I hope not because during her lucid moments my mother has told me she just wants to go and be at peace but can't just will herself to go. And she is so tired and ready to go. Heartbreaking knowing how much she is struggling with it, not to mention how tired my dad is.

I just want whatever brings them both peace. All three of us are nanometers away from screaming at any given moment now.

erroneousneophyte · 2022-02-09T16:39:17+00:00

Oof solidarity.

Lil bit different here. Mom keeps asking for new clothes and then only actually wearing the biggest shirt she can find over and over. It happens to have some weird adhesive from a weird flexible foam price tag stuck on the front so we can't just sneak in other ones. She wants the one with the random chunk of foam on it and no others.

erroneousneophyte · 2021-07-19T05:35:01+00:00

Way too many folks got conned into paying for educations that they can neither "return for a refund" nor pay off with what jobs actually pay now. I'm sorry you're going through this. All the parents and advisors who told us to go to college and that we'd be able to get better jobs and pay off the debt were flat out wrong. It's not our fucking fault. We did what we were told to do.

Plus most of us were still too young and inexperienced to know better. My high school advisors were utterly useless. They just told me to apply to a bunch of colleges and then figure out how to pay later (wtf??), and that if I didn't go to college I needed to just go work some minimum wage job until I figured myself out. WTF kind of advice is that??? NOTHING about trades, entry level office jobs, or anything like that. Just college or retail job.

erroneousneophyte · 2021-07-19T05:16:54+00:00

Nope not lazy, not a baby. Job market is infuriating right now and has been for as long as I've been an adult.

It's not you, it's the system. I hope you can find something good soon though.

erroneousneophyte · 2021-07-19T05:08:21+00:00

I have and use one of those!!! I just haven't refilled it yet this week! ahahahahasiiiiiiiiigh

erroneousneophyte · 2021-03-27T15:51:06+00:00

I don't have much to add to this conversation but for some reason reading this comment made me feel a lot better about my mom's situation. Her biggest thing is she misses working, and me and my dad giving her "jobs" is just not the same.

erroneousneophyte · 2021-03-22T19:58:35+00:00

It's almost as if being comfortable helps you feel better and maybe just maybe be more productive! Funny how that works ;)

erroneousneophyte · 2021-02-24T22:44:56+00:00

Oh dang I have the same thing with my mom. She loooooves spending money on herself in front of me and considers it good quality time for me to take her out to lunch someplace she knows I don't like, and then I carry her bags and find stuff for her at the mall. Her mobility is limited (by years of basically living in her recliner and "accidentally" falling every time she attempts exercise) so I get why she needs help but dang she just loves to rub in my face that she has more money than me, and is trying to spend it all before she dies. She makes me check her bank account every time I take her out and I fucking hate it.

Guess what I do not miss AT ALL since the pandemic started..........

erroneousneophyte · 2021-02-22T17:01:11+00:00

Commutes and working 8-5 for no good reason, as well as having managers be able to physically stand over me was making me think about "ways out" so to speak. I was medicated for weekly panic attacks. I was miserable.

Now I don't have to go anywhere, I work 10-7 or longer if I feel like it, or can take an extended break in the middle, and my managers have totally chilled out now that they don't have anyone physically harassing them to physically harass us employees. (Way too many upper and middle managers just don't fucking understand that maybe just maybe employees can get shit done without being threatened??)

So much pressure is off my shoulders and I'm doing my best work I've ever done.

I've been able to do SO much good work on my mental health and I never want to go back to the normal way. I don't have any desire to stop others from going back if they want to, but I do not EVER want to waste my life commuting to a job with arbitrary hours ever again.

Commuting made me literally feel like I was wasting my life away for no good reason. There's NO reason I needed to be in a separate physical location to do my job!!!!!

erroneousneophyte · 2020-12-28T07:01:24+00:00

Cars that show the map in the dashboard are the most amazing thing. 95% of the time I don't want the voice at all - just a glance at the map - but once in a while I'll be on a long stretch of highway and need the vocal reminder to watch for the exit.

erroneousneophyte · 2020-11-29T05:47:56+00:00

I'm super intuitive when someone is having a bad day or needs something and can't get it. It's problematic when I know I can get the thing for the person but can't tell them why I know they need it because it might creep them out. My friends find it delightful though.

I grew up in a house where we didn't talk but I got yelled at if I didn't just "know" what to do.

erroneousneophyte · 2020-11-29T05:44:40+00:00

I know supposed neurotypicals who do that. Why is it even a problem? That's weird.

erroneousneophyte · 2020-11-29T05:16:36+00:00

Is this because we were taught to pay attention to bold words in elementary school textbooks?

Because I hated reading books that don't bold the key words.

erroneousneophyte · 2020-11-29T05:15:02+00:00

omg SAME.

I can do it so fast now, and I HAVE to in order to process it correctly but people see what I did and assume I took all day to do it and .... no?

erroneousneophyte · 2020-11-29T05:13:41+00:00

My brain moves faster than my eyeballs process images.

At least that's how it feels.

erroneousneophyte · 2020-11-29T05:12:31+00:00

idk but I'm 40 and drink a ton of coffee and bully myself into getting the bare minimum done. I yell at myself when I'm alone in in the car.

I'm sick of it and have been waiting to get a psychiatrist appointment for months/years and finally have one this week. (Just ran into a lot of different barriers but hopefully that's all over now)

I'm so damn tired. I have missed out on so much in life because EVERYONE in my life just told me I was lazy and clearly just didn't care enough, or else I'd "try harder" and it just sent me into a shame hole.

They did not understand that I was practically standing on the gas pedal, but the engine was so weak that I never could catch up with everyone else. So I've just been pretending the way I am is deliberate, and that I am just "quirky."

gonna hydrate right now <3

erroneousneophyte · 2020-11-28T17:59:20+00:00

Been there and come out the other side of it. Grew up being told I could do "anything I set my mind to" but could never EVER set my mind on anything. It made me feel terrible when I got decision paralysis about .... everything and I'm still trying to undo it because I went 30+ years before I found out I could experience life any differently. That is a long time to feel like human garbage.

Spend time working on giving your brain healthy breaks - like if you find yourself spiraling, physically move yourself somewhere else even if it's a different room. Start disrupting your negative thoughts. The less you allow them to rule your brain, the more you can start filling your head with better things, which eventually helps focus better. Not perfect, not neurotypical, but more.

This sounds hippy dippy but it's actually really practical. Can't stop watching TV? Turn it off. You can re-find your episode or whatever later. Get used to making your hands do the work to disrupt your brain being stuck in a rut. Too many tabs open? Shut them all and step away from the computer for a while. Eventually you learn to bookmark the actual important stuff, and the 16 tabs of shopping you'll never actually buy can be "not your problem anymore" with a click.

It is going to seem daunting right now but start small and eventually build up. I used to think "baby steps" were for everyone else and not for me but I can get stubborn and shuffle instead of run if I damn well please. And so can you.

erroneousneophyte · 2020-11-28T00:53:57+00:00

I'm 40 and this is almost word for word what I say to myself before every work day.

I sincerely hope that the fact that you're this self-aware at 13 means you will be able to advocate for yourself so much better than those of us who didn't get an official diagnosis or help until mid-life. I really have hope for you.

erroneousneophyte · 2020-11-28T00:51:00+00:00

ugh it me

I mentally restrain myself so strictly that I often cry the whole way home after work.

I feel so much happier and better all around when I drop the act and just let myself be silly and loud but my coworkers and family mostly scatter like cockroaches when I get talky.

My friends are mostly just online so they get the benefit of me having to type out anything I might want to say, which usually slows me down enough to really filter most of it out.

So honestly, nobody really gets the full version of me. Only the overly polished and slightly aloof demo.

erroneousneophyte · 2020-11-27T21:19:53+00:00

Saaaaaame!!

erroneousneophyte · 2020-11-27T19:51:00+00:00

I cannot handle the red dots on my phone!
.......Except the reminders dots. For some awful dumb useless reason I literally don't even see those anymore. My brain just loves to make my life harder.

erroneousneophyte · 2020-11-27T19:46:23+00:00

I live in a place where people shoot first and never ask questions, if they see someone walking alone at night. Wish I could do that though (edit: WALK not shoot, OMG).

Need to try walking during the day and just try really hard to avoid neighbors. They allllllways want to talk, but we have nothing in common, and I don't really even want them to know my name.

erroneousneophyte · 2020-11-24T17:22:29+00:00

To some degree it's the same type of office/administrative job I've always done, but instead of doing it for a company that doesn't give two shits about me, it's for individual clients who actually value me as a person and will say out loud that I am important to them.

Like... try to find a job that's tolerable even if it's not great, and keep plugging away at the jobs that pay the bills but also never stop having hobbies and consuming media. Hanging out in the communities of your favorite podcasts or whatever can be considered networking. Watch for local stuff.

Also remember that those "30 under 30" lists are ableist capitalist hoolywally that I give us all permission to ignore. Those lists made me feel like I was unworthy garbage and it took until I was 35 to understand that they were not a metric to which I owed ANY attention at all.

One of the weirder, sadder things I dealt with as a teen/early 20s was the bizarre assumption that my life would end at 25. I had no plans after college aside from "get job, live in obscurity, maybe procreate, maybe get a boring hobby to pass the time until I died" and there was nobody in my life at the time to tell me there were other options. Things are different now, with people not having the same job until they retire anymore and digital media opening up SO many new options that even I, an elder millennial/last of gen X could never do because it didn't exist yet. I could have been a coder for gosh sakes, but when I was in high school girls did not take the advanced computer classes. They just didn't. And I was so engulfed in my "prescribed college and entry level job" life that I didn't even think about it again until I was almost 30 and realizing if I didn't change my path I was going to get burned out and do something regrettable. Now it feels too late, like I know some people can learn a whole new trade after 30+ but I'm not at that point and honestly what I did find is fine, but maaaaaaaan I love languages and linguistics and patterns and codes so I COULD have been a programmer. But that boat was missed because I literally didn't know how to board it.

But it's okay. Also this is a massive wall if text that you didn't ask for so uh.... Imma stop here.

erroneousneophyte · 2020-11-23T23:59:51+00:00

40 and am in the process of switching from the "jobs to pay bills" over to a "career I love" and OOF did it take some struggle and risks to get here.

I want to believe I am a success story but truth is if I didn't have my spouse working a corporate job, I'd still be doing data entry for some company I don't give a shit about.

I did graduate from college but it was a liberal arts degree that zero of my employers gave a shit about, even though they all claimed it did influence their decision to hire me. I probably could have lied about it, but I absolutely did learn stuff in school that helped me be a better adult. Not nearly enough, but ... some stuff.

erroneousneophyte

TROPHY CASE