Among my group of friends, it is no secret that my parents are very emotionally abusive. They don't mean to be so, but the fact that they are hardly excuses this fact. A little while ago, my mom dropped me off at my new off-campus apartment for the last time (classes begin Tuesday and I have an orientation program tomorrow to attend), and shortly after we left our house, she ruined my mood in a few short minutes.
Something to know about my mom is that when she gets frustrated, upset, basically any sort of negative-esque emotion, she becomes angry and takes it out on everyone around her, but she seems to especially like taking it out on me. It could be my imagination, but she nearly every time singles me out and begins ordering me around before snapping at how I'm doing everything wrong and repeating orders slower and louder while pointing, as though this will make me move faster and/or carry out the order "more correctly."
This morning, preparing for the car ride, she went in and out of this angry and frustrated state, which is always confusing for me. I feel as though her reaction to anything I do is a raffle and that I should attempt to determine the percentage chance of how likely she is to be angry with me and when I should stay away from her to protect my mental health, but when she rapidly switches from that state to normal, I am unsure of how to respond. In the car, she had seemed to calm down, and I had remembered a few forms I was meant to fill out and turn in. I told her, and she proceeded to take her frustrations out on me. She said that I need to "get my act together" and become more organized and that I should have told her sooner, but I had only set up my college email the night before and seen the email telling me that I need to send forms in. She went silent after saying more negative things and nearly swearing at me in anger, and for a long time, we were silent. Then, she asked how long I had known about the forms, so I told her that I only found out last night. I'm not sure what I expected, given her agitation, but she then scolded me more, very harshly, on how I need to keep up with my emails and that "my father can't bail me out anymore" and she may have said that I don't deserve to be "bailed out," if I remember correctly, but my memory is extremely poor, mainly because of my dissociative disorder, but also because of my ADD.
I went silent, as I always do during and after these scolding sessions (both my father and mother will scold me harshly in ways that boil down to "everything in your life that is wrong is your fault and you're not trying hard enough. Have you tried giving up your hobbies and non-existent social life so that you may better focus on what we deem to be important?" but my father has always been far more harsh than my mother). From then on, she was in "normal mode," and did not scold me again until much later, while we moved my futon from "bed" to "sofa" mode and I was very much absent from my mind, and was therefore lethargic and not fast enough for her standards. For the rest of the ride, despite her not being angry anymore, I rolled what she had said around in my head. She had also said that if I did not do well this semester (I am a transfer student and the college just barely let me in because my grades have been steadily declining, due to anxiety, stress, depression and autism-related issues), the school will likely kick me out and "that will be it." I don't know what that means, exactly, but I cannot help but interpret that to mean, "You will fail out of life and you shall never amount to anything, because you did not finish college because of your incompetence. You are a disappointment on this entire family."
As I have planned to do for several months, I am going to make an appointment with the mental health services place on campus and get screened for autism and eventually diagnosed. A short while ago, I went to the mental health services website and found the information for making an appointment, and while I was there, I happened to see that they also help students with learning disabilities, including the diagnosis of them. Out of curiosity, I clicked on it, and from the information listed that matches my experience to a T, I believe that I may have a learning disability. I am having mixed reactions to this, those reactions mainly being, "Hooray, my struggling and not getting anywhere isn't my fault!" and "Oh dear god, I am more broken than I originally suspected."
Getting diagnosed and receiving the help I so desperately need is an exciting concept to me, but the idea of telling my parents that I have been diagnosed with several "negative" things (that is, there are things "wrong" with me) is not. After I told my parents that I may have a mild dissociative disorder, my mother promptly forgot about it and my father plainly stated that I am inventing problems for myself and that I suffer from a vivid imagination. I had told my therapist what had been going on inside my head, and she refused to see me again until I had spoken with a dissociative disorder specialist, which was impossible at the time due to funds and transportation (I have no car and had no friends who could visit me to give me a ride). My father, after hearing about this from both me and a letter from my therapist that I had asked her to write to try and explain why I need to see a dissociative disorder specialist, my father vehemently and angrily told me that I had scared her away and that I had told her too much. Later, while trying to find a new therapist, I had told one of them that I suspected that I have some sort of mild form of dissociative disorder and she referred me to a place that I could not reach, again, because of transportation. I had told my dad this, that there was no private practitioner that I could easily get to because none of them would take clients with dissociative disorders, he repeated that I had scared them all away by saying too much.
In my opinion, that is utter b******t. I should be able to talk to my therapist about every mental problem I am having, no matter what it is.
In closing, school is happening again soon, and I am both apprehensive and excited. I am intensely interested in my subject of study and I know for a fact that I will do far better academically here than at my previous college. My diagnoses are forthcoming and hopefully, my parents will cease their incessant torment once they know why I am so different from the "norm!"
20 Jan 2013, 1:50 pm
