For a bit of context: My parents left for about a week and left me in charge of the house and the dog. They sort of prepared me for that the week before, leaving instructions on watering the garden and tidying up. I am not the most careful when it comes to house tidying, so I understand their apprehension.
I would also be left carless. I crashed the truck two months ago, which carries a whole ton of blame and conflict from before, and we have been moving with a lent car an aunt provided while she recovers from a surgery. The car was returned the day they left for the airport, so I am alone with the dog in a house outside of the city, with little to no public transportation and without an actual mean of moving around except a bicycle I could have used to go get groceries and such.
It was a good time to relax, and I would lie if I said that I didn’t. I was thorough on my instructions, though I missed some things on some days and had to compensate. It was also slightly rewarding. The tomatoes started turning red and I enjoyed some self-grown salad.
Overall, I was able to drift away from my involuntary thoughts, which include blaming myself for the crash and everything wrong in the family company, feeling like a bad son and like an underachieving failure of a human being.
As I said, I missed on some instructions some days, and some things that should have been done better just weren’t good enough. I knew I wasn’t going to be praised for keeping the house squeaky-clean, but I was happy with the results, as I had put the effort.
So they came back, and I don’t think I got any comment on it. I could only think that I was an ingrate who is always expecting praising for anything and started telling myself I did the bare minimum. First comment on anything comes form my mother, who tells me the kitchen wasn’t clean as it should have. Admittedly it wasn’t a perfect picture, but I had spent little under an hour before their arrival getting rid of the dishes that could make it into the washer and getting it to start. She added it was “the minimum” I should have done. Other things started piling up, like a couple of flowers I missed entirely.
And so I started to feel my thoughts kicking in.
The next day I withdrew into gaming. Not the healthiest thing to do, but there was not much else to do, to be honest. I’d spoken to my parents about their trip and there wasn’t much to add, while I’d reported on everything I had to report (including one of the gate openers which I still haven’t found and frankly have no idea where it could be).
Late in the afternoon my dad sent me a message. A video about the consumption of digital content and phones draining brains and such. He added the quote: “Shall we get to this point?”. The implication being that there wasn’t enough communication.
That simple thing made me flip. I turned off my computer and wandered around the house, not doing anything. My parents were sitting in the living room and I considered talking to them. But about what? Anything I say is always diverted to either a critical remark or implied I shouldn’t be interested in some things (I like history a lot and usually my mother says stuff like “who even knows that?” which I read as ridicule). I was feeling trapped and went to bed rather early.
So today I woke up and started my day. After I had a shower I am told my father is out to the workshop, and I presume somebody picked him up. I started working on my own load, organizing tax documents and invoices. When he comes back he comments something to my mother about being paid. I asked him who paid and he said “the scrap guy”, which I understand to be that he sold the wreck of the truck that’s been sitting in the workshop since it wasn’t insured at the time of the crash.
In order to be better informed about a new development in the story of a disaster I caused, I asked later who it was exactly that it was sold to. He gave a dodgy reply, which he does sometimes, and I insisted on knowing, telling him “Hey, I want to be involved in this, you know?” Big mistake.
He started telling me that if I wanted to be involved I would have gone to the workshop with him this morning, and I didn’t listen to anything else.
That was exactly what had been in my mind before. How anything I ask, do or tell is somehow used against me. If I had spoken about anything last night it would have led to a discussion about me gaming through the day, or that I don’t have a career (yes, weirdly, this is still a thing). Best case scenario, it would have been dismissed as uninteresting. When I asked today, instead, it ended up being about my failures, feeling like I can’t give a small step (like asking how something turned out in the end) without throwing at me a total expectation (that I should have been taking care of the wreck since the crash). On top of that, its implied almost always that it is because I don’t care, which is something I can’t measure because I don’t trust myself, always doubting my own thoughts and commitments.
After lunch I punched myself in the face. First time in months. And so now, my head hurts.
<3 Mish
