The last month has been probably the hardest I’ve had in a while. My anxiety has been through the roof. There’s a lot of family garbage(and hoooooooooo boy do I mean garbage) going on right now and it’s spilling over into my relationship in a way that I don’t have control. To give you the readers digest condensed version, we don’t have company over at the house…ever unless its a relative. The house is always a mess because my grandma and uncle don’t clean up after themselves so all the cleaning is left to my mom and I and its a lot. Aside from that, the house I live in is just a very toxic space in general so my boyfriend never comes over…ever. In the almost two years we’ve been dating he’s probably been in my house like five times and it’s starting to get…frustrating for him. Which I understand.
The holiday season in general is just…bad for me. The last two years we didn’t really do anything for Christmas because my uncle and my grandma weren’t speaking but now they are again so we’re all just supposed to play big happy family and pretend that we like each other again. It’s a lot…and it feels like everyone else is allowed to get upset or frustrated about it except for me. I tried to talk to my mom about it and she said I was looking for things to be upset about meanwhile five hours later she’s upset over the same…exact…thing.
So I guess I’ve been keeping a lot in lately because the urge to cut has been really really strong lately. Saturday I broke down and started scratching my arm. My boyfriend was with me which was almost worse because I never wanted him to see me like that but I guess it’s good that I wasn’t alone. That’s the closest I’ve been to a relapse in awhile and I guess I didn’t realize how badly I’ve been taking care of myself emotionally.
I really do want to enjoy the holidays but I’m quite literally scaring myself right now. I’m supposed to go see the new star wars movie on thursday and I can’t tell if I’m not excited because my anxiety is sucking the life out of me or because The Last Jedi was just that bad.
I’m sorry, that all sounds really toxic. I can’t imagine how out of control it must feel.
From an outsider perspective, your mom probably feels the exact same way you do about the situation and is just trying to hold it together. Unfortunately that comes at your expense. That is so, so shitty and not the least bit fair.
There’s not a magic bullet to make it go away, and it sounds like trying to stay positive won’t get you real far in that environment. Is it possible to go stay with a friend for awhile?
If you’re on the verge of breaking down in any way, whether relapse or self-harm or even infidelity, and you can’t change your situation, the best thing to you can do is remove yourself from the situation. It may damage relationships with other people, but there is no relationship more important than the one you have with yourself. You need to do whatever it takes to keep yourself well.
Well, if you’re upset… then you’re upset! There’s no reason to be judgmental about this. This is how you feel because of the current situation and there’s nothing wrong with it. So even if you don’t really have a place to express this in your family, I’m glad you can do it here. Your feelings are valid and there’s no reason to diminish this. Also it sounds that your mom is dealing with the same feelings but don’t really know how to handle this. It’s the kind of situation that let appear mixed feelings and it can be hard to even understand what we think or what we want.
It reminds me a bit of my own family because nobody talks about important things there. If two of us don’t speak to each other, if there’s a problem somehow, nobody talks about it and everbody just keep going on like nothing. Sometimes this capacity of faking astonished me. But this functioning can be destructive when it concerns important situations, because you feel like you don’t have the right to speak or even feel anything.
From what you described, it’s quite normal to feel anxious. It is indeed toxic if you can’t have your boyfriend to come regularly and if the environment you live in doesn’t suits you. Despite this, I hope you were able to fight against those urges because you don’t deserve to hurt yourself. Even if it scared you, it’s a good thing that your boyfriend was with you. He loves you and there’s nothing to be ashamed of. Holidays can be triggering and difficult to handle for so many reasons. If your feel more vulnerable these days, then maybe you’ll need to spend more energy than usual to stay on the right track and fight against the urges. So if you know things that are safe and helpful for you to ease your anxiety, then use it as much as you can. You can do this. You already proved to yourself how strong you are and what you’re capable of.
If you go see the new Star Wars movie next Thrusday, then I hope you’ll enjoy it! Even if you find the movie bad, you can still try to enjoy this moment.
Hold fast. New year is already tomorrow and holidays will end faster than you’ll realize.
