And here I am again writing about how I’m back from my extended break.... I actually wrote a draft post about this about 2 months ago and then never posted it. Things have been....complicated.
It’s hard to write when you are in a down and don’t know how to turn things around. It’s also hard to write when there is a lot that you want to say and you can’t say it for fear of hurting someone’s feelings or making a situation worse. There had been several big things happen in my life that I couldn’t write about and that’s blocked all my other thoughts.
One of those things has been my relationship with my sister and her now husband. I won’t go in to details, but suffice to say there was a breakdown in communication, several arguments with him and things haven’t quite been the same since. I got un-bridesmaided and in-invited from the wedding in Rarotonga....unfortunately I’d already brought tickets at that point. It wasn’t just me, the rest of my family were also tarred with the same brush, and things have been very awkward ever since. We attended the wedding but the relationship between us and my sister/her husband is still very much tentative and none of the issues have actually been addressed. I’m finding that pretty hard as I am normally a ‘hash it out’ type of person, but my sister prefers to brush things under the carpet and pretend they haven’t happened and she’s the one calling the shots here.
One of the big reasons this has triggered me so much is my particular sensitivity to feelings of rejection. Throughout my life I have often done things to upset other people and they have cut me out of their lives, without an explanation as to what I have actually done. Due to my mix of Asperger’s and personality disorder, I genuinely don’t know or understand what has happened to cause this, but I end up terribly hurt and feeling completely rejected. This is a repeating pattern in my life, and the more it repeats the more I am inclined to withdraw from socialising and put up walls to protect myself.
In my family I am known as very independent, but one of the reasons I am so independent is because I feel accute pain if I open up and then am rejected in any way. I find it incredibly difficult to tell other people what is going on in my head or how I feel, and I never ever ask for help. Partly because someone might laugh at me and partly because I need to prove to myself that I don’t need anyone else. If people reject me then who needs them? I can do it myself.
One of the ways this pain manifests itself is obsession with what has happened to cause the rejection. My previous psychologist fired me as a patient more than 2 years ago and I still frequently think and wonder what caused that and what I could have done to prevent it, and what I would say to her if I saw her now. It’s hard to let go because I opened up and told this person my darkest, innermost thoughts and then (for me) out of the blue she said she couldn’t help me anymore and that was it. After over a year of therapy. I ponder over this often. I get out the memories of our last few sessions and see if I can try and make sense of what happened. And I still can’t after all this time. But that doesn’t stop my brain from turning this problem over and over to see what the answer is. Time has dulled the pain slightly, but it still hurts a lot. Every time I think about this I feel a portion of that rejection all over again.
So when my sister, one of the people who is supposed to be there for me, rejected me it hurt an incredible amount. But what hurt the most was my perception that they (mum, dad and my other sister) cared about her much more than me. I’ve been in this position before where I had an argument with both my sisters and they didn’t speak to me for months, one of them even moved to another city in that intervening time and didn’t say goodbye. And no one seemed to miss me or care that much. But all three of them were deeply upset by this situation and pursued resolution with my sister. I felt that this meant they cared for her more than me. Another rejection, by my own family.
This boiled over one night when the four of us were having some conversation about this all and something got said about my behaviour. I know I am often completely erratic, I’m difficult to be around and I fly off the handle a lot (working on that), I know that’s part of my illness but I also know it hurts people and destroys relationships. I completely over reacted, hit my sister several times, punched my Dad, bit him, stomped on his feet. He held me in a head lock and I screamed right in his face. I was screaming and screaming, feeling a complete lack of any control. I just wanted to hurt and be hurt.
Later, I walked off into the night and got in the sea fully clothed (I did take my shoes off). It was the middle of winter and I had jeans and a t-shirt on, no jersey, and I was standing in thigh deep water thinking about drowning myself. A very low point in my life.
This incident scared me. I was completely out of control. I could see the red behind my eyes and all I wanted was to feel physical pain to match the mental and emotional anguish. I’ll never forget the look of terror in my sister’s eyes though as she cowered in the corner after I punched her and pushed her over. And my father physically restraining me.
I’ll continue this in a follow up post shortly.
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