Fambly

I am so very sick of the constant mansplaining from my brother/trans-sister.
I am sure she means well. Or at least I am working very hard to convince myself that she does. But the constant need to insert herself into every conversation and have dubious but “definite” facts on everything is so tiresome.
It makes me realise how much patience my friends must have.

This holiday has also made very clear that the person my brother has grown to be is not someone who I would ever be friends with.   We are about as incompatible as people as it is possible to be.

She tries so hard, to be helpful or impressive or just to contribute to everything, and it makes her so very infuriating.



On the other hand my dad is mostly a dick on purpose....

Home is so soon, but not soon enough

I had a very nice weekend on Cortes, and only spent half the time angry at Evelyn and my father for being annoying.
Evelyn acts like a spoiled, entitled, child on far too regular a basis and we all just let it slide - which is likely making it worse.
Family is awful.

Finally had a couple of night with both a bed and a room to myself.
The room I had is usually Used by the gay cousin I still haven’t met who I mentioned a few posts ago.  It was his grandmother’s house.

So sick of family. Especially now I am back around Johnny.

Would love to spend a lot more time around my grandma, but am more than fed up with all the rest.

Counting down to getting home

Johnny being gone has made things so much less unpleasant.

Though for all that Johnny made Evelyn worse, much annoyance is still being caused.  She means well, but is a bit hit and miss about listening and very stilled at quoting or taking personal things she seriously misheard.

The good thing about this is that after years of being told I had done things so forcefully that it gave me serious doubt about my lack of memory of it, or contradictory memories, and thinking I was losing my memory of things faster than I had realised I have now seen it pretty definitely that the issue is with Evelyn misinterpretating or misremembering the world as much as any sign of early Alzheimer’s in me.

And the complete lack of listening until a voice is raised and then sulking about the fact anyone raised their voice.

I should have been more obnoxious a child so my parents gave up on making more children.  It would have been better for everyone.

Hrmmm

Reading over this blog it worries me how much it sound like I am trying to prove things aren’t unhealthy or abusive every time I talk about the semi-imaginary-one.

He is mostly pretty decent.

Honest.


We have just had some massive failings of communication.  And I still have no idea how much our intentions or expectations agree.

And I am too close to the situation to actually know if there was intentional stringing along.  It is possible that I was just stringing myself along and he eventually went along with it.

And I will keep blaming myself, regardless, as I need for him to not be a dick.

Also, my depression has been kicking my arse all trip.   It is making how bad things are back home hard to work out.

That

I just ended a conversation with “I am going to go sit on the toilet and have a cry. Like a well adjusted adult.”

It pretty much describes how well I am doing today.

Canada is not going well for me.

Mentally or physically.

Going to dinner I was wobbling on surprise jelly legs.  And then got asked how I had got so sunburnt - I’d not been in the sun, I had just turned bright red for no obvious reason.

I should be feeling happy tonight. Johnny has pissed off to Cortes without us, but am feeling too gross to enjoy finally having an evening without his explaining how he doesn’t see skin colour but those First Nations....

Shame

So. This morning to break the boredom of the trip I had a poke about in the gay social apps. The semi-imaginary-one uses them for reasons that may or may not be my fault.  Very unlike him I was absolutely clear in my profile that I am spoken for and not looking for anything more than friends.

So of course there has been an avalanche of unwanted dick pics.
Homos really are the worst people.

The first guy I try to initiate a conversation with myself on Grindr I realised only after I had said hi and it was too late to pretend I hadn’t looked (like I did with everyone else) was a cousin (technically second cousin) who I had it yet met.
He immediately blocked me.

I was at about 70% that it was a dumb experiment and that I should delete the app before that happened. Now it is definitely going to be deleted.

People should never say hello by sending an unsolicited picture of their genitalia. Or of any body part (except maybe a clear shot of their face).

Also I am pretty certain I only installed it out of confusing and poorly defined anger at the semi-imaginary-one.
I really have to man up and sort things with him.  I am pretty certain that if he isn’t my “the one”, then he is at least the closest that I am going to get.
For all that things have been more problem than not, he is still the first person in my post-teenage life that I have genuinely wanted things to work with. Which has to count for something.

Or I am just so smitten with his boobs that I am blinded to reality.

Amaze

I have “amazing” hair today

I’m taking landscapes, I’m taking still lifes, I’m taking bad self-portraits

Finally did a thing, coming after a weird morning losing the fight against my brain. And also my little head after weird dreams - a sequel to a dream nights earlier where the semi-imaginary-one’s workmates tried to set me up with a nice transdude as they thought I should try dating someone nice -  leading to my sending some rather needy and desperate for validation texts to the semi-imaginary-one.  Like a creep/saddest-saddo-what-ever-sadded.

My brain is bad at the best of times.  Travel, and the tragedy back home, and the frustrations of family are making my brain worse.

Anyway, have some more bad self-portraits.

Orphans are the luckiest.

Between Uncle Johnny using the whole horror that Friday unleashed on NZ as an excuse to make a bunch of islamophobic comments and jokes and Evelyn exciting mix of self-involvement and intense (often hypocritical) self-righteousness, I am seriously not in favour of family right now.

At least Ev means well, but is just a bit terrible at humaning (possibly even worse at it than I am, which is concerning).  The more it goes on the more certain I am that Johnny is just an awful person.


Fuck. Now Johnny is alternating between massively Islamophobic comments and declarations about how the “soft racism of liberals” is the only actual racism involved. Mostly in relation to Trudeau’s response.
And he huffs and sighs at anyone talking about protecting the Islamic community on the news.
He is so objectionable.

I find myself hoping he is insane, so there is an excuse.

Racialism

The whole fucking mess going on in Christchurch is depressing as. 

Staying in a house with someone openly on the side of the attackers does not help the situation.  Johnny may just be trying to antagonise Evelyn constantly, and the cold impersonal universe knows that Evelyn is far too easy to antagonise, but he spouts some exceptionally offensive opinions.  Though I did notice that he toned it down severely when my step-cousin Ryan visited. He was still right wing and crazy but dropped all his racism. So he can act closer to human when he chooses to. 

Which mostly supports me opinion that he is mostly just a giant douchebag. 

I seriously need to organise some time to be off somewhere where my family isn’t.  Just need to find a way of doing that that I can afford. 

Being one of “the poors” has many downsides, and a distinct shortage of upsides. 

I saw, after being proudly toured around the trailer park one of my second cousins raised his family in.  It actually seemed sort of nice, if a bit small, but the baggage of the term trailer-park was just too much for me. 

From a housing crisis perspective, New Zealand could probably benefit from some trailer park style housing projects. 

People....

Yesterday afternoon, after I completed my 23&me, and got it all ready to post back (though dad hasn’t even opened his yet), my uncle Johnny started his usual InfoWars-based ranting. It got pretty unpleasant to be around pretty quick. I was quit disappointed when he talked grandma’s new husband into agreeing that anyone who waits more than ten days to lay a complaint with the police wasn’t actually raped.
I was glad most people had fled the house earlier in Johnny being Johnny so had avoided having to hear my step-grandad being dragged into it.

I am really not happy about the fact Johnny is now staying for all of our holiday, and even coming with on the first away mission we have planned.

If I didn’t like the Semi-Imaginary-One so damn much I think I might have broken out one of those gay hookup apps and found somewhere to stay that only cost me in dignity and awkward physical contact, that I would rather not, instead of having to put up with all this awful family.

On the Semi-Imaginary note, he is doing a surprisingly good job of making me feel appreciated from afar.  I really do need to have that one awkward conversation with him about things of the last four and a bit years that I don’t know about, so I can stop fearing the worst and imagining a situation that is probably much worse than it is.  But it will be hard, and most likely kind of painful as I while I know my worst case scenario is almost certain to be disproven, I am pretty certain the truth won’t be the best case scenario either.  There is too much grey in which the truth will fall, and any of which will hurt a little.


[PS from a few days later] yes, this post was saying that I am miserable enough that I would consider whoring myself to escape my family. And I really don’t like physical contact with new people. I am pretty against having to touch anyone ever.  There are only a very small number of people that I am okay with hugging and I just have to take it with others I am expected to be happy about hugging.
I mean, what is with shaking hands with people when you first meet them. It is an awful tradition, having to touch a stranger.
It is so gross and awkward.

I may be broken.

Bad self portraits of a lonely woman

My autocorrect seemed to know the Lake Street Dive lyric that I was using as a entry title.

I went for a walk to hide from my family. It led to some bad self portraits, so I shall dump them here and let blogger scramble their order like it always wants to.  There is no reason for them but to prove that I am alive.   Then I will go read the instructions on the 23&me kit that I ordered.

Ughhh

I am getting so miserable on this trip that I have now posted an unhappy post on my forced jolliness travelblog.  I expect to get very told off for having the audacity to not love every moment of this experience.

That uncle Johnny is now staying the entire time we are here, thus meaning there will continue to be four people sharing the room we are staying in and that Johnny will continue to have the only actual bed.

I can just hope that when we finally get around to going to Elk Falls I will somehow manage to get myself killed by a bear.  I think that would probably count as a win for everyone.

Pronouns

Going to bed last night I got called out by Evelyn for not referring to her by female pronouns - this coming after being told not to when I specifically asked what pronouns I should be using (back in December when she first actually told me that she was transitioning).

It seems that I am wrong no matter what I do, which leads to a certain amount of wondering why I should even bother as she will then just have to manufacture some other thing to be offended by my existence about.

Also, how transitioned does a trans woman need to be before her constant mansplaining stops  counting as mansplaining?

It is probably unhealthy to hate my family so much.

I am not handling being around my family, and trying to broach things that are making it much worse with my father made it pretty clear he is unconcerned by things that don’t directly affect him. If anything he seems to be entertained by the discomfort of the rest of us.

I think that the takeaway from this trip is that I should never have agreed to travel anywhere with my father.

Also, I should have less contact with my immediate family in general.

And possibly that the extinction of the human species is long overdue.


In happier news, overnight last night the semi-imaginary-one finally accepted my Facebook friend request.  After four and a half years of whatever the fuck it is that we are doing, he is finally willing to acknowledge possibly being sort of friends with me.
I realise I am not sounding very positive, but my brain has not been in a helpful place and I am spending far too much of my time fixating on how adroitly he avoided confirming or denying that he’d been shagging over people the who time before being all surprised that I wanted a monogamous relationship with him when I finally forced the DTR conversation a few weeks back. It is frustrating/infuriating/ridiculous as I had made it clear in many previous occasions including when he agreed that I shouldn’t see other people back in the first year.  And I had also made it clear on regular occasions that I was monogamous.
There needs to be a bit more awkward conversation before I can be entirely positive about stuff.
And I am also highly suspicious that it will go in ways that somehow put fault for it all on me. Because I fall for people who are dicks to me. Because I am too dumb to human.

I think I may have been over sensitised after my one Campbell River homo internet friend proved to be all the bad kind of homo internet friend when he pulled an ultimatum on me and then blocked me over the fact I am spoken for and unwilling to treat that as a greyzone.
It is making me hate the gays more than usual.  And also a little bit question the years I spent committed to someone who doesn’t appear to have felt the same for most of it.  And the worst part is that I mostly knew it was just me init the whole time.

And this place is not doing favours to my sanity.

I am falling apart and sharing all my insanity here as the people I want to talk to are all out of timezone.

Crumbling

I am not handling this trip.  The intense negative emotional responses I am experiencing in relation to basically every stupid thing that is happening here is pretty unbearable.

I am getting used to the way that never getting a fucking moment to myself around my family is making me feel extremely lonely, in a way that being alone never has.  But I have been finding myself feeling genuine regret that I failed to die before this whole trip happened.  Even by my standards that is an unhealthy place for my mind to be.

I am just plain not doing OK.

And I have no idea what I can do about it.
I don’t have access to any of my coping mechanisms except food, and I have too much stress-nausea for food to help.


But at least I am keeping the travelblog all full of the fake cheerfulness. That is what matters, letting everyone who keeps telling me that I am having an amazing time believe that they are right. Because their comfort about something they only momentarily think about is the only thing that I exist for....

Family, you can’t kill them... unless you can.

Finally snapped at my brother and told him that I had not at any point disagreed with what he was arguing at me and he didn’t have to keep fighting at me. He stormed off into the freezing night in bare feet. And has not returned.
Now being guilted for picking on him.
Family.....

He returned when messaged for dinner.  And in time to then just fight with Uncle Johnny.
I understand it is an autism spectrum thing that doesn’t allow for grey zones, but it gets very frustrating to be around.  It stacks poorly with a tendency we both have to extrapolate from the info we have and run on the generated assumption - unfortunately the ASD makes him less able to adjust to new information modifying the assumption. It leds to rage arguing when it is really unnecessary to argue any amount at all.
And Johnny is kind of an arsehole, so the combination has been exceedingly unpleasant to be around.

I am trying to find an interpretation for Johnny that isn’t just an arsehole, but I don’t think that there is one.

I am all backwards

So, I have been having this problem when the only time I don’t feel crushing loneliness is when I am off by myself.
Being around my family somehow just makes me miserable to the point that wandering the streets of an industrial park, and the poor sections of the strange town around it, is an improvement. Which is not to say that it is good or pleasant, but it is just a vague numb bad and not the complete awfulness that being around family is.


I sort of wish that I could blame it all on my brother. Who is super annoying, mostly due to trying FAR too hard at everything.  And I gave him my emergency chocolate too (his cat back home died, it seemed necessary) and he didn’t like it and fed it to dad (dad let me rescue much of it back).
And so damn many terrible puns, all presented in an infuriating special vocal tone just for puns.

But I can’t.

Which is very irksome.


I think whatever is wrong is just me. I don’t seem to work with this family.


At least the Semi-Imaginary-One has been putting in surprising effort. Which helps take the edge off how much I am not enjoying my life while I am over here.

Crazy pants

Continued failure to sleep here has led to far too much lying awake and stewing in my thoughts.
The semi-imaginary-one’s response to our discussion of monogamy has been seriously chewing at my brain.  I realise that I am leaping to the worst assumptions and that is probably unfair of me. But it is only probably unfair. It might prove to be perfectly fair.

I really should have had that awkward conversation before I left. Putting it off did not do the favours that I hoped it would.

Fat Tuesday where I am, but Ash Wednesday in the real world.

Evelyn and my uncle Johnny keep arguing.  It is making everything very unpleasant.
But I am not allowed to kill either or (better) both of them.
One can’t not fight for whatever idea is already in that thick head and the other is so ridiculous in his anti-having-respect-for-other-people and climate science denial.  It is it fun to be around - unless you are my dad, who is such a fun of unnecessary chaos that I often suspect that he is just an arsehole.

Still really not enjoying this trip to Canada.
I thought not being alone would help with my depression, but it is mostly just making me want to take my family out with me.

I ran away from them today and walked into town. I really should have stayed away from them for longer.  They are not proving pleasant to be around.

At least the semi-imaginary-one is making slightly more effort than I had expected.  He has sent pictures from a group outing that I would have been invited to (probably by his flatmate).

I am mostly just really hating being in Canada so far.
I wish I had stayed home in my flat and my own space with as much of my loneliness as I want. The feeling of being surrounded by all this family is a lot like loneliness but a bit worse.

And my loneliness would at least let me get some sleep.

I am not looking forward to travel

It has got to the point that I really don't want to go on this trip.

I don't want to be around my family at all, much less for a solid month.  Evelyn picks fights so hard, and is almost as intolerably mopey afterwards if your don't fight as if you do prove to be irredeemably evil (by having an opinion that disagrees with whatever tumblr blog the point being fought for came from).

And my dad is..... my dad.

Also, travel is stress and I am a very broken person.


It also annoys me that the situation with the semi-imaginary-one is also adding to my unhappiness about the trip.  I put off an argument we needed to have because I didn't want our last interaction before I left to be unpleasant - and now I am just fixating on the things left unresolved.

I should be packing.  Instead I am cleaning my flat, watching TV and posting multiple blog entries across my various (well, two) blogs.
So fucking productive.
I deserve a medal.  Or something...

In other news, I had pub lunch with a friend today and then went and had Hungry Hobos late lunch with his partner's ex husband.  I did not mention the existence of either to the other.   It was weird.
Also, Hungry Hobos is wrong.  Gourmet sandwiches with a hobo theme seems tone deaf and, maybe, even mean-spirited.  And the sandwiches have too much cheese. (Yes, I heard it too - the concept of too much cheese sounds impossible - but...)

And on the way home I bought $20 worth of snacks for the flights.
I have already eaten over half.
Because stress, and being a very broken person.

At least I have only broken down into tears a couple of times while failing to pack.