The Things I Can Not Fix

Covid is not doing wonders for my mental health. I really needed this time to be able to live life and find happiness. I was just getting started trying to "re-find" my life. I loved art class, going to the UU and stamp club.  I had met new wonderful people at my UU. We had gotten another car, and I was eager to do day trips again and explore many places I was interested in.

I feel angry and upset, and feel like I may as well be in county prison. Oh I have tried to make the best of it, doing tons of Zooms, cooking food from scratch, doing some art work, reading a lot of books, and spending time with husband, but it's dragging me down. Covid is exploding like crazy in my local area, and the hospitals are filling up.  That's scary. At least Trump did not win, I would be despondent at this point. Biden is not perfect but is far superior.

I will never accept most Republicans to my dying day, so many seem to be horrible people who just seem out to destroy us all.  Their quest for self destruction should be researched by sociologists everywhere. My state is literally now being destroyed by their actions. I know Biden wants to unify the country to quell violence, but I think too much compromise with these non-empathetic creatures has put us in this place to begin with. I will never understand people who want everyone to do nothing but suffer. I hope the Senate flips to Democratic in the upcoming weeks or we are all in trouble. 

If not for my husband, life would have very little meaning at all at this point. I have begged him to leave to be anywhere but here. He is more practical than I am knowing taking a severely disabled woman overseas would be fraught with problems. If it were up to me, I would sell everything off and get out of Dodge just to be able to talk to someone without a mask in a coffee shop or to walk down a street without feeling like the Grim Reaper is chasing me. I had daydreams about being down at a dock begging to go on a boat to go overseas. I shouted to husband, "Screw this place, lets go to Taiwan, they've kept Covid under control!"

Even our library had Covid affect it, and while we didn't have contact with this library worker who had Covid, we are safely past the two week mark too, even the small pleasure of going to the library is now erased and I know if the place re-opens I can't risk it. Bills are growing huge too, especially the food bill. I told husband, "I don't want to get food this week, let's just scrounge, I'll cook these old pumpkins and use up some of the freezer burnt meat from April", but he is not for that. I know he will insist on getting some groceries.

We have this big internet bill to pay with the money he managed to make this week at gig employment. His work has been decreased massively, there's SOME, but state unemployment is only so much compared to federal. I find myself thinking of all these people not able to pay rent, our is paid with my Social Security, and think unless Biden comes up with a real plan, we are going to see millions in the street. I can tell homelessness is already growing around here, everytime we leave our "well off neighborhood" we can barely afford.

This one man had a neighbor over that we know, and had to quarantine from his work for two weeks because the neighbor informed him he got Covid just a day or so later.  Psychologically it seems people would be unable to cope and would be having nervous break-downs. Are the psych wards even open?

If I get Covid it is a death sentence, which makes the few times I do go out for "mobility" and to eat some hot food in the car in front of a take out restaurant feel like high risk. This has killed all pleasure in life, and I'm worried about cracking up. Severe internet, TV and sleep addiction are my reality. A lot of my life is planned around TV shows, and today's TV watching agenda includes Fargo, Evil Lives Here and some Nova ordered up on Comcast. How are single people surviving their long bout of solitary confinement?  I have dealt with depression most of my life, so know what to do, but winter is when my SAD and what I call "December Depression" gets rolling.  What's going to happen this year. Maybe being numbed out will help. 

 I married someone who has a lot of fortitude, this is probably a good thing. We tell each other jokes. He is a homebody and seems to find the isolation to be like a protective cacoon as long as he has me to talk to. He still goes to the store too much but at least does it late at night to avoid people. Maybe he thinks this is nothing compared to the stories his parents told him of surviving in the woods and stealing food to eat in World War II. He was less enthused to leave America, and is probably relieved that with a Biden win, this takes the issue more off the table. 

Covid has shoved my lack of close social connections into my face.  Before Covid, I was talking to husband saying, we are too isolated, we need to fix this. We have lots of long distant and other friends but here, there's too few. I was so dependent on groups and social activities for my real life social interaction. I know being almost deaf, this disabled, and this autistic affected my social standing, but it makes it more ornerous now. 

There's the odd thought that my isolated life is a protection, because I have no close local friends to offend by not having them over, there's less risks of Covid19. The UUs kept masks on and outside that I saw.  One friend who lives far away but used to visit all the time, for acouple of days, I think understands my high risk, but that feels like another loss with those visits and activities gone.

It made life more family dominant, and made my lack of close local friends even harder to deal with.  I have lots of far away and online friends. I am always behind writing emails.  Maybe some people would envy me now as they have their Trumpster, Covidiot, evangelical and religious families demand they show up to Thanksgiving and Christmas and risk Covid germs where for me, there's no worries. Remember the MRSA saga with my family? They had no problem with telling me to put my health at risk. It's doubful they are following Covid protoccols. It is weird to me about how I had thoughts about "plague" and "germs" back then considering what happened now.

The theme of my life seems to be too often "locked down", I yearned for freedom but it seemed everytime I turned around, it was attacked or I was thwarted or locked in a room or sitting as a kid on Summer vacation wanting to go to camp or do activities with the other kids but stuck at home cleaning house. Covid has brought up uneasy feelings about feeling like I am "grounded" and thinking "What in the hell did I do to deserve house arrest?" Some people I know went on a trips, to remote areas. I watched the friend of the "two parties" after Covid, take her sisters and herself to Chicago. She seemed to have no fear traveling around using a multitude of public bathrooms and restaurants. Another Facebook friend runs around and eats inside restaurants without a worry. She has these close friends constantly visit from out of town. I don't want her to get Covid, but envied her lack of fear in being able to run around and do what she wanted.

I thought multiple times of throwing caution to the wind and "living life too" but my CPTSD and anxiety disorders ruin everything. I went once into a thrift store that was too crowded with a mask, people kept walking too near me, it destroyed all the fun of trying to shop 6 months after this nightmare began, and then I was at home worrying about having "caught it". In the background, memories of not being able to breathe from various asthma attacks in the ER would haunt me. The party friend, always had tons of friends too and never was lonely. 

I am struggling with some post-no contact issues that have brought some things to bear. The family is gone, the toxic friends are gone, but I have been struggling in "rebuilding my life", Covid is a massive problem for this. People don't realize this about my personality but it was important for me even with the health problems and housebound times, to explore life and "do things". Some local people even used to comment that I seemed to have a verve for life they envied which may suprise some here. With everything wiped away I am not sure I can cope.

I realize my confidence with people is still very low. I feel like I have so much to hide. People talk about their happy families and activities, and I sit there smiling. They have close friends who are actually in their everyday local life, and I ask why don't I have that? And then I just feel like something has always been wrong with me, and I have had the thought, I can't fix it. I tried. It's hard to write this because I don't want faraway friends to think I take them for granted, but I needed friends too who live close. I needed people to talk to who really KNOW me.  The feelings of being stifled, repressed and more are always there. There's no local friend to cuss with or to talk about how much Covid sucks. Then there were the Trumpster friends I lost from far away. Most of the people here are religious and conservative outside my UU, who can I really talk to and be open with?

There's always this feeling that I am not enough for people I don't think I can ever fix. I threw away the people pleasing, learned to hide my emotions---I am far less abused now,  narcissists and sociopaths always took advantage of them, shut the empath stuff off that only brought me vulnerability and pain, but now I can't get close to anyone. Maybe a lifetime surrounded by so many narcissists and sociopaths destroyed any trust in people.  I have close friends online and long distance, who I can be open with in talking to them about our feelings and life and more, but in real life, it's like I am shut down. I have an inability to be spontaneous, open up or any of those things. Now that I am at home and all social interaction is run by committee on Zoom, I am frozen even more. 

Then there is the feelings of low status, and knowing what the weight and autism have wrought. It seems I have to draw boundaries more than other people or speak up more to be noticed. I notice some people take it for granted that their words will be listened to. They have a niche, they belong.  I envy those people. How do I become more like them? Is it even possible?

I have faced the losses of what the family did to me, and the full picture took years into coming. I now am in my early 50s, a childless woman who was fortunate enough to marry and be happily married but had so many relationships destroyed.  There's empty places where a niece should be, or a sister that cares. I lost the roulette and than some. I do not regret my no contact. I had to go. They were destroying me. They were crushing any dignity that was left. They had no respect or love for me. I think all scapegoats even years deep into their no contact will ask in their private minds, "Why wasn't I loved?", "Why didn't anyone care?" "Why did they reject me?". I faced facts in my case many of mine were simply terrible people, it wasn't me, but that doesn't fill the hole of who should have been there. 

These feelings of rejection I don't think will ever go away. I have worked hard to shut down, trying to "win people over" and teaching myself to harden up and do away with desperate feelings and neediness in relationships I know makes people understandly run but I can't replace the family I should have had. I have felt feelings of grief over what life could have been if I had the right family, the right medical care, and if my life had not been burdened with severe depression and anxiety as a result. 

One false hope one can have is that some outside people may come around after you go "no contact" realizing your hurt was real and there were things you did could not put up with.  This is a fantasy better left avoided. It didn't happen. Maybe this is why I got so angry at a wealthy high status blogger who was able to reconcile with her family and have a sister treat her right for once. I know this will never happen in my case. I still don't agree with her defense of sociopaths and religious views.

They still hoover me, you know, I just don't write about it anymore. I made the decision not to.  I want them to disappear from my thoughts. Time does heal where people become ghosts of the past. They destroyed my life enough, and I knew part of finding happiness was to erase them from my existence. I stopped talking about them to anyone. I had friends of 3 and 4 years duration--one local one moved away, where they never knew of my family or what happened. It was too hard for people to understand and brought me nothing but pain and judgment. I sometimes fear this blog being found by people I know because of the uniqueness of my health problems.  I am old enough to have a deceased family and to have been an only child and that is what I let people believe. 

The hoovering is lessening as the years pass, but it's the same bragging letters--all the young never rebelled and became "high achiever and conforming types"  who dated homeschooled, Republican, religious and very conservative people, so even there no one was like me.  The same checks were written, the same "get back in line" and "why won't you forgive" with no repentence or reconciliation.  I mean why even bother, it's Ground Hog day over and over. 

Even the negative toxic friendships I wasted years and time and energy in were part of this picture. The ex-millionaire friend never cared about me. She actually wrote me a stupid email, asking for old emails from me so she could file a complaint against someone else. She had complained about a "handsy" massage therapist to me, but I had deleted the emails long ago. She never apologized or asked how I was. She took no responsiblity for what happened. I ignored it. 

The other day in a group I belong to on Zoom, there's another woman with my all too common first name, and they kept saying her name and I didn't know if they were talking to me or not, and it created endless moment of embarrasment, and I got tired of it and said "Look there is another person here of that name, you have to distinguish between me and that person!". I had to speak up. It's some of these inequalities that bother me. I don't know if this was malicious intent, and don't think it was, but I worry there is an invisibility to me among other people. Does this kind of thing happen to other people? I worry my fear and anxiety still show despite my efforts to dampen them down. 

I also realized doing videos for one group where I was doing speeches and lectures, that my autism shows and is severe.  This is an accepting group but this was a revelation that almost bowled me over. I worried when I tried to become a teacher that I had issues that were making jobs harder to get. My speeches were well recieved for content and I was told I was a very good writer. I focused on inflecting emotion into my words to make the speeches more pleasing but the autism was more than apparent. This may sound odd but I avoided watching myself on video for years, it used to give me strange feelings I could not cope with.

I am speaking now like a "deaf" person my hearing is so far gone.  They don't offer much help to adults. I am trying to work with a disability support group in obtaining a phone to caption live speech. Zoom has been no help to the point I consider filing complaints. Outside of the hearing issues,  I am in shock, that my autism was ignored, and never treated or dealt with. It is obvious and shows in my speech inflections, where my eyes go and far more. I have myself in a trap I have to dig myself out of. This desire for a normal life and to be treated normally and to have acceptance and belonging. I don't think this is something I am going to be able to fix. Disability rights and learning about ableism has brought me self protection, but maybe I have to adjust my expectations about life. 

There's some damage of the soul murder of being the family scapegoat, I am not sure I can undo. That would sum some of that up. Some  may call me a "forever victim" from their vantage point of high status in this world, but they didn't live the life I have. I was doing everything I could to bring meaning to my life, and change it for the better and trying to impact the world in a positive way. I protested Trump for 4 years. Covid slowed this down, but I am someone who stood up even before it became popular. 

While among more educated people, like in the UU circles I have found more acceptance and understanding it all remains an issue. I have a lot of regrets over the life I should have had. Often asking "Why did it go this way?" I don't believe in God anymore, if there was a God it hurt me so much and was a sadist that should be begging for my forgiveness, any relationship would be forever over anyhow. It's just not that nice to people even if it did exist.   I was refinding my life post no contact and feeling feelings of happiness, hope and an eagerness I hadn't felt for years, and to have this all shut down was a giant blow.  It's another giant disappointment to me I can't even describe the words for.  I can't spare the time or have lost years, because some idiots ate bat soup or a sociopath wanted to "own the libs". 

I don't know the answers now. I have held severe depression back, reminding myself "I didn't choose this." and I had found some happiness for many months before Covid came. I did stand up for myself. I did try to make my life better and the world better too. My husband and I are happy together, that is something I have that many people don't have. I don't know the future yet, but I want the full expanse back, I want to be able to live whatever life I got left. I want Covid to end.