RL Sads

[Derp]

@Aria said in RL Sads:

@Sunny

So, one thing that I tell people over and over - and @Testament has heard this from me literally yesterday - is that it's really hard to be someone who is both pretty smart and mentally ill. When you're smart, you take pride in that great big brain of yours! You come to trust it and its ability to synthesize information, solve problems, think creatively, etc.

But here's the thing: Your brain is also full of lies.

It tells you stupid shit like, "Ohh, Aria! Silly girl. None of your 'friends' actually like you. They just put up with you and never say anything about what a wretched burden dealing with you is because they're just too polite. Don't believe anything nice they say to you! That's just social expectation. You're really just a pile of hot garbage."

So you get frustrated. You get frustrated with yourself because you have this otherwise pretty cool brain that just malfunctions in this one particular way and why, why why, can't you just make the stupid thing work like it's supposed to??

My honest to god recommendation is to start dissociating from your negative self-talk. Stop treating it like it's a part of you and start treating your anxiety/depression/OCD/PTSD/whatever like it's the shittiest roommate imaginable. You don't like them, in fact you hate this asshole, but they're on the lease that is your head and you can't just kick them out. It is a whole lot easier to talk back to your negative self-talk when you've made it into a little caricature in your imagination that is the sort of wretched person that starts off sentences with things like "I don't mean to sound racist, but....", who literally never pays you back for anything ever, and who dents your car but insists its fine 'because you have insurance, anyway, right?!', etc.

Treat your negative self-talk like it's the sort of person whose opinion you'd never give a shit about, anyway, but would instead mutter about behind their back/under your breath and it's a whole lot easier to ignore.

"Nobody actually wants to---"
"Did I fucking ask you? No. No, I didn't, so shut up."

Trust me (and my therapist) on this.

I cannot upvote this hard enough, and also: thank you. I've been having one of those weeks where my stupid lying brain is lying and I know it but it still manages to make some headway. It's good to know that there are others out there feeling the same thing. It really helps.

[Roz]

@Aria said in RL Sads:

@Sunny

So, one thing that I tell people over and over - and @Testament has heard this from me literally yesterday - is that it's really hard to be someone who is both pretty smart and mentally ill. When you're smart, you take pride in that great big brain of yours! You come to trust it and its ability to synthesize information, solve problems, think creatively, etc.

But here's the thing: Your brain is also full of lies.

My brother -- for whom depression ended up a terminal disease -- had a genius-level intellect. He was probably the smartest person I knew. He studied and taught logic. But he could not logic his way through therapy, he could not logic his way out of depression, so in the end his logic brought him to a really horrible conclusion.

Depression lies. Anxiety lies. Mental illness lies.

Please take care of yourselves.

[Derp]

@Roz

I mean -- knowing that your issues are the direct result of brain weasels can be helpful, but it's not curative. So yeah, I feel this too. Don't think you can logic your way out of it. It doesn't work like that.

I know that most of my stuff is brainweasels. I am fully aware of that. It doesn't always stop me from having to reach out to people and go "Ok, so, here's the deal. I know that this is likely not the case, but here is how I am feeling about things, and I would like to clarify..."

Some people are good at this. Some people less so. I was lucky to find people who assured me that not only were the brainweasels lying, as I suspected, but they are also familiar with the brain-weasels and how they operate. Which helped. A lot.

There really has to be a better way. Maybe one day we'll find it, so that stories can go more like mine, with just the occasional awkward cringey moment as my self-esteem spirals into dark places, and less like your brother's.

Neither are pleasant. But one is far more preferable.

[silverfox]

We have been told all summer that we would not have to teach in person and online.

All. Summer.

With a single week till teachers report back though we are facing a deficit of 100+ students from our building who have enrolled but are scared to come in person and ALSO do not want to enroll in our district virtual academy.

So in a last ditch attempt to keep our students we are now going to have to teach online and in person at the same time. Not a hybrid where the kids come every day, but either they are online all day or in front of me all day.

The other option is firing 5 teachers from our building. (We are a teacher staff of 15. 5 is 1/3 of our staff.) Even doing this there is no guarantee that those jobs won't be lost.

I'm devastated. I think my job is secure because I've worked pretty damn hard to be indispensable. That said this is going to be SO HARD on kids and I'm already beating myself up for how poor the education my online kids are going to get.

I couldn't force myself out of bed till 2 pm today and I snapped at my husband 3enough without cause that I am just going to go back.

[thesuntsar]

@silverfox Oh honey.

HUGS

[Aria]

Playing "Amazing Grace" at a funeral is practically cheating.

We're all already crying, you monsters.

[SuperiorHuron]

@Aria Or Taps. Taps is always awful. When the two are combined? Just bring out the box of kleenex.

[Macha]

..but I totally want Amazing Grace on the bagpipes played.

[SuperiorHuron]

I seem to say this a lot or bring it up. And then I apologize. Because I'm sorry. I was going to bring my husband over from Canada to the US side this weekend, so I had called the customs office. Who informed me that he could NOT visit, even with a quarantine plan in place. That it would be deemed nonessential. Canada has it so immediate family can cross and are deemed essential visitors. We however don't have the same rules implemented. It will be 5 months the end of August I've seen him. 6 months since my step kids. It's been disheartening and sad. Rumors of the borders not opening until Feb or Mar. That's a long time for any family.

But what I have learned is, we can buy him a plane ticket. To fly into the states. So here we are, going to drive miles to just get him home. You do what you have to do. But what I learned throughout this whole thing? We have amazing people in our corner. So many of our friends have come out of the woodwork, offering to pay for his ticket, just so he can be home with his family here. It makes me feel lucky to know these people. There's been a lot of unshed tears, that people haven't seen. And I'm just fortunate to know these people. So with this RL sad, there is a RL happy.

[Aria]

@Macha said in RL Sads:

..but I totally want Amazing Grace on the bagpipes played.

Yep. That was what got me. We've had to live-stream my favorite aunt's funeral because of the pandemic and they played it before they even had the opening invocation.

Really, guys? Really? You just want 40 people ugly snot-crying into webcam close-ups before the thing even starts? 'Cause that's what happened.

(I am processing my feels through sarcasm and anger right now, if that wasn't obvious.)

[mietze]

Well, if I was on the fence as to whether my job was creating the majority of bad stress issues that I've been having, I guess I have my answer today. No panic attacks or anything like it for the last 11 days I've off, no palpitations, no needing to stagger off and go lay down for a bit as soon as I can after dealing with stressful shit. But today it's back in spades. And hell, the $600/week unemployment supplement just got cut, so I know it will be a couple of weeks before we start getting the terrible phone calls again, there's a reprieve! I feel so weak and fucking stupid, but it is what it is. My job isn't even hard. And yet I am right back to where I was stresswise. And it makes me just want to run away from everything, even though I know that I won't. (At least not until I find another job with comparable health benefits.)

[reimesu]

@mietze Don't sell yourself short, you're having to be polite to people who are massively stressed. And you're also taking on their problems, too, because you care that much. You're not weak OR stupid, you're compassionate and kind.

[Wizz]

I've got an ex who keeps trying to reach out to me and get back into my life. She's had some really horrible things happen to her; she was very nearly the victim of a mass shooting, and has some other neurological stuff going on that I am unsure if she's been treated for.

We really just don't work, and every time we've tried it is just messy and weird. I thought she gave up after this last time a few years ago, but she texted me the other day. She wants to meet up and catch up when she comes to visit my state later this month, and I just don't know how to say like, "let's not talk ever again." I still care about her as a person and I feel really bad about what she's gone through but I really think she has an unhealthy fixation on us and I wish she'd just move on.

[Ganymede]

@reimesu said in RL Sads:

You're not weak OR stupid, you're compassionate and kind.

This.

Empathy is not a weakness.

Sure, I don't get emotional about things, but there's a word for people like me: sociopath.

---

@Wizz said in RL Sads:

I still care about her as a person and I feel really bad about what she's gone through but I really think she has an unhealthy fixation on us and I wish she'd just move on.

Setting boundaries is an important part of self-definition.

You can still care for someone as a person and cut them completely out of your life.

[Ominous]

@Wizz

Can you keep your ex at an acceptable distance if you insist on only corresponding by snail mail letter?

[RightMeow]

@Wizz

I don't know the situation, obviously (Geez - I just invited myself over ONCE - kidding). However, I find honesty is the best policy. In any relationship, we stress so much about how the other person is going to take it, but if we are just honest; it tends to be how it's meant to be. Maybe don't be cruel, but just tell them you don't want them in your life.

Hey, thank you for reaching out. However, I don't think it would be a good idea to catch up. You know we tend to fall into the same patterns as the past has shown. I'm in a good place and I think we are in a good place as we are separately and I would like to maintain that. --- yadda yadda.

Something that is all hey, I'm not interested but yo thanks, ya know. It's hard. I moved to a different state to get out of a cycle with an ex. We'd break up, stay friends, do things, end up together, be good, get toxic, get 100x worse than the last time, break up, stay friends.... So I understand. It is hard to walk away, but it's best for you and that should be honored.

[Wizz]

@RightMeow said in RL Sads:

Maybe don't be cruel, but just tell them you don't want them in your life.

This is the hardest part -- I want to be firm at this point, but never cruel considering all the shit she's gone through over the last year.

We've just known each other for a very long time and she has always had all these emotions tied up in her memories of us, and I really worry that if I were to push too hard it would really hurt her after the trauma she just went through.

Finding the right thing to say will be tricky, but I sure appreciate the perspectives y'all.

[SilentHills]

@Wizz I would point blank tell her that if she wants to have a relationship with you, even a friendly one, she needs to her mental health checked out.

'Point blank' isn't the right word here to use. You can obviously go with something much more gentle. But I'm going to make a guess and say that your ex is probably very attention seeking, especially whereas you're concerned, and frankly - you don't need it. You have your own mental health to worry about.

Some people have shit lives, some people have shit mental health, but they can't live there forever and play the victim card, whether intentionally or unintentionally. They have to unfuck themselves with professonal help a lot of the time. It's hard but it's worth it.

Source: Shitty person with shitty mental health and a shitty life who got unfucked. I'm not as shitty anymore. Many people shut me out and I understand why now.

[il-volpe]

For thirty frickin' years my father has 'owned' and moderated a listserv about entomology.

A few weeks ago somebody posted a link to a petition to change the name of the Linnaean Games, a sort of entomology trivia contest, because some people are troubled by the racist aspects of Linnaeus' original taxonomy concerning humans.

So some assholes responded about racism not existing, Linnaeus being right about human subspecies to begin with, and please somebody protect our statues.

And some other assholes responded to that by complaining, instead of to the list moderators, to the university that hosts it. And /they/ responded by shutting down the list entirely and removing the offending thread from the archive. All without giving my dad a minute to take care of it.

[hedgehog]

I got accused of being the worst racist in all of Evanston, IL because I tried to share a Zinn Foundation post to our school district's FB page, and didn't realize that sharing from the app means that it doesn't copy over the text of the original post, and only shared my snarky commentary and a badly-centered image of a newspaper from 1834.

All I wanted to do was show how even the UK, arguably one of the top three cruelest colonial powers in history still managed to abolish slavery a full thirty-one years before the United States managed to.

Nothing like a steady stream of woke white women flooding your inbox with demands for apologies and 'reflecting upon and fixing the pain (I) caused' and failing to accept that it was a technical error and I had no idea that the text for the post hadn't even transferred over when I did it.

And, yes, I apologized and owned the fact that my snark was egregious and gave them the hairshirt-and-flagellation they demanded...then left the group. And every other local civic group. And the one I was in trying to help promote a less Eurocentric history being taught in the schools. Because it was clear that these women never really respected any of the anti-racist and pro-equity posts I'd been making for the past six years given the way they turned on me on a fucking dime like that. Especially since nobody bothered to ask me if it was a fluke, save for a group moderator. Of course, all the admins and moderators of that page are such because I hand-selected them to ensure that minority voices were being centered and heard, as they were often the ones being shut out of conversations, historically, there, by the old guard of the group.

I get it, though...it makes them all look that much better, and their purely performative anti-racism that much more attention-worthy and shiny. But it still hurt like fuck to experience all this vitriol due to a goddamn technicality. On the upside, my pain and tears led to homemade pie and weed candy to self-medicate the hurt a bit.

Oh...and when the moderator who checked in on me reposted the text of the article in question, all these hypocritical cows loved it.

https://www.facebook.com/ZinnEducationProject/posts/10157705003614677?