Conflicted Emotions.

This is what I wrote down trying to process my feelings & thoughts after learning of my mother's death. It's all very jumbly & confusing

So this weekend my mother died, & I'm not sure how I feel or how I'm supposed to feel or really anything. Those of you who know me know that I've not had a relationship with my mom for years, but that doesn't prevent the emotional confusion.

The last thing my mother said to me was "get a real job or die on the street." I was extremely, obviously ill at the time, & that was what she had to say. She had spent the previous several years hurting my physically-I have dents in my skull that I was not born with-and verbally abusing me and justifying her husband's abuse of me. So, if that is my mother, if that is who she is, then how I feel right now is probably appropriate and normal. Mourning one's abuser and tormentor isn't something that is reasonable to expect of anyone. Numbness, if not outright relief, is a reasonable thing to expect.

But my mother wasn't always like that. When I was young, she fought for my intelligence and capabilities to be recognized. When I was being tormented at school by teachers and students alike, she logged many many hours talking to teachers and parents of other kids in my classes. I've been having roughly identical "WHY IS EVERYTHING SO DAMN DIFFICULT?!?!?" meltdowns since I was about seven years old. When I was little she'd squish me tight, stroke my hair, & say "I don't know, punkin. I just don't know." She didn't understand me by any stretch of the imagination, but the mom I had when I was little sure tried. She made mistakes, as do all parents, some of them pretty huge, as with all parents, but the mom I had when I was little was doing everything in her power to do what was best for me.

And that's what makes this so complex & difficult. The mother of Little K was a woman worth mourning. The mother of Adult K was scary & upredictable & abusive, and not ever dealing with her again is a relief. But I had it in my head that Little K's mom could be somehow revived.

That's probably not the case though. Little K's mom died a long time ago, I think, even though her body never went anywhere. I think I knew that and did my mourning and mental burying a long time ago. The scary person occupying her body is not the mother I could once depend on to always be on my side, even when she didn't understand why that was my side.

So being numb is probably ok. I think I came to terms with my mother's death years ago and just hadn't thought of it that way. Feeling guilty about being numb, probably also ok, but not necessary. Or something. I don't know.

Existential Guilt.

This is a world that would rather I weren't in it. That's a thing I and many like me fight every day-the pervasive feeling of being reviled and unwanted, infringing on everyone else's wish for a normal, uncomplicated little life where everyone and everything makes sense.

I try to not let it bother me too much, but sometimes it does. Like right now. Right now I feel as guilty for existing and subjecting other people to me as I imagine people who accidentally run over their children's pets in the driveway do.

There's just a lot of stuff that pours into that, you know? There's this ever present narrative that people with brains like mine don't deserve to exist. There's the deficit model of pretty much everything. There's all the everything about how hard it is to know or like or love or be friends with or consider human someone of my neurotype.

Then I go climbing, or try to, and they won't change the music to something that isn't seizuregenic. Hell, they don't even understand why I asked, or why when they made it out to be the HARDEST THING IN THE WORLD to change the Pandora station to "not electronic techno whatever the hell this is" I wanted my money back.

So it was a bad day and then we're in a car crash that was totally not my friend's fault in any way and it turns out my steroid injection is expired and no one at OHSU understands that even minor car accident + inadequate steroid cover = pretty big deal. And I sit in the ER waiting room in a cervical collar for 3 fucking hours, my pulse hovering between 46 and 52. And then they look at me and with my vitals in this whole BARELY ABOVE DEAD range and still argue about whether or not they should do more steroid cover.

Yeah, jackasses, someone with documented adrenal insufficiency is presenting in your ER after an injury (not a broken anything, but I TOLD YOU THAT MYSELF) with dizziness, low blood pressure, alarm-ringing-low pulse, nausea, etc and you decide to get in a power struggle about what to do about it? The only thing that would have made that better would have been if you'd offered me a medication I was allergic to.

Oh wait. You did. Because people like me aren't even worth the time it takes to review a chart.

So not only does society at large not want me to exist, but the people who are paid to see to it that I don't die are more concerned with being right than anything else.

And my back hurts. And I feel bad about my back hurting. How dare my back hurt, when I am so many other kinds of shitty to have to interact with any way? Who the hell do I think I am, to think that I'm allowed to feel bad and feel postictal and not want to die in the ER?

So you throw all that together, along with the knowledge that the failure of rock climbing + the car accident and subsequent ER visit totally fucked up my friend's day, and I feel like shit at the bottom of the ocean just for existing.

I keep seeing and hearing and being told that it's irrational and unacceptable for me to demand or ask for or even suggest that maybe something could kind of be not a big battle for me. But no. How dare I exist, how dare I think I'm human, even a little? Who the fuck am I to have needs and wants and try to get them taken care of?

So yeah. I feel inordinately irrationally guilty just for existing. Hope the autism tragedy complex is pleased.