when things are bad, and i think my mother is going crazy

sometimes i am so, so sad. sometimes i think my mother is going crazy, and everyone else is going stupid. sometimes i am so, so, sad about the world that i just start crying. sometimes i just don't understand why such a nice, beautiful world full of good things could be so bad.

i'm a little apprehensive of posting this, because as much as i over disclose on this blog, this is something even more private. but i want someone to see.





it's not like i'm a particularly optimistic person or anything, but i know the world is good. when people smile at children and pet tiny animals. when people invent solar energy and build space stations and explore other planets. even the internet makes me tear up sometimes, because it's so beautiful, so incredible, that people all over the world are talking and communicating and exchanging ideas. the world could be so, so good, and the world is already so good.

sometimes, it's so good, and i feel like i'm flying, high on life, all happy and carefree. we did good. i feel the pride of mankind as if i had invented every single thing myself. my existence affirms the world and the world affirms my existence. we did so good, man, we have so many incredible things that people of the past never thought could happen. it's a kinship with thousands of years of human beings.

but sometimes it gets so bad, and it's so painful because i know we are good, we could be so much better. sometimes it just feels like everything is falling apart, like that beautiful world i'd imagined just didn't exist. it makes me feels like i've been deluding myself for the entire two decades that make up my life. it makes me feel... small. wrong.

when it's wrong i almost know what it's like to give up. the kind of giving up that lets people walk off the edge of a building with a smile on their lips, because there's really nothing worth anything at all in this world. the kind of giving up you feel when you know inside that nothing good could ever happen again in this world. it lets you kill yourself easily because you know there's nothing worse than what you've already seen.

i almost know what it feels like, and i'm so scared. anything could set it off, really, but what always set me off are things that you can't help. with things like poverty, you can slowly make it better, and you can see the small glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel, because you there's an actual, tangible solution for it, there's an established framework. but there are some things, some small, insignificant things that you just can't help. like when you break a mirror and you can never put it back together like it was, so all you can do is melt it down and kill it completely, and any other option is just delaying the inevitable.

today, this time, what sets me off is the thought that my mother is going crazy.

i know my mother has her bad times and good times, much like i have. there were months when i couldn't speak to her without both of us screaming and throwing things, but we've also gone a year, two years, perfectly amicable and friendly. i once called the police on my parents because we were all so hysterical. my parents even dared me to called the police, just stood there and let me do it.

but the older i got, the less bad she got, because we didn't see each other as much, because i didn't rely on her for most things, because i resolved my own emotional needs outside the house, and idk, because she felt better for some reason. these few years have been good.

so... i'm usually not surprised when my mother starts pitching fits. but lately, these two weeks, she's been going off the rails. i've never seen her this crazy, and she's thrown candles in glass containers at my head before. she's scratched my eye before. she's done a lot of crazy things before, so when i say i've never seen her this bad, i mean it.

she seems almost unhinged. i... i don't know how to say this, but she's completely unhinged only towards me. she's so calm and logical now, towards my brother, she doesn't get angry or snap at him or hit him any more. she's so patient with him, but when it comes to me...

in this family i'm not allowed to scold my brother. he's incredibly rude towards me sometimes, and he hits me frequently, but i'm not the one who's supposed to scold him for it. my parents, for some godforsaken reason, think they are the ones who are supposed to resolve it for me, on my unwilling behalf, with no consultation or input from me. they're the ones who get to decide if i should be pacified with a "sorry". recently it's not even that - they just admonish him for hitting me and let him go on his way. i'm supposed to be quiet and let it slide.

i know why it's like this: because my brother and i get into terrible fights, and i want to hit him back. nine years younger or not, if he's going to hit me then he's bloody getting hit back. i'm not letting him grow up thinking that he can hit me and get away with no consequences. he can't hit anyone and expect to get away with no consequences, but that's exactly what my parents are teaching him.

and i get mad at this. i no longer have any desire to hit people, because i think it's so stupid and i just, i just hate it so much when people hit others without thinking. i don't even do any spontaneous physical actions anymore, like hugging or just touching people in general, and i know i used to do that a lot. i didn't grow out of it, i just became incredibly averse to it because of my parents. they let my brother hit people and they themselves hit people, but for some reason i'm not allowed to. it made me averse to even playful hits. i'm not very bothered by it, i'm just... averse, i'd rather not.

anyway, i get mad at how my parents treat my brother. and i don't hit people, not anymore, so nowadays i lash out with my words. it's so easy to hurt people with words, but it's equally easy to brush words off, if you're a certain kind of person, if you make yourself that kind of person.

and the thing is, my parents get more mad at me for speaking harshly than at my brother for hitting me. today he literally kicked me in the back, and no one was rash or angry at him or anything, they just admonished him as usual and let him off. they didn't even make him say sorry to me, and that's just not okay because they're not allowed to decide for me what i find okay and what i don't. so i scold him, and i know i get harsh, but my parents were so angry with me that they were almost going to hit me.

and it makes me... always... so confused and angry. i could never understand, not even once, how they let my brother go for hitting me, but turn around and want to hit me for being angry at being hit. it literally doesn't make any sense at all. i don't even have any context to link it to, so i just can't even begin to understand. and i've asked them, but all they do is get angrier. they never explain anything to me when they're angry, they just turn into angry animals whose only instinct when they're angry is to bite.

i know, i've said this about a million times. but this leads into why i think my mother is really going crazy, this time.

usually she just screams and hits me, but she really loses it. she lost it the same way the previous weekend when i came back, and she's been angry the whole week, which is strange because my family is kind of shit at keeping grudges past a day or two.

and today she acts the same way: like she's itching for a fight, shoving her way into other people's conversations at the slightest provocation, and immediately ready to throw things and be violent physically. it usually takes a while to build, but these two weeks she goes from 0 to 100 faster than the best racing car on the market. it could be less than five seconds before she starts grabbing anything within reach, regardless of its price, importance, or how dangerous it is. she just hurls it, full strength, at whoever she's angry with. she screams so hard her face goes red, and she really throws a full-out tantrum, stomping her feet and just... acting like a spoilt, infantile brat.

i was really shocked. and i was really scared, and it just because one of those times when everything gets really bad, really fast.

i wasn't equipped to handle my mother acting like a child. even at her angriest, before, she'd always acted like an adult. she wouldn't... stomp her feet or scream herself red. it's like all her filters and inhibitions were just turned off. i wasn't equipped to handle it at all.

and i just felt so, so sad, even as she basically threw stuff at me and screamed into my ear and hit my head. i was so sad because the world could be beautiful, but here she is, a full-grown woman with 2 kids and an entire family, being a complete and total brat.

i was angry at her for being unreasonable to me, but i also... angry-pitied her. i even felt angry at her for being what's wrong with the world, in a more abstract sense. i blamed her for making my world just that bit less logical and coherent. i felt that she was ruining all of the emotional stability i had accumulated bit by bit over the few years of my short life, just by being there. i felt like she was stealing the good, beautiful world that i held in my mind.

...um

i think my parents never really understood what kind of person i was. i think they've always struggled to grasp my real motivations, from when i was as young as 10. and over the years, i just got more emotionally detached, because they weren't into displaying emotions and i taught myself to have fewer emotions and to handle them in a productive way. it's gotten to the point that my parents have problems communicating with me. they don't know what to say to me to resolve the emotional issues between us, because they're bad with emotions and i'm just not interested in theirs. it causes them more issues when they have their emotional problems deep inside and they see me being perfectly fine. i think they feel as if i'm almost not human.

i'm okay with it, usually, with them thinking i'm almost not human. but it hurts, sometimes, and it hurts especially at the worst times. it hurt when my mother's behaviour just crumbled a bit of my world, and so it hurt doubly bad. my mother was ruining my world and my parental complexes just had to hit me at the same time.

and it really scared me, how incredibly childish my mother was today. for a moment or two, watching her, i was so shocked that there was no emotional response anywhere. in my head, i felt during those moments, swam a single thought: "god, i can't believe she's such a child", and it was so starkly alone because i shock had driven everything else out. it echoed so bad.

this full-grown woman with an entire family and career, dissolving into a screaming, crying child throwing a hissy fit. it was ruining the potential of the entire world, and i was angry that she didn't see that. i was scared that i might be wrong about the world being beautiful, because she was an example that the world wasn't beautiful. she was so ugly, then.

i am so, so sad, sometimes. i confess, i was disgusted by my mother today. i felt so disgusted, and that's even worse than hatred. hatred could straddle the line between hate and love, but disgust could never be that forgiving. disgust is one of the best predictors of the end of a relationship, scientifically. i will never forget that. today i felt dead inside, disgusted and sad. this woman has managed to ruin my perfect world, just a little, just by being herself, she managed to bring up all the filth that this world should leave behind.

and i am so sad.

i am sad for so many reasons that i would double the length of this post if i were to list them all out.

my mental picture of the world is so, so important to me that i literally can not overstate its importance. after my depression, it's the only thing that makes me breathe, get up in the morning, do anything at all. i do everything in my life because i can see goodness in things. i do everything i do because i can believe that the world is good, that it's beautiful, that we can become better and do better things. i make myself breathe because someday, somewhere, someone will do something good. even small things: i can live because the sunset looks nice outside my window, i can live because salted caramel donuts are tasty, i want to live because tomorrow any number of small good things could happen.

and my mother just takes it all away without even knowing what she's doing. god.

it brings me all the way back to when i was so depressed that i lost almost a year of my life, when i almost would've stepped off a building if it had been convenient. she brings me back to when i couldn't see any meaning in life, when ice cream didn't have a taste and apples didn't have colour.

she takes away whatever hope i have for the future by being such an intense representation (!!) of the things i hate the most. for those few moments all the good things are absent. i can't think of a single reason to live. i feel so disgusted that i think the world shouldn't exist at all. i think it vehemently.

and this, besides the fact that any child would be terrified that their mother is acting like a violent spoilt brat, is what scares me. that she could take away my reason for existence without even knowing it. without ever knowing it.

it makes me feel small and wrong, like i've said. like i'm fragile, teetering off the edge of a cliff.

i wish i could move away and see them only once a year. i know they're my family and i really do love them, but it's not worth risking my mental wellbeing to be close to them. they say friends are the family you choose, and i think that's as close to a universal truth as anything could get.