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How Am I Responsible for Two People's Emotions, Including My Own?

Being mentally ill in a home with tough love.

By Aimes IsraelPublished 5 years ago 7 min read
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My family has been the most important part of my life. I love them endlessly and unconditionally. I want them to be proud of me, and I want them to want me to be happy. I want a relationship with them; a healthy one. Recently, I am starting to think and see that with the history that we have, it may not be possible. This is more heartbreaking than a breakup.

When I was 11 I hit puberty, and with that came depression, and uneven brain chemicals causing me distress, anxiety, hopelessness, and apathy. I was a kid. I was already having suicidal ideations without knowing what any of it meant. I was afraid of everything that could potentially hurt me, because I wanted to hurt myself. When I confided in my mom, she told me I was her shining star. I knew what I meant to her then. As I got older, my mental health declined and got worse, and with that came the tough love. Being a child, I wasn't in control of my emotions, especially being mentally ill. I had outbursts and tantrums, and there was screaming... lots of screaming. I was trapped in a body that couldn't control itself. I couldn't control these intense negative feelings that separated me from the rest of the world. I was utterly alone.

I quickly became an anti-depressant guinea pig at 15. Experimenting with different medication, having manic episodes, and intense depressive dips. I was failing high school—and that was the only thing that mattered. Not my health, but my grades.

I was a child, and I was blamed for my emotions. I was told to grow up. I was yelled at for being immature. Not only that, but I was somehow responsible for their emotions as well. I was the one that was meant to fix everything. I was the one that had to, not only fix how I reacted to things, but how THEY reacted to things as well. They were the adults. I was the kid, and yet they put the entire world on my shoulders at such a young age, and I couldn't live up to it. So I got worse.

I started self harming from the bullying at school, and then the bullying at home. It was inescapable. I was the family scapegoat. I was the one that was always wrong. I was put into outpatient therapy at a local hospital, because I refused to go to school, and was self harming in the bathrooms.

I was released a couple weeks later, and on the day of my discharge my mom said "you will never do this again, you put the family through so much." I was 16. I was suffering, and there was no love on the day I had improved and stopped self harming. Just blame. I was utterly hurt. I felt like a failure. I felt like I wronged the family. All I wanted was to get better, but somehow, my health and my recovery, was too horrible for the family to handle. They never walked in my shoes, but I was required to walk in theirs.

I never got to defend myself when something went wrong. I was the one to blame. I had to ask to be held and told, "it's going to be ok" when I was so depressed I couldn't get out of bed, because their first reaction was to get upset. I was forced to stay in school after I would have severe panic attacks that would render me useless for the rest of the day, because my grades were more important than my health.

I was trapped in a world that didn't care about my feelings, and only cared about themselves, and how I represented the family.

I needed kindness, I needed a place to relax, I needed to decompress. Instead I came home to the feeling of mediocrity, of failure, of disappointment. I was blamed for something I had no control over. I didn't have the power to fix myself at such a young age. I was counting on you to help me, instead I just got fights and yelling, and, quite frankly, insulted. They wonder why I yelled back? Am I not allowed to defend myself? Is every differing opinion I have somehow a personal attack on them?

When I got to college, they helped me get an apartment and gave me an allowance to live off of while I was getting my degree. I quickly learned that money was their form of love. I accepted this for a while, but now, as a 24 year old woman, that's not what I want. I want their devotion. Their understanding, their softness, their support. I do not feel like I got that growing up. I felt blamed. I felt shamed.

Nothing has changed, even being an adult. I am still treated like the same mentally ill child I was. Sensitive, volatile, uncontrollable. For some reason, they can't let go of the past that I try so hard to forget. They don't let me forget it, and it's exhausting.

They brought up my past last week, saying that, "while you were a teenager, you did a lot of things that hurt us." Why is this still a topic of conversation? It's been 11 years, and they're still upset? About something that cannot be changed?

Do they not see how much I have improved? How stable I have become? How hard I am fighting for my dreams and goals? How smart I became? Do they know how painful it is to be reminded of a time that was so destructive and sad, even though I have made marvelous strides of improvement?

I am an adult. To them, I am still a child. They are broken records telling me to keep doing the same things—things I am desperately trying so hard to do—but I can only be responsible for so much. A lot of what happens in the world is not up to me.

They meet me with ultimatums if I don't do something fast enough. They threaten to move me back into their house—which I will not be able to survive. With all the negative memories, and all the freedom I have already experienced, they are going to create my downhill spiral into such an intense depression I would be surprised if I make it out.

They emotionally hurt me. They yell at me, they ask me to do things I am already doing, and then tell me I am not doing enough. I don't know what else to give them. I don't know what else they can possibly want from me. I have never tried so hard in my life to be a better and more successful person, but because they don't live with me they don't see it, so they assume it doesn't happen. They assume this because there was a version of me years ago that didn't care.

They never apologize for things they are responsible for. If it was an argument that they started, somehow I was the one apologizing in the end. I don't know why I have to apologize on behalf of how negatively they treat me, but because I so desperately want the fighting to end, I'll take the blame. As usual.

I am just going to say that I am done. I am done proving myself to them after I have done so time after time to just have it swept under the rug, and not too much later, I somehow find myself doing it again. Proving to them that I am worth something. That I am an adult. That I am responsible.

I shouldn't have to live under their roof for them to see it.

Everything I have put my mind to they assume I wouldn't complete, and yet, I have completed every thing I have ever started. Where is this belief coming from? I graduated high school, and college, and a post college certification. I have finished everything.

Why do they think I am lazy? Why do they think I don't care? All I do is care. I care so much. I care so much that I get sick.

I am about to be financially independent for the first time, and I think that scares them, because they are about to realize that there is nothing from them I need. Not money.

What I do need is a relationship. A healthy one, a loving one, a supportive one. Not the authoritative one that it has been for so long. Let me be an adult. Treat me like the adult that I have successfully been. Leave my past in the past. I am the only one that's changed, and even through the copious therapy sessions we have all been to together, I am the only one that has changed. When will they? If they don't admit to some type of fault, some type of failure on their part... I don't think a relationship is possible, and that fills my heart with the most intense sadness I have ever felt. Nothing can top that pain.

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About the Creator

Aimes Israel

Writer. Designer. Activist.

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