Due to personal circumstances and the hoohaw over Fifty Shades of Gray, I have been having my nose rubbed in the fact that I have issues.
As you can see by Itzl's concerned look, this group is for us to check in at to let people know we are alive, doing OK, and not affected by such things as heat, blizzards, floods, wild fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, power outages, or other such things that could keep us off DKos. It's also so we can find other Kossacks nearby for in-person checks when other methods of communication fail - a buddy system. Members come here to check in. If you're not here, or anywhere else on DKos, and there are adverse conditions in your area (floods, heatwaves, hurricanes, etc.), we and your buddy are going to check up on you. If you are going to be away from your computer for a day or a week, let us know here. We care!
IAN is a great group to join, and a good place to learn to write diaries. Drop one of us a PM to be added to the Itzl Alert Network anytime! We all share the publishing duties, and we welcome everyone who reads IAN to write diaries for the group! Every member is an editor, so anyone can take a turn when they have something to say, photos and music to share, a cause to promote or news!
My life is good, and doesn't cost too much (in the course of throwing money at my debt since 2007, I have learned that I can live quite well on rather less than I make). One result of this is that, if things continue as they are - and they will for the foreseeable future (my boss really
is that famous in his field) - I will have a comfortable retirement. My firstborn tells me I'm a cheap date. My buddy downbuilding only stopped complaining about his bills when I pointed out to him - for about the dozenth time - that he has considerably more in the way of savings, besides his IRAs, than I do and that I don't complain about my bills (he also comes from a richer family than I do).
But I have issues. Revolving around trust, for the most part. I have difficulty trusting people.
I no longer walk into family events hyper-vigilant. It took many years away from my family and three months of EMDR to get me to that point, but I'm there. I don't trust my sister to be nice to anybody but our mother - especially me, since we have never liked each other - and she's usually the one in charge. And my mother has only fairly recently let go of the notion that I wouldn't know a social skill if one bit me.
I think my parents decided I was morbidly obese and hopelessly clumsy when I was three. I have a very minor birth defect that makes me limp a little to this day, but has never actually slowed me down. However, my sister is only a couple days less than a year older than I am and I honestly don't remember ever being smaller than her (till after we grew up anyway - I'm mean spirited enough to cherish the memory of standing behind her once when she bent over to pick something up and realizing her butt is bigger than mine). I think my parents forgot to allow for her having a year's more experience in getting her body to do what she wanted than I did. I know my father believed that younger kids in the same family were never supposed to be bigger than older ones.
And my two brothers were perfectly normal and charming.
We're all smart, but I'm the one who was labeled "genius". I think I'm the only one who noticed that my sister is much better at math than I am (I did enjoy math - I actually had to think). I did get tired of getting slapped down for being such a snob over my intelligence.
By the time I was 12, I was basically in charge of the kitchen (except for gravy - I make lousy gravy), and laundry. And four times out of any given five, I was the one who hauled the trash - the four of us were supposed to take turns, but my parents found it easier to believe I was lying than to keep track of who had actually done it the previous time. If the stories conflicted, it was always me who was lying.
In high school, I had the reputation of being unable to stand losing at anything (that was Shirley Lagestee), of being unable to take getting anything less than an A+ (that was Harold Bump), of having no sense of humor (that was my sister), and of being a vicious gossip (I've never understood that one - I rarely said more than six words a day and could go for weeks totally silent [which would have been more fun if anybody had noticed]). Well actually, I do understand that one - I was the safe person to blame for that sort of thing - I wasn't going to try to refute it and nobody paid enough attention to realize I didn't say much.
I was also commonly supposed to be madly in love with the boy who ended up the man I now refer to as my buddy downbuilding. A silly story involving being a clueless 12-year-old who was always stuck sitting behind him (teachers love alphabetical order and there was nobody between us, alphabetically speaking). That was part of the reason I was so insistent on going to college somewhere other than Oregon State - I got to where I hated that supposition. I mostly wanted to get far enough away from my family to make my own enemies.
I was several months into my college career when it dawned on me that the people I was hanging around with were actually listening to what I had to say. By then, they had picked up on any social awkwardness on my part being lack of practice rather than lack of training or malice - I am very fortunate in my college friends (several of whom are still friends).
However, I also found out that some of them would ignore indications that I wasn't enjoying things. It took several years of marriage and two small children before I got over being super-ticklish, and there were several guys (and one girl) in college who didn't let it register that screaming meant I wasn't having fun. And one of the things I have been unable to forgive my first husband for is getting me down on the floor and tickling me till I couldn't breathe. I put considerable effort into not getting into places I can't get out of to this day.
Neither of my husbands found me entirely satisfactory. I didn't want to be the person they were trying to make me into (both of them tried to turn me into their mothers, for wildly differing reasons). Also, I don't like pain - it hurts.
I have known far too many people who believed they had more right to my money than I did. To this day, I would like to kneecap one former friend who called the $1400 I had lost to my paycheck being garnisheed for his car loan "petty cash" when it was more than I had each month to support four people and a car.
I am in the situation I'm presently in because of my own choices. My situation is pretty good, and I know it - having totted things up, I know I will be well able to afford the car I want for myself in a little over a year. I was not expecting to feel so trapped, though. I will get over it.
Next week, I think I will talk about food.