Lockdown Yelp is weird. There's a dude in my town who's been going around, posting pictures of fire stations. Why do fire stations have entries on Yelp? Great question.
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JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
Yeah, she's coming up on 66 and has COPD so I'm doing my damnedest not to think about hospitals and vectors and ...
Why the fuck does a hospital need a yelp review?!? What kind of petty bullshit is this?!?
*sigh*
Yet another sign that America (specifically) is full of entitled children masquerading as adults.
If you want to take your mind off things, I recommend browsing Google Maps to find the most inappropriate places people have left reviews. County jails are usually pretty good.
"Motherfuckers wouldn't let me leave for like three months. Two stars."
Edit: hah, shit, the Oklahoma City bombing memorial. "I was so depressed when I left this place. One star." Not sure how to help you there, Local Guide.
Ok, so it's not a dislocation, the bone is completely broken directly underneath the ball joint of her shoulder; right now, it's pain management and observation until they can get her in a sling, then we wait a week for the swelling to subside to determine if she needs surgery. She's still at the hospital and they might keep her another day just to be sure they can get a proper piece of gear to immobilize her.
She's finishing up paperwork and being released within the next hour or two, I'll pick her up and fold her gently into a bed of pillows and soft blankets and painkillers.
If it's not a *total* break but a partial fracture instead, then that means some kind of harness or brace for a good while, some PT and then ... I dunno.
Could someone send me a winning lottery ticket so I don't have to worry about money while I take care of my mother (again)?
I feel like that's really very good news. Not as good as the whole situation not happening, but given that it did, it seems like the best possible outcome.
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BouwsTWanna come to a super soft birthday party?Registered Userregular
Hey all. Just got some news that I don't really know how to process. My Kiwi wife is doing a once in a lifetime hike in New Zealand (the Te Araroa). She's been gone for 6 months, so was really looking forward to her mid-April return. Starting March 30th, New Zealand is stopping all international flights, incoming and outgoing. All flights to Canada are full up, or despicably expensive and would require her to quit her hike within 10% of the finish line.
Luckily, she has family in the country and is a citizen, so this is arguably the second best place to ride this thing out, but I can't help but be a little shattered that I'll continue to be alone through this scare.
Keep your family close everyone, and try to see the silver linings in our new-found forced proximity. It feels like a very empty house at home.
Hey all, the NZ shelter in place order has been lifted and they haven't seen new cases in days. Wifey is re-training to finish her hike over the next two weeks, and this pause in her return means she'll likely be around to help out with her sister's first kid (very exciting!). Her flight to head back home is booked for July 2nd, and I've secured two weeks of time off so we can quarantine together. I hope you're all doing well, and keeping safe. Thanks for being such a supportive community.
Between you and me, Peggy, I smoked this Juul and it did UNTHINKABLE things to my mind and body...
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lonelyahavaCall me Ahava ~~She/Her~~Move to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
Mom has been feeling sick. Sleeping all weekend. But her issue has been really bad stomach pain and diarrhea.
Which relief it's not Covid, but she says it feels like it did ten years ago.
When she got colon cancer.
We won't know anything until at least this weekend, but I'm..... Not ok.
I'd have to fly to the States, into a plague cloud, with no valid visa to re-enter New Zealand on my way back.
I know I'm possibly over reacting, and I can fix the issues. But....
My wife's grandfather died last week. He never got to meet his greatgranddaughter in person. Her Grandmother might neither, with Covid making crosseuropean travel impossible/very complicated.
with the pregnancy and then the pandemy it's been over a year since we've been there.
In these troubling times, my mother has a way of bringing out the most random shit from my childhood, mostly about shit I can't possibly remember because I was still in diapers or something; I tease her about it mercilessly.
"Oh, you remember so-and-so, you met them when you were 18 months old!"
And so, last night my mother teases right back with the first time I ever went to a nightclub: she was living in South Texas, had come to Houston to finalize the divorce papers with my dad and I was two months old, her older sister had decided to take her out for drinks. With the baby.
"Mother. How in the wild blue fuck am I supposed to remember something that happened literally more than forty-two years ago when I was just starting formula?"
"It was great, I got wasted for the first time in almost a year. Don't look at me like that, Debbie was driving!"
"Awesome, thank God I wasn't breast feeding. Where did you go?"
"A drag club! We were there for hours and I didn't have to pay for a single drink! The shows were hysterical and almost broke a rib."
It occurred to me that in any other situation, my father could have claimed negligence and sued for custody, but he claimed (at the time) I wasn't his; I also thought (for a brief moment) that it might not have been safe for a newborn to be out that late, then I reconsidered that honestly, I probably had about twelve drag aunties and a hundred gay uncles that night, I couldn't have been safer in the center of a battalion of heavy infantry ringed by gorillas on steroids.
p.s. Mom's broken arm is on the mend, but it's taking a lot out of her, so I'm making sure she eats healthy food with lots of protein and calcium, she gets her meds like clockwork and she's getting plenty of rest while she binges random shit on Netflix.
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lonelyahavaCall me Ahava ~~She/Her~~Move to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
Mom has been diagnosed with diverticulitis and not any form of cancer again at the moment.
Thank fuck.
And she's Covid negative and hasn't left the house mute than three times since march.
My father died in February we had a complicated relationship as despite good intentions and love he was a manipulative emotionally abusive sort of man. He changed in his later years and was struggling with 30 years advanced Multiple sclerosis, and retinita pigmentosa as well as dementia likely exacerbated by a couple brutal high fevers from UTIs.
I miss him but I am so thankful he didn't have to go through COVID. We had to cancel the planned memorial, and although I am incredibly happy his suffering has ended, I miss him and wonder what he would have been like without all the tragedy from when he was young.
My mil just sent the worst email complaining about her professional development day. I'll include the party that makes me want to actually respond in spoilers, because, warning, it's very very dismissive of mental health
In addition the Psychology Expert started off talking about being anxious and depressed, that if we are feeling that, it’s okay. But why start with that premise? I am not depressed. I am not anxious. I am well. I am at home. I am still alive. I can breathe (as opposed to Mr. Floyd). So I am lucky. Focusing on the assumption that people are having a hard time may be an incorrect assumption. The people I know around me are doing okay. Well, I do know of an exception. That’s my friend who lost his husband. He’s really sad that his partner has died. That is totally understandable. But even so he posts beautiful images of flowers from the park every day. Spring is here and in his grief he is celebrating his own life. From my view, most other people seem pretty balanced. There is lots of time to visit with family and friends one hasn’t talked to in awhile. The weather is changing and the birds are chirping outside my windows in the morning. It is so beautiful. I saw the full moon the other night from my window. My house is really clean. The supposition that people are having a hard time emotionally may not be universally true. Well, if you are trying to alter things like the meditation led us to do, and one isn’t’ just present to this here and now, maybe one could be depressed. Maybe. That is why it is just important to be here now.
I am probably not going to respond unless she brings it up again. It's just.. peak Boomer liberal
MulysaSempronius on
If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
I drove down to Ky after my work shift, about a 6 hr drive.
After my father passing from factor 5 blood clots, all the siblings are trying to donate time to visit and take care of what we can do.
Found out a cousin of mine overdosed and died, while his mother is abusing painkillers to deal with her crippling pain issues.
Another aunt of mine, fantastic lady, a literal inspiration to me, just discovered she has kidney cancer.
I'm so tired, and I'm here to be emotional support, and work to destress things for my mother, but I also just want to crawl into a corner and cry, and there ain't much privacy out here.
Virgil_Leads_You on
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FishmanPut your goddamned hand in the goddamned Box of Pain.Registered Userregular
Take care of yourself and do what you can. Try to reserve some self-care time to recharge; you'll do better overall by taking the moments when you need them than you will by being "on" all the time.
So I just spent about an hour wroting an entry in my journal about something that happened with my father this morning. I want to vent about it somewhere and think Facebook would be too risky. I hope it's okay to post here.
Father Threw a Possession of Mine in the Trash to "Prove a Point"
Soon after waking up this morning my Dad got on my case about the damage to my car from someone damaging my left side mirror when I was coming home from Charleston recently, asking if I'd noticed if the window was cracked a bit, too. He believes I didn't get angry about that when it happened because I don't care about the car. He tried to illustrate his point by having me give him one of my "priceless" (his words) Dungeons & Dragons figures for him to put in the trash, and when I got it back out he said "see, you care enough about that figure to fish it out of the trash, but you don't care about the car because it doesn't matter to you."
I found this particularly insulting and asked him if I should have made a u-turn and tried to chase down the guy who had damaged my car before stating how disappointed I was in myself for not being more assertive when, less than an hour before, another guy chased me down for several miles over an incident that was probably his fault in the first place that led to extremely minor damage to his vehicle and more significant damage to mine (in particular, the fact that the cop at that incident told the state trooper who showed up later that I and the other person hadn't been "arguing or cussing or anything" makes me feel very disappointed in myself for not being more assertive and making my counter-argument effectively when the other party had stalked me for at least a couple miles; I discreetly took a photo of the "damage" to his vehicle and a photo of the damage to my vehicle, btw).
Dad said I was getting wound up and needed to calm down, but I responded by saying that I feel like a lot of my problems come from me not getting angry and assertive and that maybe I'd be better off if I trained myself to get angry at other people more often and to care less about their feelings. He said that would just get me in trouble and that I need to be calm, not angry or nervous. I should have said to my Dad "that's what I take all this medicine for, to try and stay calm" (I currently take a combination of lexapro, cymbalta, metoprolol, and klonopin to try and treat my anxiety; honestly, though, alcohol works better than all those medications combined at treating anxiety, but obviously I can't just rely on alcohol to function and can't consume it at all while taking klonopin due to a high risk of fatal side effects from doing so). I also feel like I should have said "it seems to me getting angry makes you more assertive and intimidating people is the best way to keep from getting exploited".
Personally, I feel like I don't get angry enough at damage to vehicles I drive because I feel often like there's nothing to be done about it. I feel like the reason I usually don't angry and assertive when people do me wrong is because I believed in the idea of treating people the way you wish to be treated (what Christianity often refers to as "The Golden Rule"), which led to me turning the other cheek and never telling people when they've upset me and mentally forming excuses for other people's mistreatment of me, which turned into a social handicap because I never learned how to stand up for myself or because I felt on some level due to my Christian upbringing that doing so is wrong (turn the other cheek, remember?), which led to other people who don't believe in "the Golden Rule" (but very often claim to be Christians) learning they could walk all over me and disrespect me, which led to me internalizing that I would probably always lose in social conflicts, which led to the social anxiety that I currently suffer from and take four different medications every day to try and overcome.
It probably doesn't help that I spent a large amount of my real Mom and Dad's 22-year-marriage trying to play peacekeeper between them and avoid conflict.
Besides, if what my Dad says is true and that I don't get angry because I don't care about things, wouldn't it follow that I don't angry when people do me wrong because I don't care about myself?
I'm also irritated because both my Dad and Stepmom want me to start going back to church, with the latter making the claim twice in the past that maybe my anxiety problems would go away if I "got right with God". Easy for her to say when she seems to me to be one of those Christians who doesn't follow the Golden Rule unless it's convenient for her. She's probably never had the sense of internal conviction I've had to follow the Golden Rule, freeing her to mistreat others for her own benefit when it suited her but feel guilty and ask for forgiveness about it afterwards.
There's a lot to unpack here, and the mods discourage in-depth discussion of specific mental health issues, but:
What your father did was both shitty and nonsensical. A figurine is not a car, and fishing something out of the wastebasket is not equivalent to getting the damage to your car repaired (which I assume is what he wants to happen?).
Anger has a place, but staying calm is better than blowing up. Anger and assertiveness don't necesssarily go together. I think your attitude toward damage to vehicles (that isn't your fault) is frankly healthy and mature; plus, there's nothing to be gained by trying to argue your case with the cop who shows up to a collision. If you want to report the other person for stalking, you can do that separately. (That said, you might want to get the cracked window repaired if you can.)
Trying to intimidate people with anger is a losing game. There's always someone who's better at it than you. Also, people who default to intimidation/bullying in a conflict absolutely suck to interact with.
Whether you don't get angry because you care about other people or because you have low self-esteem is something only you can answer (possibly with the help of a therapist). But standing up for yourself and getting angry are two completely different things. Making excuses for other people is work you don't need to be doing. If you're upset, let yourself be upset; if you're not, just let it go. Speculating about motivation is pointless.
Being a peacemaker between your parents is definitely something you shouldn't have to do.
Re: your mom suggesting that coming back to church would cure your mental health issues: It's 2020 FFS you don't expect church to heal a broken leg so why would you expect it to heal a brain chemistry imbalance FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF (that was directed (figuratively) at your mom, not you)
BouwsTWanna come to a super soft birthday party?Registered Userregular
Hey all, last update on this saga. She's home, has been for a few days. We're under quarantine for 2 weeks together, which has been wonderful. I hope you're all doing as well as can be.
Between you and me, Peggy, I smoked this Juul and it did UNTHINKABLE things to my mind and body...
My guess is it's the best favor they ever did any of you, if it's anything like my experience with my own family's "purity test the family tree until there's just a smoldering stump left"
It’s a real shame because they used to be nothing like this. They’ve both fallen down a deep, deep religious/far right hole over the years.
My brother’s going to keep trying to check in on them since mental illness runs in our family and more than anything we all want them to get some help.
My brother took over as their "caretaker" about a year and a half ago when I went No Contact (they don't need physical assistance, just a Daddy to make sure that they don't murder-suicide each other), although his blazing hot take is that they've always been this crazy, so where do I get off expecting them to change now.
You can tell he loves being the new Golden Child, but once a conversation (despite the fact that I stated very clearly that "I won't be discussing them") he snaps me with a "well you wouldn't *know*, *would* you", so you can also tell it's getting to him and he super resents me for just taking my ball and going home
So my parents have gotten back home from visiting my sister/BIL/kids for the last couple of weeks, and now they're making noises that they want to do the same with me.
Except my sister lives in the middle of nowhere, PA, and both I and my parents live in various parts of Florida. And they're both immunocompromised, my job is pretty damn close to the frontline.
Sorce on
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lonelyahavaCall me Ahava ~~She/Her~~Move to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
I need to gather up my courage
find and talk to an accountant down here that knows US tax laws
and tell my father to send/give me all of my invesment/stock/bank details for all of the money that he's taking care of for me in the US.
I then need to work on figuring out the best way to get all of that out of his control, into my control, and do so without damaging his ego, but making it clear that this is not really a power move. it's more to protect me for when he ultimately dies and I have no idea what to do with all this financial bullshit that he's got set up.
I don't even now half of what I have in my name, he's got power of attorney, and I'm going to need to know sooner than later I fear.
I just.
I need to get my courage together to do all of the above.
find and talk to an accountant down here that knows US tax laws
and tell my father to send/give me all of my invesment/stock/bank details for all of the money that he's taking care of for me in the US.
I then need to work on figuring out the best way to get all of that out of his control, into my control, and do so without damaging his ego, but making it clear that this is not really a power move. it's more to protect me for when he ultimately dies and I have no idea what to do with all this financial bullshit that he's got set up.
I don't even now half of what I have in my name, he's got power of attorney, and I'm going to need to know sooner than later I fear.
I just.
I need to get my courage together to do all of the above.
That's a hell of a needle to have to thread. Is it at all possible to do this via e-mail?
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lonelyahavaCall me Ahava ~~She/Her~~Move to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
oh yeah. it will definitley need to be done by email.
doing it in video conference will just lead to him trying to bully me into getting my daughter her citizenship so that she gets to need a CPA for the rest of her life.
it doesn't end well when we start those conversations
Would phrasing your desire as wanting to take on the responsibility and and not selfishly impose on others to manage it for you? Express it as you wanting to take a step as part of growing up.
Be like look, it's not that the money is with you specifically, it could be with literally anyone in the world and I'd want it moving, because I really feel like I want to take control of my own finances, it's an important step for me. I appreciate all that you've done to look after it! But I am a grown woman with a family, it's time for me to manage it directly.
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lonelyahavaCall me Ahava ~~She/Her~~Move to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
Sign.
Mom's heading heart issues again.
Only this time, it's the atrial valve that's fluttering. She's got a pacemaker already for the ventricular valve. The atrial flutter is going at a 2:1 beat. Mom's filling up with fluid again. She gained 10lbs in a week. She increased her lasix, but that's only flushed out 3lbs worth.
They're going to look at the rest of her test results, but she's probably going to need to at least have the pacemaker tweaked so it fixes birth valves, or she's going to need to get an ablation done. Either one means time in a hospital.
On top of all this, one if my uncles has colon cancer. Apparently they couldn't even get the scope all the way to check. So it's not looking particularly good. But official designation is still out.
I mean, he's in his early to mid 70s. But he also just welcomed his first grandchild this year. Everything sucks.
I'm so sorry Ahava, this must be even worse when you're a whole world away.
"Simple, real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time." -Mustrum Ridcully in Terry Pratchett's Hogfather p. 142 (HarperPrism 1996)
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lonelyahavaCall me Ahava ~~She/Her~~Move to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
It's tough. We've got Skype though. And mom doesn't seem worried. And even if she is, there's nothing I can do. I can't leave NZ right now, certainly not to fly into a plague cloud. And if mom were to die, her body goes to John Hopkins's research for two years anyway.
But yeah. Other side of the world sucks right now.
A couple of weeks ago was the funeral of my uncle Brian's wife, Rita.
They had dated for six years before Rita's diagnosis of advanced pancreatic cancer, and within months of this diagnosis my uncle married Rita, sold his house in Georgia, and moved in with her and her children by her ex-husband at her house in South Carolina. Despite fighting her cancer for two years, she passed away on July 17. In the days prior to her death my dad and stepmom, who had went on many cruises and vacations with Brian and Rita over the years, visited her every day. On July 17 my dad received a short phone call from my grandmother, hung up, and tearfully said to me "She's gone".
Since then it's been uncovered that Rita secretly withdrew a total of $47k from her's and Brian's joint account over the last two months of her life, leaving only five dollars and thirty-five cents left (Rita was a bank manager and handled most of the finances). No one has any idea yet where the money went.
Further, Rita owned the house Brian and her kids stayed in, and her family has inherited it. The older son has moved out with his fiance, the younger daughter has went back to live with Rita's ex-husband, and now my uncle is living alone in a house he doesn't own that he could be evicted from by Rita's family at any time.
Brian is alone in that house, has started drinking a lot, and already has diabetes that has given him several close calls in the past. I lived with him for a bit back when he and Rita had started dating but before they lived together, so thankfully I was there to save him when he became so incapacitated that all he could do was moan as loud as possible to try and get my attention from the basement where I was living at the time.
I've also just learned from my stepmom, who was one of the people most saddened by Rita's passing due to the fact that she is herself a breast cancer survivor, that the beneficiary of Rita's life insurance policy was her ex-husband. For some reason in the years she battled cancer she never changed the beneficiary.
My sister is flabbergasted that calling out my aunt's narcissistic personality disorder in her memoir (now widely available in bookstores) has resulted in a certain amount of internal family blowback from said aunt
who could have ever foreseen this
this is my shocked face
If there's one thing Cluster B Personality types *love*, it's feeling caught out and exposed, especially publicly. Pretty sure my dad would burn all my shit and consider me dead to him at the bare *minimum*. With my mom, I would be in actual fear for my physical safety.
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Why the fuck does a hospital need a yelp review?!? What kind of petty bullshit is this?!?
*sigh*
Yet another sign that America (specifically) is full of entitled children masquerading as adults.
If you want to take your mind off things, I recommend browsing Google Maps to find the most inappropriate places people have left reviews. County jails are usually pretty good.
"Motherfuckers wouldn't let me leave for like three months. Two stars."
Edit: hah, shit, the Oklahoma City bombing memorial. "I was so depressed when I left this place. One star." Not sure how to help you there, Local Guide.
She's finishing up paperwork and being released within the next hour or two, I'll pick her up and fold her gently into a bed of pillows and soft blankets and painkillers.
If it's not a *total* break but a partial fracture instead, then that means some kind of harness or brace for a good while, some PT and then ... I dunno.
Could someone send me a winning lottery ticket so I don't have to worry about money while I take care of my mother (again)?
Because that would be ...
Hey all, the NZ shelter in place order has been lifted and they haven't seen new cases in days. Wifey is re-training to finish her hike over the next two weeks, and this pause in her return means she'll likely be around to help out with her sister's first kid (very exciting!). Her flight to head back home is booked for July 2nd, and I've secured two weeks of time off so we can quarantine together. I hope you're all doing well, and keeping safe. Thanks for being such a supportive community.
Which relief it's not Covid, but she says it feels like it did ten years ago.
When she got colon cancer.
We won't know anything until at least this weekend, but I'm..... Not ok.
I'd have to fly to the States, into a plague cloud, with no valid visa to re-enter New Zealand on my way back.
I know I'm possibly over reacting, and I can fix the issues. But....
But.
Democrats Abroad! || Vote From Abroad
with the pregnancy and then the pandemy it's been over a year since we've been there.
"Oh, you remember so-and-so, you met them when you were 18 months old!"
And so, last night my mother teases right back with the first time I ever went to a nightclub: she was living in South Texas, had come to Houston to finalize the divorce papers with my dad and I was two months old, her older sister had decided to take her out for drinks. With the baby.
"Mother. How in the wild blue fuck am I supposed to remember something that happened literally more than forty-two years ago when I was just starting formula?"
"It was great, I got wasted for the first time in almost a year. Don't look at me like that, Debbie was driving!"
"Awesome, thank God I wasn't breast feeding. Where did you go?"
"A drag club! We were there for hours and I didn't have to pay for a single drink! The shows were hysterical and almost broke a rib."
It occurred to me that in any other situation, my father could have claimed negligence and sued for custody, but he claimed (at the time) I wasn't his; I also thought (for a brief moment) that it might not have been safe for a newborn to be out that late, then I reconsidered that honestly, I probably had about twelve drag aunties and a hundred gay uncles that night, I couldn't have been safer in the center of a battalion of heavy infantry ringed by gorillas on steroids.
p.s. Mom's broken arm is on the mend, but it's taking a lot out of her, so I'm making sure she eats healthy food with lots of protein and calcium, she gets her meds like clockwork and she's getting plenty of rest while she binges random shit on Netflix.
Thank fuck.
And she's Covid negative and hasn't left the house mute than three times since march.
Again with the thanking of the fuck.
Democrats Abroad! || Vote From Abroad
I miss him but I am so thankful he didn't have to go through COVID. We had to cancel the planned memorial, and although I am incredibly happy his suffering has ended, I miss him and wonder what he would have been like without all the tragedy from when he was young.
After my father passing from factor 5 blood clots, all the siblings are trying to donate time to visit and take care of what we can do.
Found out a cousin of mine overdosed and died, while his mother is abusing painkillers to deal with her crippling pain issues.
Another aunt of mine, fantastic lady, a literal inspiration to me, just discovered she has kidney cancer.
I'm so tired, and I'm here to be emotional support, and work to destress things for my mother, but I also just want to crawl into a corner and cry, and there ain't much privacy out here.
And my condolences, for all of the above.
You are not letting anyone down by crying or expressing your sadness and fear
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better
bit.ly/2XQM1ke
Father Threw a Possession of Mine in the Trash to "Prove a Point"
Soon after waking up this morning my Dad got on my case about the damage to my car from someone damaging my left side mirror when I was coming home from Charleston recently, asking if I'd noticed if the window was cracked a bit, too. He believes I didn't get angry about that when it happened because I don't care about the car. He tried to illustrate his point by having me give him one of my "priceless" (his words) Dungeons & Dragons figures for him to put in the trash, and when I got it back out he said "see, you care enough about that figure to fish it out of the trash, but you don't care about the car because it doesn't matter to you."
I found this particularly insulting and asked him if I should have made a u-turn and tried to chase down the guy who had damaged my car before stating how disappointed I was in myself for not being more assertive when, less than an hour before, another guy chased me down for several miles over an incident that was probably his fault in the first place that led to extremely minor damage to his vehicle and more significant damage to mine (in particular, the fact that the cop at that incident told the state trooper who showed up later that I and the other person hadn't been "arguing or cussing or anything" makes me feel very disappointed in myself for not being more assertive and making my counter-argument effectively when the other party had stalked me for at least a couple miles; I discreetly took a photo of the "damage" to his vehicle and a photo of the damage to my vehicle, btw).
Dad said I was getting wound up and needed to calm down, but I responded by saying that I feel like a lot of my problems come from me not getting angry and assertive and that maybe I'd be better off if I trained myself to get angry at other people more often and to care less about their feelings. He said that would just get me in trouble and that I need to be calm, not angry or nervous. I should have said to my Dad "that's what I take all this medicine for, to try and stay calm" (I currently take a combination of lexapro, cymbalta, metoprolol, and klonopin to try and treat my anxiety; honestly, though, alcohol works better than all those medications combined at treating anxiety, but obviously I can't just rely on alcohol to function and can't consume it at all while taking klonopin due to a high risk of fatal side effects from doing so). I also feel like I should have said "it seems to me getting angry makes you more assertive and intimidating people is the best way to keep from getting exploited".
Personally, I feel like I don't get angry enough at damage to vehicles I drive because I feel often like there's nothing to be done about it. I feel like the reason I usually don't angry and assertive when people do me wrong is because I believed in the idea of treating people the way you wish to be treated (what Christianity often refers to as "The Golden Rule"), which led to me turning the other cheek and never telling people when they've upset me and mentally forming excuses for other people's mistreatment of me, which turned into a social handicap because I never learned how to stand up for myself or because I felt on some level due to my Christian upbringing that doing so is wrong (turn the other cheek, remember?), which led to other people who don't believe in "the Golden Rule" (but very often claim to be Christians) learning they could walk all over me and disrespect me, which led to me internalizing that I would probably always lose in social conflicts, which led to the social anxiety that I currently suffer from and take four different medications every day to try and overcome.
It probably doesn't help that I spent a large amount of my real Mom and Dad's 22-year-marriage trying to play peacekeeper between them and avoid conflict.
Besides, if what my Dad says is true and that I don't get angry because I don't care about things, wouldn't it follow that I don't angry when people do me wrong because I don't care about myself?
I'm also irritated because both my Dad and Stepmom want me to start going back to church, with the latter making the claim twice in the past that maybe my anxiety problems would go away if I "got right with God". Easy for her to say when she seems to me to be one of those Christians who doesn't follow the Golden Rule unless it's convenient for her. She's probably never had the sense of internal conviction I've had to follow the Golden Rule, freeing her to mistreat others for her own benefit when it suited her but feel guilty and ask for forgiveness about it afterwards.
Venting is fine; it's what this thread is for
I'm sorry, dude. Sincerely.
So of course their parents have disowned them both.
My brother’s going to keep trying to check in on them since mental illness runs in our family and more than anything we all want them to get some help.
You can tell he loves being the new Golden Child, but once a conversation (despite the fact that I stated very clearly that "I won't be discussing them") he snaps me with a "well you wouldn't *know*, *would* you", so you can also tell it's getting to him and he super resents me for just taking my ball and going home
Except my sister lives in the middle of nowhere, PA, and both I and my parents live in various parts of Florida. And they're both immunocompromised, my job is pretty damn close to the frontline.
find and talk to an accountant down here that knows US tax laws
and tell my father to send/give me all of my invesment/stock/bank details for all of the money that he's taking care of for me in the US.
I then need to work on figuring out the best way to get all of that out of his control, into my control, and do so without damaging his ego, but making it clear that this is not really a power move. it's more to protect me for when he ultimately dies and I have no idea what to do with all this financial bullshit that he's got set up.
I don't even now half of what I have in my name, he's got power of attorney, and I'm going to need to know sooner than later I fear.
I just.
I need to get my courage together to do all of the above.
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That's a hell of a needle to have to thread. Is it at all possible to do this via e-mail?
doing it in video conference will just lead to him trying to bully me into getting my daughter her citizenship so that she gets to need a CPA for the rest of her life.
it doesn't end well when we start those conversations
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Be like look, it's not that the money is with you specifically, it could be with literally anyone in the world and I'd want it moving, because I really feel like I want to take control of my own finances, it's an important step for me. I appreciate all that you've done to look after it! But I am a grown woman with a family, it's time for me to manage it directly.
Mom's heading heart issues again.
Only this time, it's the atrial valve that's fluttering. She's got a pacemaker already for the ventricular valve. The atrial flutter is going at a 2:1 beat. Mom's filling up with fluid again. She gained 10lbs in a week. She increased her lasix, but that's only flushed out 3lbs worth.
They're going to look at the rest of her test results, but she's probably going to need to at least have the pacemaker tweaked so it fixes birth valves, or she's going to need to get an ablation done. Either one means time in a hospital.
On top of all this, one if my uncles has colon cancer. Apparently they couldn't even get the scope all the way to check. So it's not looking particularly good. But official designation is still out.
I mean, he's in his early to mid 70s. But he also just welcomed his first grandchild this year. Everything sucks.
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But yeah. Other side of the world sucks right now.
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They had dated for six years before Rita's diagnosis of advanced pancreatic cancer, and within months of this diagnosis my uncle married Rita, sold his house in Georgia, and moved in with her and her children by her ex-husband at her house in South Carolina. Despite fighting her cancer for two years, she passed away on July 17. In the days prior to her death my dad and stepmom, who had went on many cruises and vacations with Brian and Rita over the years, visited her every day. On July 17 my dad received a short phone call from my grandmother, hung up, and tearfully said to me "She's gone".
Since then it's been uncovered that Rita secretly withdrew a total of $47k from her's and Brian's joint account over the last two months of her life, leaving only five dollars and thirty-five cents left (Rita was a bank manager and handled most of the finances). No one has any idea yet where the money went.
Further, Rita owned the house Brian and her kids stayed in, and her family has inherited it. The older son has moved out with his fiance, the younger daughter has went back to live with Rita's ex-husband, and now my uncle is living alone in a house he doesn't own that he could be evicted from by Rita's family at any time.
Brian is alone in that house, has started drinking a lot, and already has diabetes that has given him several close calls in the past. I lived with him for a bit back when he and Rita had started dating but before they lived together, so thankfully I was there to save him when he became so incapacitated that all he could do was moan as loud as possible to try and get my attention from the basement where I was living at the time.
I've also just learned from my stepmom, who was one of the people most saddened by Rita's passing due to the fact that she is herself a breast cancer survivor, that the beneficiary of Rita's life insurance policy was her ex-husband. For some reason in the years she battled cancer she never changed the beneficiary.
who could have ever foreseen this
this is my shocked face