I don't really rage, but this is the closest thing to a thread for feeling hurt, angry, and embittered. I don't make a habit of voicing feelings like this, since it doesn't stand to change anything. They aren't feelings in response to things that can change, at least that I have an ability to change directly. More just things to accept and find ways to avoid or live around.
I've trained myself to be pretty self-sufficient. Been doing most of my own caretaking since I was young, because I didn't have an available alternative. At certain points in my life I've tried something different, opening up to the support of others, counting on their help to free up some of my mental, emotional, or material resources for other things. And every time I trust people to mean what they say, or to follow through with promises and commitments they make, I eventually get burned, and lose whatever momentum I have going in my life. Am I expecting too much? Am I trusting the wrong people? Are there even people who don't do that? I honestly don't know.
I started seeing this pattern recently, when my biodad let slip that he considers me an "investment" of his. Funny how this comes from the man who saddled my mother with the debt of singlehandedly raising 3 kids while he dodged child support... not to mention the psychological scars that came from growing up in the situation he created for me. Someone who later promised help with college tuition, but pulled it at a time that cost me my grants, enrollment, apartment, and saddled me with debt I'm still paying off. A man who offered me a place to live rent-free while I worked to self-educate and build a freelance career, until I fully committed to it... at which point he asked more and more in rent until it passed anything I've paid for an apartment before. I don't know what exactly he thinks he invested, nor what he's expecting to collect in return. I don't even know how someone could consider their family that way... it's hard for me to imagine a code of ethics that permits that. But time and again, I believed he meant what he said, and it cost me.
He's certainly not alone in this either... it's a pattern that's established itself thoroughly in friendships, romantic relationships, even jobs. People who see me as something they stand to gain from... a source of emotional support, freely-given time and effort, or some other need, who bait me in with ideas of mutual benefit or unconditional reciprocation. A relationship history full of partners who've taken advantage of how badly I want to trust others, and my willingness to help unconditionally... people who have fostered the codependence I've worked hard to dismantle- my tendency to take on their problems as my own, and commit any resources they ask for- only to leave when they got what they wanted, or use it as leverage against me. Always people I care about, people I sympathize with, and people I love.
Hope, optimism, and trust are in my nature... I have to believe that something better is always possible, or there's really no damned point in anything. And I'm tired of people using that against me. I'm not a fucking investment. I'm not a therapist. I'm not a thing to be used as necessary, then discarded. And I'm tired of trusting that the people I let into my life consider me as something other than that. I'm tired of being burned for loving people, believing people to mean what they say, or trusting them in the ways they try to convince me they can and should be trusted. I'm tired of being open about my troubles, if people only offer help to gain leverage against me. I don't even know why I'm writing any of this down, when it stands to change nothing. I'm just so damned tired of it all.
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Topic: Things that made you RRRRRRAAAAGGGGEEEE today: Trust-o-nomics Edition (Read 3774818 times)