Dammit, dammit, DAMMIT!
Aug. 9th, 2010 10:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sarasvatiI'm annoyed beyond belief at my mother right now. I mentioned on Facebook the other day that I applied for a job that sounded awesome. Data entry, overnights (4 nights on, 4 off), $13 an hour. Temporary, but hell, even if it's only for a week that'd give me almost a month's rent money!
So what does she do? She asks me for the link to apply for the job herself. Then deletes that message. I think oh, perhaps she realised that I need the job more than she does, since she currently has a full-time job that pays her almost twice as much as she needs (and yet she's still declaring bankrupcy because she can't curb her spending habits).
But no, today she called me to ask me the location of the temp agency that posted the job, because she wants to know before she sends them a resume.
I fumed. I reminded her that it was only temp work, and she said she didn't recall seeing that on the job ad. I checked while she was on the phone, and yes, it still is. Just temp work. Not guaranteed to last.
"Oh," she said. "That's a shame. When I saw that it was overnights, 4 on and 4 off, I thought, 'Yeah, I can do that!'"
"Yeah," I said in a flat voice. "So can I."
I don't think she got the hint.
She then asked me how many clips I had left on my bus pass. I told her 3, which will get me to and from the cat rescue meeting tonight and to the gym tomorrow. She offered to buy me another clip pass, which I agreed to, because why turn down what I need?
"That ought to get you by until your next installment of EI money," she commented.
Once again, I snapped. "That money goes on groceries. I can't afford to buy anything with it but groceries. I get $72 every two weeks!" I've told her this before, numerous times. It isn't like she doesn't know.
"Oh, how can anybody survive on that little?" she lamented. I fumed some more. She knows all this, though she acted like it was a terrible surprise to hear. I used to be frugal with groceries and get by on about $200 worth of groceries a month for 2 humans, 2 cats, and a bird. Now I have less than 3/4 of that money and have to somehow make it stretch to be enough, and it rarely is. I can't afford a bus pass. I can barely afford what food I manage to buy!
And she knows this. And still whenever I comment that hey, I applied for a really awesome-sounding job and I really hope I get it, she feels the need to try for it to, in spite of the fact that she doesn't need it at all and I need it more than I can fully express.
You'd think she was some competitive high school brat rather than my mother. Well, she acts 15 most of the time anyway, so I suppose that behaviour shouldn't come as a surprise to me.
So many times I've had to censor what I say online. I've been made to feel like hiding is the only way I can exist. If it isn't stalkers following me from site to site, or the worry of employers finding a single less-than-flattering comment about them, it's the risk of my parents finding out anything that they can use against me or for themselves. Now I feel like I can't tell anybody about jobs I interview for and have them wish me good luck, because if I so much as mention it, she'll try to steal the job out from under my nose.
I took a big risk in adding two friends from LJ to my circle here on DW. Not that I think those people would betray me. I wouldn't have added them if I thought that. But it's a connection, and it's a connection that I recoil from a lot because somebody else can trace me, find me, look at everything I say and force me back into that little corner where I have to custom-lock all my entries in order to say anything at all, or else disappear entirely and come back as some other online persona.
I'm starting to feel smothered again. I'm starting to feel like I need to hide and to cut myself off. It isn't just my OCD, I think, that makes me try to compartmentalize every aspect of my life, every hobby. In the past, I've had separate blogs for knitting, sewing, generic crafts, cooking, trying to be frugal, writing, book reviews, and personal journals. It's hard. Too hard, sometimes, to keep it all so apart. I fail a lot of the time. I wonder why I even tried.
Then things like this happen and I remember why I like every bit of my life to stay away from every other bit.
When I was younger, I had a dream about nonexistence. Sometimes a person was winked out of reality and went to a place called The Silence by its inhabitants. It was called that because silence was golden there. It existed out of time, and so I had access to books, games, everything from every day of every year that had ever been or would be. It was a numb place, very alone, where few people saw each other and fewer still communicated.
And when things were bad in my life, I'd summon up the feeling that The Silence gave me, and I'd be fine for a while, pretending that when I was alone in my room, I was there. I had eternity to be with myself, reading and playing and drawing and doing whatever I wanted because I was all I had and all I needed.
I know now that such a thing is a sign of deep psychologic problems. Entirely likely to be related to depression. But sometimes I still wish that I could be there, because when I wasn't real, I didn't have to hide anything. For once, I was free to be me, and I didn't have to worry about being found because I wasn't around for anybody to find.
All this, resurfacing because my mother won't leave well enough alone and always tries to selfishly prevent me from getting a new job by trying to take it for herself. And they'll hire her, too. Not because she's good at what she does. Not because she's reliable or competant. Because she's older, in that age group that's supposed to be reliable and competant, and I'm in the group of delinquants who drink and party every weekend and who can't be trusted. I have never been hired where she has not been. I have been rejected where she got hired.
So what does she do? She asks me for the link to apply for the job herself. Then deletes that message. I think oh, perhaps she realised that I need the job more than she does, since she currently has a full-time job that pays her almost twice as much as she needs (and yet she's still declaring bankrupcy because she can't curb her spending habits).
But no, today she called me to ask me the location of the temp agency that posted the job, because she wants to know before she sends them a resume.
I fumed. I reminded her that it was only temp work, and she said she didn't recall seeing that on the job ad. I checked while she was on the phone, and yes, it still is. Just temp work. Not guaranteed to last.
"Oh," she said. "That's a shame. When I saw that it was overnights, 4 on and 4 off, I thought, 'Yeah, I can do that!'"
"Yeah," I said in a flat voice. "So can I."
I don't think she got the hint.
She then asked me how many clips I had left on my bus pass. I told her 3, which will get me to and from the cat rescue meeting tonight and to the gym tomorrow. She offered to buy me another clip pass, which I agreed to, because why turn down what I need?
"That ought to get you by until your next installment of EI money," she commented.
Once again, I snapped. "That money goes on groceries. I can't afford to buy anything with it but groceries. I get $72 every two weeks!" I've told her this before, numerous times. It isn't like she doesn't know.
"Oh, how can anybody survive on that little?" she lamented. I fumed some more. She knows all this, though she acted like it was a terrible surprise to hear. I used to be frugal with groceries and get by on about $200 worth of groceries a month for 2 humans, 2 cats, and a bird. Now I have less than 3/4 of that money and have to somehow make it stretch to be enough, and it rarely is. I can't afford a bus pass. I can barely afford what food I manage to buy!
And she knows this. And still whenever I comment that hey, I applied for a really awesome-sounding job and I really hope I get it, she feels the need to try for it to, in spite of the fact that she doesn't need it at all and I need it more than I can fully express.
You'd think she was some competitive high school brat rather than my mother. Well, she acts 15 most of the time anyway, so I suppose that behaviour shouldn't come as a surprise to me.
So many times I've had to censor what I say online. I've been made to feel like hiding is the only way I can exist. If it isn't stalkers following me from site to site, or the worry of employers finding a single less-than-flattering comment about them, it's the risk of my parents finding out anything that they can use against me or for themselves. Now I feel like I can't tell anybody about jobs I interview for and have them wish me good luck, because if I so much as mention it, she'll try to steal the job out from under my nose.
I took a big risk in adding two friends from LJ to my circle here on DW. Not that I think those people would betray me. I wouldn't have added them if I thought that. But it's a connection, and it's a connection that I recoil from a lot because somebody else can trace me, find me, look at everything I say and force me back into that little corner where I have to custom-lock all my entries in order to say anything at all, or else disappear entirely and come back as some other online persona.
I'm starting to feel smothered again. I'm starting to feel like I need to hide and to cut myself off. It isn't just my OCD, I think, that makes me try to compartmentalize every aspect of my life, every hobby. In the past, I've had separate blogs for knitting, sewing, generic crafts, cooking, trying to be frugal, writing, book reviews, and personal journals. It's hard. Too hard, sometimes, to keep it all so apart. I fail a lot of the time. I wonder why I even tried.
Then things like this happen and I remember why I like every bit of my life to stay away from every other bit.
When I was younger, I had a dream about nonexistence. Sometimes a person was winked out of reality and went to a place called The Silence by its inhabitants. It was called that because silence was golden there. It existed out of time, and so I had access to books, games, everything from every day of every year that had ever been or would be. It was a numb place, very alone, where few people saw each other and fewer still communicated.
And when things were bad in my life, I'd summon up the feeling that The Silence gave me, and I'd be fine for a while, pretending that when I was alone in my room, I was there. I had eternity to be with myself, reading and playing and drawing and doing whatever I wanted because I was all I had and all I needed.
I know now that such a thing is a sign of deep psychologic problems. Entirely likely to be related to depression. But sometimes I still wish that I could be there, because when I wasn't real, I didn't have to hide anything. For once, I was free to be me, and I didn't have to worry about being found because I wasn't around for anybody to find.
All this, resurfacing because my mother won't leave well enough alone and always tries to selfishly prevent me from getting a new job by trying to take it for herself. And they'll hire her, too. Not because she's good at what she does. Not because she's reliable or competant. Because she's older, in that age group that's supposed to be reliable and competant, and I'm in the group of delinquants who drink and party every weekend and who can't be trusted. I have never been hired where she has not been. I have been rejected where she got hired.