A place for Vase and Berry
Hi @bestVase7265 This is a place where we can chat with each other. Thank you so much for supporting me, Vase. I'm very grateful and I'm happy to continue our previous conversion here. 😊
I too plan things out which means that I will eventually go over in my brain something that will actually happen. But what is interesting is that the really bad scenarios almost never happen. So my suggestion to you is to worry less about the really bad scenarios and more about the okay ones.
So see if you can come up with just one thing to show your mom that you see her - a compliment or thanks for something every other day for a while. Let me know if it works.
I am guessing that your mom just doesn't like to see tears. They make her really uncomfortable. Maybe she had parents who told her crying was weakness. Crying is actually strength. It means you are letting yourself be open and vulnerable. You won't convince your mom of that, but you can know in your own head that crying is what helps you survive. It is extremely valuable.
On the instance with your father coming home late - it is okay to tell him that you are concerned about him overworking himself. That is valuable to him even if it is hard to point out and see. So you aren't guilt tripping your dad because your mom wants you to. You are helping him by helping him see a bigger picture. You can also go back later and say that you see how hard he is working and how you would love him to find a spot where he can rest more.
You will find the time to study and get things done.
I do like plants and lots of other stuff too. Right now I am into an orchid that I got to bloom a second time. I usually kill plants. But I am trying to get more into plants so I can relax more.
Yes, do tell me about you and travel when you get a chance.
My special moment today was drinking a cup of tea while grading a bunch of papers. I managed to sweeten the tea just right so I liked it better than usual.
As far as backing up your mom goes, the main object right now is to get her to see you as a person. That sometimes means agreeing with her. Then she treats you better. That is the only goal so it is okay to step into her shoes occasionally.
@bestVase7265 hey there, i'm sorry about my late reply. things have been really rough for the past few days with my mother. i've been feeling terrible and like a burden lately. i didnt have the motivation to just type a proper reply with so much of yelling going off in the background that makes me feel like useless rubbish (its easier to distract myself with youtube when thats going on). there's no yelling going on right now so i came here to reply. how are you doing by the way? how's the week going for you? by the way this is a long post coming your way so take your time, there's no pressure to reply quickly.
aww you plan things out too? but the really bad scenarios almost never happen? that's nice. for me the really bad scenarios do happen quite a lot as far as I can remember. mmm yeah i could try focusing on the okay ones but its hard.
a compliment for my mother or thanks for something every other day? i told her thank you today for changing my pillowcase and she just gave me an angry stare and told me to keep my focus on studying and not looking around to see what's happening... kinda discouraging. but i'll still try for this week and then let you know how it goes.
i dunno, maybe. but if she doesn't like to see tears, why does she cry? she cries a lot too, i will see her crying at least once a week. i mean her crying is kinda weird, she usually sheds just a few tears, its mostly just sadly muttering stuff to herself, but that's still crying, right? (when i cry i usually have a lot of tears rolling down. i never mutter anything while crying, so the noise people here when i cry is mostly the breathing sounds and you know the little sounds we make when we're in pain).
i do understand why you say that crying is a strength and it helps me survive. i know sometimes we feel a little lighter after crying. but sadly, it doesn't usually happen for me. because i can't just cry freely. i have to keep it as silent as can be so that my mother doesn't hear me. i really do wish that i could cry freely.
mmm yeah, i agree with you on the instance of my father coming home late. he does need to see that working for like 12 hours a day isnt good for his health. and whenever we comes home that late, its usually him helping others by writing lettera for them instead of actually doing his own work. i do try telling him to come home on time but he just tells me that "no, that work is important". he's probably not going to listen to me, by i'm going to tell him anyways.
aww yes my mother loves guilt tripping everyone haha. and i too have learnt to do it sometimes and i am incredibly ashamed about that. i really shouldn't be doing that. i'm trying not to.
and honestly, my mother is being incredibly unsupportive of my father right now. and i need to vent about this. the other day she was telling me "your father is mad. now its officially confirmed" i responded saying "what do you mean officially confirmed?" and she said "the doctor has diagnosed him as mad". i didn't respond. madness isn't a condition you can be diagnosed with, is it? after a few minutes she says "i mean the doctor hasn't diagnosed him as mad, he has diagnosed him with a mental disorder. now don't tell anyone about this, okay?".
but she really thought i didn't already know about his diagnosis? i listen when i hear my parents discussing something and she knows that i listen to their convos (like if there talking in the living room i can obviously hear them from the bedroom because the door is always open). i already know about what my father is diagnosed with, bipolar disorder.
and i hate how my mother treats him because of that. i mean she is educating herself about bipolar disorder and yet she treats him like that because of it. when my father was severely depressed in november, she was the one who made him go to a new psychiatrist because his doctor at the time was unable to give any meds that worked to make him less depressed, she probably didn't expect a new diagnosis. (when she made him go, she went along with him because she believed my father cant explain his problems well). and then he got his diagnosis and now she is calling him mad because of his diagnosis. wow, this is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen (sarcasm).
anyway, sorry about putting that in here. i just needed to vent. let's get back to what we were talking about before.
ah i do see you like plants. and what other stuff do you like? ooh getting into plants to help you relax sounds like a nice idea. do you have many plants at home?
i'm guessing when you asked me if i like plants, you meant to ask if i like taking care of plants and so on. in that case, the answer is no. i am not good at being caring to plants and taking care of them. also, taking care of plants will usually involve toughing the soil too and i don't like doing that. but i do like being with plants and being around plants.
yeah, so as for why i don't like overnight trips, until may 2018 i was actually more than happy to go on overnight trips. but in may 2018 i had a terrible experience with an overnight trip. the full story isn't relevant here so i'll not share it (but am willing to if you're curious so lemme know if you are) but the main problem with that was that i became very sick there, and i longed to go home but that didn't happen until the next day. and that whole sickness and everything is a terrible memory because i was very sick, the sickest i have ever been so far and it took me a long time to get better.
after that i refused to go on any overnight trips for like a year afterwards because i was scared of getting sick again if i went somewhere. after a year or so, although i became more willing to go somewhere, it was a time when we were struggling a lot financially and i also switched schools in may 2019 so we were busy with those things and we also had to sell our apartment so people were coming to see it all the time and we couldn't go anywhere for an overnight trip during that time. then for the entire of 2020 and 2021 don't even think about overnight trips, it was lockdown time or at least things were restricted. then by 2022 although i was willing to go on an overnight trip, it hadn't been possible for us for a couple of reasons.
however in dec 2022, i actually did go on this overnight trip from the school. it was the first night i spent away from my parents haha. but it was honestly a terrible experience again. i didn't get sick or anything but it was bad for other reasons. they put five 7th graders in tiny one room, so I basically had to share a room with 4 others. the room just had one bed (that too just for 2 people), a huge window that the size of a door (and doesnt have window grills, and doesn't lock - that's so unsafe to be honest) and a bathroom. so that's the main point, i won't share other details here because its not relevant, but if you want to know the whole story, let me know)
that trip sparked the worries that cause me to avoid overnight now - i get no personal space and no me time. okay, if i go somewhere with my parents, there will only be 3 of us in one room, but still. i will get no alone time that night. 3 of us might even share a bed if its a big bed. and sleeping in between my parents (so that i dont fall off the bed) would be very wierd. i cant sleep still, so if i roll on one side i'll roll into my mother and wake her, or the other side i'll roll into my father and wake him up. both of them wont be able to sleep well because of me, thats how much of a burden i'll be. or if its a small bed, we'll ask for an extra mattress to lay on the floor and i might be able to sleep on that and that would be better, but that might now happen. sharing a bed with my parents would be a disaster. at home i share a room with my mother (do you think that's weird?) but we have separate beds, though they are kept side by side.
other than sharing a bed, another thing is me time or alone time. i just need some time alone when i can't see or hear any other person anywhere, and preferably with the door of the room closed, and this doesn't include time spent in the bathroom haha. i just really need to be alone for some time when i can just be free and not have to act. i can cry if I need to. so if i ever feel like crying, the only thing that stops me is telling myself that i can cry later when i'm alone.
but i'm worried i won't get this alone time during an overnight trip. so what will i do if i feel like crying or something? i can't tell myself "you can cry tomorrow afternoon when you get home". that won't work because it's too long of a duration.
another thing i'm worried about, although i won't be showering in a hotel if its just a one night stay (i can shower after coming home), how will i do my skincare or makeup? many hotel bathrooms don't have a mirror. so do i not wash my face once during the whole trip and even sleep in makeup so at to not have to do my makeup again? and even if i do that, what about sunscreen? i normally don't reapply it throughout the day or something and make it go for the entire day. but would it be a good idea to make it go for one whole day and half of the next day, that too when most of the time is spent outdoors in the sun? and my sunscreen won't go on top of makeup, it'll mess everything up and i'll have to do the makeup again. i totally realise how stupid i sound by worrying about this but i worry about this a lot because i am extremely self conscious about my skin.
all these of my worries were also there during my train journey back home from my grandparents place. however, it mostly worked out fine. no worries about sharing a bed because i had a berth to myself. as for the alone time, since i took the upper berth, time spent lying on my berth and not talking to anyone was kinda like, but not exactly, alone time because I could still see and hear others, but since others couldn't see me, it worked fine. i didnt need to cry luckily but if i had needed it, i could have cried under my blanket and nobody would have heard me. as for skincare and makeup, i did not wash my face once during the whole trip and i also slept in makeup. it was fine because i was in an air conditioned train and i didnt sweat or anything. and no, i didn't reapply my sunscreen because i was inside the train "indoors" anyways so i made the sunscreen go for one and a half day. i know it didn't have any effect by the time i got off the train and in the sun, but yeah, i wasn't in the sun for long.
ooh i get you. i don't drink tea, but my parents do and when they are able to make a perfect cup with the perfect amount of sugar and everything, its always nice. glad you were able to enjoy your tea. how did grading the papers go? what nice moment did you have today? i had a bit of a nice laugh with my father today. honestly, he can be pretty funny sometimes.
mmm yeah, i get it about my mother. how do i get to see me as a person though? like other than a thank you or compliment or helping her with something, can i do something else?
and yeah, you mentioned you'd like to see a few of the plant photos i've taken, so here you go.
You aren't a burden at all. Both of your parents are dealing with really rough stuff and they are taking it out on you. You are just as much a comfort as a burden, but your mom can't always see that. I am glad that she isn't yelling too loudly so you had time to type a message.
That thank you that you gave your mom was perfect. Her responses aren't going to be on point or caring for a while. But what I think will very slowly happen is that she will start to see you in a better light. She won't acknowledge it at all, but her yelling will eventually decrease a little. It is a good thing to aim towards at least.
She cries (I think) because she too is depressed and has a mental illness which causes her to lash out. She views crying as weakness even though she does it, but when she sees you do it it bothers her even more because she knows deep inside that she taught that sadness to you. Admitting that to herself is too hard so she lashes out. She can also say to herself "I cry because I have a reason and my daughter cries for nothing." However, she doesn't live in your brain, so she is totally wrong.
I am so sorry that your mom is unsupportive regarding your father. It sounds like he could use lots of support. Mental illness isn't something to be ashamed of but she wants to view it as such because it allows her to feel superior to all those around her. Again, she is quite wrong.
What you can do best to combat that is to treat your dad kindly. Every time that you talk about him you mention how funny he is and how he makes you smile. Focus on that. Keep reminding him that all of that hard work can make any anguish he is feeling a bit worse. But help him enjoy his time at home as much as possible. My guess is that your mom is also making him miserable. So you are actually fighting back against all her negativity when you reach out in kindness to your dad.
Liking plants can just be photographing them and other things around you. Your pictures were beautiful. The more that you can get out and do things like that the better, even if is just short trips.
I understand some of your fears over longer trips. Keep working to overcome that. All trips put your mind in a better headspace. Sometimes you may become sick, that is okay. Sometimes the room may be crowded, that is okay too. Being in a new location allows you to imagine other possibilities. It allows you to see beyond being around your mother all the time. It is an escape, even if it is scary sometimes.
You did a great job on the last trip and it sounds like you even had more time in a private space than you would normally get. That can happen on a mini-vacation too. You actually will have a greater chance of a free space on a vacation than in your daily life. You also have a chance of greater crowds, but that is a risk worth taking. If you cry in public so be it.
Any time that you can, you can use photography to give you those private moments even when you are surrounded by people. There is a wall that you can build up around yourself using your hobbies.
I have had a good day today. My special moment today was seeing a white pelican.
@exuberantBlackberry9105
@bestVase7265 i do feel like a burden though. because of me, my mother has to wake up early on my school days. on non-school days, though she's able to sleep more, i bother her and annoy her so much that she cant get her chores done on time because of me. because of me, she cant get enough sleep at night because i like going to bed late. all these things actually my fault. i am a burden.
i am just as much of a comfort as a burden?? how am i a comfort?
i really doubt if thanking my mother like that will do much good. maybe it will over time. but i dunno. that day when i said thank you she get angry at the fact that i wasnt studying in a good focused way.
i have no way of knowing if my mother too is depressed or not, but i think it could be a possibility. but even if she isn't depressed, i think she probably does have some mental illness. i've seen her watching youtube videos about cptsd and just in general educating herself about it, so that makes me guess that she thinks she has cptsd. and it does make sense to me because i feel like it would explain her behaviour.
mmm i get that she sees crying is a weakness, even though she herself cries. but i'm not sure what you meant by "she knows deep inside that she taught that sadness to you" though. could you explain that please?
oh dear, "I cry because I have a reason and my daughter cries for nothing." she definitely thinks that way. she doesnt just say that to herself, she tells that to me too. remember that day when she asked me if my crying is justified or not? she definitely does think i cry for nothing. and that's not true. i have lots to cry about. yeah, sometimes i do cry without a specific reason but that's just because i feel fed up with everything going on and i cant keep it bottled up anymore.
i just somehow feel like many adults think we teens have nothing to worry about and nothing to cry about. not true for all adults of course, you're an adult and you realise that a 13 or 14 year old could have lots to cry about. but many adults dont realise that. i wonder if they've forgotten the times when they were a kid or teen, did they not cry? dont they remember that being a teen is already hard enough?
my father could most definitely use some support. i'm sure he doesnt like the way my mother treats him. he might be feeling like nobody understands. i do wish i could tell him that i do understand, but i cant say that.
i get that my mother feels like mental illness is something to be ashamed of and she does that because it makes her feel superior. but really, how does that work when she thinks she might have a mental illness too? is it similar to how she sees crying as a weakness even though she also cries? (and by the way, i'm not totally sure if she thinks she has a mental illness. but i'm guessing that she does think that way based on what i've seen her watching on youtube)
mmm how do i treat my father kindly? maybe i could be a little less bad to him, but i dont think i can be very kind with him or something. because firstly, that would infuriate my mother as she would think i'm more on his side. and secondly, it would feel very wierd to him is i suddenly started being very different to him. when my father needs someone to do something for him, he suddenly becomes very nice with them. so if i become too nice to him, he might assume i need something from him, which i dont.
yes, he can most definitely be very sometimes and he does make me laugh. but he makes me cry too. and a lot. when he is angry, he can be incredibly harsh. he doesnt yell like my mother does, but instead he will threaten to do something bad. for example, he will threaten to throw something on you. i remember one when i was very little, i made him angry and the threatened he would break my face. he never did anything, but even just hearing that hurts. but yes, i am trying to focus on the times when he makes me laugh.
i dont want to talk to him about the hard work and so on. its complicated stuff and i dont wanna talk about it. the best i can do is tell him to not work till so late at night and come home on time instead. i wonder how i could help him enjoy his time at home though? we dont talk much other than during meals, so what can i do?
yes, my mother is certainly making him miserable. she yells at him too. and he surely doesnt like that. today afternoon my father headed to the kitchen to eat a besan laddu. my mother saw him and she yelled out "again?!" my father got mad and and said "i didnt eat the last time i stepped in the kitchen. why are you shouting at me like that? i'll throw this besan laddu in your face right now. do you think i'm your kid?" then my mother tried to defend herself saying "i didnt shout, i just said it loudly" which is definitely not true. she did yell. i get that she's concerned my father might be eating too many sweets, but that's seriously not the way to react. and just because she yelled like that and made him mad, he started making fun of her about how she needs help when it comes to handling tech and how she yells and is so commanding when not needed and how when she needs to speak up, she cant get one word out of her mouth, and so on. he definitely feels like he's being treated like a child and he does not like it. and my mother wont stop calling him an "adult baby".
oh, just photographing plants counts as liking them? i see. i'm glad you liked the picture.
woah, i really dont know how to overcome my fear of longer trips. any suggestions? hmm i wonder, being in a new location would allow me to imagine what kinda possiblities? even on a trip, i will be around my mother all the time, wont i? like yeah if i go on a trip with the school, i will be away from my parents. (but i'm not interested in going on those trips because everyone goes there is other intentions and mine will be different from theirs, and i dont fit in. my first overnight trip with the school in dec 2022 is going to be my last. it was an absolute nightmare. there was nothing good about it.) but if i go on an overnight trip with my parents, i will be around them the whole time.
i did a great job on the last trip? may i ask which last trip you're talking about? when it comes to crying in public though, i could never do that. i just cant, it would be very embarrassing.
i wonder how photography will give me private moments? i'm not sure if i understand this.
i'm glad you had a good day. ooh, a while pelican? i've never seen one. i'm so glad you could have that special moment.
No, you aren't a burden. ALL children keep their mothers from sleeping in late and getting their chores done as quickly as they want to. I have raised three sons and I NEVER thought of them as a burden. You have absorbed your mom's wrong message. Yes, I do have to get up at 6 am each school morning to get my son to school which starts at 7 am. It is what I do because I love him. Yes, he interrupts me to ask about a homework problem or asks me to drive him somewhere that will take me lots of time and will be a stressful job. Even my older sons who no longer live at home ask for stuff and I don't consider them a burden. Tomorrow I will deliver petitions that my oldest son needs signed to a bunch of people. A few days ago I delivered a bunch of sleeping bags so my middle son could go overnight on a camping trip. Those are things that I just do and it makes me happy to see them happy.
When you help your mom with any chores you are a comfort. You are working as a team whether she wants to recognize that or not. As you get older you will do more for your mom because she won't be able to do certain things anymore. It all balances as you go through life.
Complimenting your mom or thanking her will continue to surprise her. She will react in weird ways in an effort to find something that you are doing wrong even though you aren't doing ANYTHING wrong because taking a momentary break from studying is the only way to properly study.
On the question of crying - your mom knows deep inside that she has created tons of guilt in you and that you have a tough time balancing it all. Part of her knows that you don't deserve that but she won't admit it. To admit that is to admit her own flaws. You are also right that adults can't see kids pain easily because they can't remember their own.
I would agree that your mom wants so desperately to feel superior and ignore her own condition that she sees crying or mental illness as a threatening weakness. That reaction is totally on her and totally wrong. You already do support your father. Just keep doing what you are doing and look for little windows where you can support him more. At meals, ask how his workday went. Ask him about any hobbies that he has. In other words, be interested in him for his own sake. They don't need to be huge things. I don't think it is at all problematic for your mom to believe that you and your dad are supporting one another. She is the one who is yelling all the time.
On photography - each time that you take a picture you are getting at least 10-15 seconds (usually much more) where you are focused on looking at what you are taking a picture of rather than any problems that you are having. Each one of those mini-moments adds up. Some photographers can build up to the point that they can spend hours in that focused space where their worries disappear. Those are the kinds of things that you are looking for.
Travel is much the same way. That most recent trip you took when your grandfather died, you survived it better than you thought you would. That shows courage and strength. So that trip was a success because it wasn't a disaster. Much of it is how YOU frame it in your own brain. I am just showing you how I saw it as an outsider. You are correct that your parents are around when you travel. However, because you are in a different location there is more room for those photography like moments. People relax more and find a little time to use their senses to really see the world around them. Don't think about big trips if you can't do so right now. Think little away times - even a few hours at somewhere that you have already been to. It will give you more space, both physical and mental, like my seeing a white pelican did yesterday. We only went walking for half an hour and I had been there before. But that didn't ruin the wonder of that small moment.
My moment today was making a nice dinner. I made some pasta with eggplant and mushrooms. The sauce tasted better than I thought it would. Again, a quick and simple moment of peace. What was your moment today?
@bestVase7265 okay, maybe i'm not, but i'm having a hard time believing that now. i've absorbed my mother's wrong message? i'm not sure what that means. she's constantly complaining about how she doesn't get enough sleep because of me, how she doesn't get to eat on time because of me, how she doesn't have time to exercise because of me, how i disrupt her routines by eating slowly, so on and on. she may not directly tell me that i'm a burden, but that's what i feel like she's trying to tell me by constantly complaining about those things. and surely she doesn't do any of this out of love. i'm totally sure that she doesn't love me. i dunno is if dislikes or hates me and if so to what extent, but i do know that she doesn't love me.
awww all children keep their mothers from going to bed on time and getting their chores done quickly? i see. mmm you can get up at 6 and still get everything done for your son whose school starts at 7? you must be very quick then. my school starts at 7:45 (i leave home at 7:10) and my mother has to wake up at 5:30 for that because she needs to make my breakfast and lunch. and she doesn't go to bed until 12:30 am or 1 am. that's very little sleep, and that kinda my fault to be honest. when do you usually go to bed? do you have to stay up late because of him? i really think your children are extremely lucky to have a mother who loves them and doesnt see them as a burden. speaking of your sons, is the one who was injured doing better now? i hope so.
i am a comfort when i help my mother with chores? mmm okay. but i mostly only help her a bit on non-school days (filling all the water bottles once in the afternoon and wiping the dining tables after lunch). should i be helping her more, because she's the one doing everything else, my father doesn't contribute at all.
haha, i do think it will keep surprising her. i do agree that taking a break sometimes is the only proper way to study, but my mother sadly doesn't agree. she thinks i should just sit down and finish at least one chapter and only then get up or take a break.
oh, she really does know deep inside that she's created tons of guilt in me? mmm i see. lol, you're an adult and I'm a kid and you do see my pain, right? is that because you remember your pain from when you were a kid, when most people forget it?
i agree about my mother and her weird views about crying and mental illness. as for supporting my father though, asking about how is workday went is a bit of a tricky thing. that kinda question would make him start sharing on an on about his day. while I'm always willing to listen and be there, his work is complicated stuff i seriously don't understand, so there's nothing good or supportive that i can say. and i think it would be awkward if i asked him to share and then i didn't have anything to say. as for hobbies, he doesn't have any. when he's home, he's either on his phone or laptop, or sleeping or eating or smoking and that's it. i know he's very good at drawing, but he never does it. and actually, if i show too my interest in my father, it angers my mother a lot, which is exactly why we both don't talk much. and yes, it is quite problematic for my mother to believe that he and i are talking to or supporting each other.
when it comes to taking pictures, i don't think I'm fully focused on that while i do it. i always have something else on my mind. also, even if i am focused on what I'm doing, I'm usually focused on how the thing is showing up on the screen. and i feel like i miss out on how it actually is because things always look different in real life than on camera. sometimes they actually look better in real life, but i don't notice it often because I'm busy with the picture.
actually the trip to my grandparent's place was a disaster. the train ride home wasn't a disaster, but being there in that house was. but i get how you see it as an outsider. mmm yeah i hear you about going on a trip. and I'm glad you could enjoy your little 30 mins walking trip the other day. my exams just got over today and i have holidays till 31st march. school starts on 1st april. I've been thinking we might go out somewhere during these days. but my mother says we need to first work on looking for an apartment, and only then we can go for a trip. that's disappointing. i feel if she's going to put it off like this, we might never be able to go somewhere during these holidays. and by the way, we have to go to school on 20th to see our exam papers and I'm very worried about that day. and when we have report card day on 27th and I'm super worried about that too.
ooh that sounds like a nice moment you had the other day. I've had a rough day today even though exams just got over. but i guess my nice moment was when my father made a weird little joke during dinner. and also being out in the balcony for a few minutes in the evening.
I do think that your mother loves you very deep down, but she hates motherhood. Those are two different things. You aren't to blame for ANY of the things that your mom is complaining about. Kids have to eat and go to school. Those are normal things that they need help with. You aren't a burden just because your mom claims that you are.
I go to bed at a normal time - 10 pm and then get up at 6 am. I love my sleep, I will admit. But I also know how to move fast. My son is also in charge of assembling his own lunch by this point. Breakfast is something very quick as well - fruit and bread usually. So I can get up, shower, feed the cats, get my son up and get him to shower, make my own lunch when I won't be home and be out the door in an hour. I guess we kind of work as a team. Does your mom ever let you help with something like assembling your lunch? Maybe there is some last minute packing or putting stuff in a container that you could do.
Unluckily, my middle son's injury isn't better. It looks like he will have to stop playing the sport that he loves. He is still working through his disappointment. But he wants to get out of pain first. That may involve some injections into his back. We will wait and see.
Don't think about doing tons to connect to your father. Just laughing at one of his jokes is enough. For all of these things think smaller things rather than massive changes. It makes them much more doable and easier to manage.
You are right that cameras can also take you away from reality a bit. But part of what heals you when you feel bad is using the 5 senses. I know that probably sounds stupid, but when you are doing things like taking pictures you are momentarily using vision. When you really smell something or really feel something like a pot or a doorknob, it takes you away from all the other complaining that your mom is doing. Even if it is just for a minute, when you train your brain that is where you focus should be then you will begin to feel like less of a problem or a burden because her words won't hit quite as hard.
It is also a better way to think about trips or even apartment hunting. Think about senses and new things that you see, etc. New experiences are extra helpful.
Well, I need to go for tonight. My moment of peace was watching a video that my older son sent of a small waterfall that he saw. But even when I don't say it, that doesn't mean all of my day is awesome. Today I saw someone old die of a heart attack. But I know I can't focus on that. I will focus on what is real and in front of me.
@exuberantBlackberry9105
@bestVase7265 hey there, i'm sorry i didnt respond to you yesterday. i missed out on this post, only saw it today. lemme get to you now.
when i think about it, i kinda think that's possible. maybe she does love me. when i was younger, she quite obviously loved me. she doesn't seem so loving towards me anymore, so i feel like she doesn't love me, but i don't know what's actually the matter. sometimes she tells me that I'm one of the biggest blessings god has given her. but then she still treats me terribly, and that really hurts you know, when someone calls you a blessing once day and the next day they call you a monkey or whatever.
but yeah, i think it would be correct to say that she hates motherhood. and she's told me several times that she didn't want to be a mother just yet. yes, she was 36 years old when i was born, but she wanted to wait even more. but she wasn't able to deal with the pressure to have children, there were too many people pressuring her (my father and most of my aunts) who insisted on having a child and she couldn't take the pressure anymore so she agreed. but honestly, i don't understand why people put this type of pressure on others. like it still kinda makes sense for my father to want children, but why my aunts, it's literally none of their business. i guess it's because in our culture a lot of people believe that if someone doesn't have children, their life is unsuccessful. that makes no sense to me.
oh, you really have a nice bedtime. I'm glad your getting enough sleep at night. I'm not sure about what it means to assemble lunch though. oh i see you usually have fruit and bread for breakfast. my breakfast never involves fruits, though i do have bread sometimes, I'm not a fan of bread. right now because i had exams going on and there's no time to eat a normal breakfast on exam mornings, i've had to eat bread and jam every exam morning and I'm just so tired of bread and jam at this point, lol. my breakfast isn't usually very quick, usually it's something like poha, upma, sheera, sandwich or pancake.
you are reallyyyy very quick to be able to do so many things in just an hour, since you leave home at 7 i guess. i am usually half asleep in the morning and I'm veryyyy slow. i don't even shower in the morning (since i must shower after school because of how sweaty i am at that time, i just skip the morning shower) but it still takes me an hour to get read because of how slow and sleeping i am. aww you have cats, that's nice. how many?
and no, i don't help my mother with lunch. she's the one who cooks everything (usually 2 rotis and some sabzi) and puts them in the containers. the only thing that i do is take the containers and put them in my tiffin bags and put those inside my school bag.
I'm sorry to hear that your middle son's injury isn't better. oh no, he'll have to stop playing the sport he loves? that really sounds bad and disappointing. i do hope he's able to work through it though. and i hope the pain gets better soon.
mmm i agree about my father.
i hear you about taking photos. and don't worry, nothing you say ever sounds stupid to me, i mean it. I'm a bit confused, though, am i not using vision all the time? like i really see everything around me, don't i?
as for the apartment hunting, here's the plan as for now: my father (or maybe both my parents, but mostly my father) will be visiting apartments. if he likes something, (or in case both of them go, if they like something) then they'll take me to see it. that's actually a good thing in my opinion because if they take me around everywhere, and i see everything, it's possible that i like something and they don't, so i might end up disappointed. so it's better i see only what they like. i didn't think I'm going to get much of a say, but yeah. and I'm really hoping that both my parents go visiting apartment, so i can be alone at home for a while. i really love being alone at home (during the day).
glad you could enjoy the waterfall video. I'm sorry you saw someone die, though. how're you feeling about it?
today's good moment was i guess my mother being nice to me, especially today morning. i'm not feeling good, i'm feeling kinda sick today, and i'm also really missing someone who decided to leave 7cups. but my day overall has been alright, i guess. what about you?
just thought i'd share this, i feel like my mother's being a lot better to me now that my exams are over. she's always worse during exam time. but so far she hasn't yelled at me today and she didn't yell yesterday either. yesterday she was sick and in bed so i had to do a lot of work in the morning - clean the gas stove, so all the dishes, fill all the water bottles from the aquagaurd, and water the plants and wash the balcony floor. normally, she doesn't even acknowledge what i do, let alone thank me for it, she just points out if i didn't do something the right way. but yesterday she thanked me and that was nice. i also trimmed my hair yesterday and she normally has a problem with that because i keep the door closed for longer when i do that, but yesterday she didn't say anything much, even though i was worried she'd start yelling. (yes, i cut my own hair, and I've been doing it for nearly 2 years. by the way, is it weird for someone to cut their hair by themselves?) and she asked me to paint her toenails yesterday, and i was more than happy to, and she thanked me for that, haha. she's being quite nice to be honest. but i know this wont last long.
Someone who switches back and forth so much between seeming to love you and seeming to hate you is probably mentally ill. Again, that isn't your fault. You cannot change their behavior, only your reaction. The key is to figure out ways to protect yourself so that the voices don't hurt quite as much. That takes lots of time, but you are doing it.
You are right to wonder why people put such pressure on others to have kids. They are never a sign of success or failure. Lots of people interfere in the lives of others too much in that regard. People can be happy in a variety of ways - with a job, without a job, with kids, without kids, etc.
By assembling lunch I simply meant putting it in a container to carry it to school. I presume that you carry what you eat in something? If you were able to take whatever your mom made and put it in a container she might see that as helpful. At some point you will definitely be doing more of such things and starting with little stuff now is good even if you are tired. You give your mom less to complain about.
We have two cats, Columbia and Leslee. They are the friendliest of cats but they are often funny.
Your vision question isn't the least bit stupid. I understand entirely. Let me reframe what I said before. How often when you are riding the bus or walking to school do you really focus on what you are seeing? I know that I regularly get to work and wonder how I got there because I was so caught up in my own thoughts that I didn't really see anything. That is what photography (among other things) allows you to do - to look more closely at little details and try to frame them in a new light. When you take a picture you think about how close things are or whether they are in light or shadow. Those are the kinds of things that when you focus on them you forget about problems for just a minute or so.
That is great you are recognizing when your mom is kinder and when she isn't. Then you can clearly see that it isn't based in your actions but in her own ideas about stress. She controls when she gets angry, not you. That knowledge gives you a certain amount of freedom. You should always try to be kind, but if she doesn't respond well then that is based in her mood, not you. Appreciate the kindness while you have it.
Of course, it is great that you can cut your own hair. That is quite a talent that I certainly don't have.
I am doing okay tonight but a bit emotionally drained. I got some good (and long awaited) news on my job for next year today. It is a little like what you said at the beginning about deciding what success is for other people. I have worked very hard for many years for a job title that almost all my colleagues have. I tried very hard to not let the fact that I didn't have that title bother me, but it did. I have only been granted it for this coming year, but I am grateful. We are also starting our week long break so I will hopefully be able to get more caught up on things. @exuberantBlackberry9105
@bestVase7265 i agree. and it's really very hard to deal with when one moment she's so nice and the next she's so awful. and it hurts. my father for example, never says he loves me, so i know he doesn't love me and I've come to terms with it. but my mother will one day be so sweet and loving and the next day, or even at a different time the same day, she's gonna be so harsh. so i don't know whats going on and it leads me to nowhere but confusion. i try to accept that the doesn't love me and then one day she'll make me feel nice, and then i feel maybe she does love me, and then the cycle continues. i don't understand how she truly feels about me. but i feel like her opinion about me is very unstable.
the other day in the morning, my mother was asking me if i love her. i totally get that she doubts that, she has the right to. and the truth is, i don't love her, and i'm sure about that. with all she does to me, it's pretty much impossible for me to love her. i know people say you're supposed to love your parents, but i cant. but anyway, i just replied "yes" because i dont have the courage to say that i dont love her on her face. i normally dont bring up the topic of loving her because then i asked her if she loves me. and she said "yes", now i dont know if she too is lying. then i asked her why she calls me stuff or shouts at me if she loves me and she said it's just because she gets angry. doesn't make sense to me.
haha i totally agree, having or not having children arent a sign of success or failure. but many people sadly still have old fashioned beliefs and think people must have children for their lives to be successful.
hmm thanks for clarifying that. i not get what it means to assemble lunch. yep, i do carry lucch to school in tiffin boxes. but no, i don't think taking the food she makes and putting it in the container will be of a lot of help. we have a small kitchen and too many people in there can cause problems when everyone's in a rush. and cooking isn't something she complains about a lot, and i don't think she expects my help in the mornings.
and anyways, she's not gonna cook my lunch for school days anymore. I'll be eating in the school canteen in 9th grade. it's going to give her the relief of cooking lunch in the morning, she'll just have to cook and pack breakfast and that's much easier. eating in the canteen will also be better for me because it's more like you can have a bit of everything instead of a lot of one thing. for example, if my mother makes me lunch, I'll have 2 rotis and a sabzi, but if i eat in the canteen, i can have 1 roti, some rice, some dal, and one or maybe two sabzis. also, if i don't want to eat something on a certain day, i can ask them to not give that to me. if i want to eat less some day, i can tell them to give me less food. and the biggest advantage is that if i have rice for lunch (which cant happen if my mother give me lunch) I'll be able to have rotis for dinner and that's way better than rice and dal for dinner.
i know that sounds like a lot of advantages of eating in the canteen, but there's also one major disadvantage. the canteen is noisy, a lot noisier than sitting in the classroom during lunch. there are just too many people talking or running around. the canteen is also dark and gloomy and it's not nice to sit in a gloomy place. also, another disadvantage is that i wont probably have anyone to talk to. i might not have anyone to talk to in classroom either, but I'll at least be able to sit on my place and just quietly sit and observe others or be busy in my thoughts. but in the canteen, most people sit in groups, so when people see me sitting alone, especially teachers who are also eating in the canteen, tend to ask why i'm alone. and i don't know what to say so i just smile and say nothing. it feels very awkward. but if i eat in the canteen every day, hopefully, I'll get used to the awkwardness.
oooh you got two cats. friendly and funny cats, that's nice. i like their names, cute names they have. meowwww 🐾🐾 are they playful and like to be around you a lot? I've heard that cats love to sit on keyboards when you have something to do, is that true?
when it comes to how much i really focus on what i see on my way to school on the bus (i don't walk to school), a lot of the time, i sleep in the bus, so there's no question of seeing anything. if i am awake, and sitting on the window seat, i will actually focus on what i'm seeing outside the window. i may not remember everything unless it's something out of the ordinary, but i do see everything and actually look at things. yes, i am always busy with my own thoughts, but i still to observe everything, i'm quite a good observer. i know the entire bus route quite well. i don't talk to anybody in the bus, but because i'm observant, i know where each person's bus stop is, and i know everyone's names in the bus.
"Then you can clearly see that it isn't based in your actions but in her own ideas about stress." i agree, lol. this morning, she got mad at me because i spoke at an inappropriate time, in her opinion and so she made a mistake. but actually she was the one who said something, and i just responded. maybe the response wasn't necessary, but when someone says something aloud when i'm nearby, i normally assume that they expect a response so i say something. like how am i supposed to know when a response is expected and when it's not? then she's like "i was thinking out loud, you don't need to respond to that". i never think out loud myself, so i cant tell when someone's just thinking out loud or when they're saying something. i told her that and then she admitted that the mistake she made was really because she had a stully nose that annoyed her and i just further distracted her. lol.
i actually only learnt to cut my own hair because i hate it when my mother cuts my hair. she's been cutting my hair since i was about 5 years old, till i was 11. i used to hate it because i was never satisfied with the results, and she was also extremely slow at cutting my hair, it took her at least an hour. i just hated it. so i learnt to do it myself. it gives me more freedom because i can cut it the way i want to and the only thing she can do is yell if she doesn't like how i cut it. it also means i don't have to wait for her to do it, like she might say she doesn't have time today so she'll do it another day. but if i cut my own hair, i can cut it any day i want. and it also doesn't take me 1 hr to do it.
i'm sorry you were feeling emotionally drained yesterday. i hope you could get some rest last night. i do hope you feel a bit better today. how've you been today? i'm glad you got some long awaited good news yesterday, your hard work seems to be paying off, and i'm happy for you. ooh a break sounds nice. i hope you get to enjoy it a bit.
by the way, i have some news. i don't know if it's good or bad, i have mixed feelings about it and it's honestly kinda making me very worried. so yesterday afternoon, my mother talked to me about bipolar disorder. we were both just sitting and doing nothing you know, and she started telling me that "look, your father has a mental illness. it's called bipolar disorder. it's what causes him to be doing so amazing and makes him so excited and stuff and makes him so depressed sometimes. bipolar disorder is mostly genetic, though environment plays a role too. it's likely that some people in his family like his siblings might also have bipolar disorder, but your father's case is really severe. so he'll have to take meds for the rest of his life, and his illness cannot be treated with therapy or anything because it's too late. now because bipolar disorder has a genetic component, there's a chance you might have it too. so in case you do, we're going to just check it out once. I'll talk to your father's doctor on 20th when he has his appointment. then we'll take you to the doctor and do an assessment. you'll be shown some pictures and stuff and you'll be asked questions about it, there will also be some mcq kind of questions. so in case you have it, we can start treatment now so you don't have to take meds for your whole life or something."
and oh my god, this was really surprising. i never expected her to say something like this. i'm seriously taken aback. i do feel like she kinda did her research and she was pretty nice when she talked about it, and honestly, this is the first time she's ever talked to me like that about something. i obviously said that i'm okay with seeing a doctor and whatever.
now, i don't think i have bipolar disorder. i did a little research online and so far, the symptoms don't at all sound like they describe me. but either ways, i have no problem with seeing a doctor about this. as far as I've read about depression though, i do really think i have depression. i'm deep down really hoping that the doctor is able to see and recognise that. if he is, i think it would be nice. right now i'm in a quite hopeless state about my depression, i feel like it wont get better and when combined with the stress of 9th grade, i might end up deciding to give up and stop holding on to my life, i hope that makes sense. so if the doctor is able to recognize that i'm depressed even when being assessed for bipolar disorder, it might be nice. but then how would my mother react with that? also, i read that bipolar disorder is mainly diagnosed on the basis of mania, what if he's not able to recognise that i'm depressed? i don't think i'd have the courage to tell him directly unless i'm asked about it. maybe I'll be able to muster the courage given that this might be my only opportunity to get help for my depression, but who knows? i can really shy away sometimes, especially with doctors because in general they aren't super fun to be around. but i'm overthinking about this right now and there's so much going over my mind....
Ok, I am going to start to answer this one but I may need to wait to finish it all until tomorrow night because I had another longer post to answer.
Whether you love someone or not is more complicated perhaps than you are making it out to be. I do believe that both your mom and dad love you and that you love them back. I know that is shocking to hear or to imagine. First, your dad's case. It is true of many people (especially men) that they feel no need to say that they love someone out loud. They feel that they show their love through supporting their family by working and that is enough. Saying it doesn't matter (even though it does to you). In your mom's case, she is asking if you love her because she is scared. She knows that her constant yelling is hurting you badly. She does love you but she can't control her yelling or her demeaning comments. In part that is because she hates herself. She is unluckily training you do to the same. You can't love her actions. In fact, you can hate them. But her actions aren't all she is. She is a real person who birthed you, feeds you, cares for your needs and tries to help with your studies. Does she fail often? Yes. But that doesn't mean that your love (or her love of you) is necessarily not there. You may reach a point in your life where you have to leave because of her abuse. But that doesn't mean that you won't still have memories of her and your dad that you cherish. That is where your love is.
Ok, now I am going to try to get done the canteen question before I have to stop for tonight. It is great that eating is going to be much easier soon. You will adapt more to the canteen once you have to use it more often. It will also make things much easier in terms of the amount you get to choose to eat. I do think that will help your relations with your mom.
Yes, you will be in more contact with other people. However, that isn't going to be a bad thing forever. Some days you will sit alone. Some days you will not. Give yourself time to adapt and focus on the good things in the situation.
Ok, I need to stop for tonight. Why don't you wait until I finish my answers tomorrow night before you post again.
I am so glad that you upvoted the posts. I realized after I closed last night that I might have trouble finding the original message to respond to. This site is organized weird sometimes. I usually need to have two windows open to answer to begin with.
Yes, our cats are quite silly at times. They aren't keyboard sitters, but the one cat will nip at me if I stop petting her when she wants pets. The other one meows a great deal when she wants pets even from another room.
There is little you can do when your mom responds to you out of her stress like that except laugh inside to yourself and recognize that it isn't your fault. You are doing exactly that.
I am actually with my own mom this evening. Both she and my father have the same birthday so I am visiting today to help them celebrate. My father is quite elderly and has nurses who assist him. Tomorrow my mom will have her second eye surgery and I am also here to help her get to the surgery and back home again. She will be very happy when both surgeries are done because she has had so much trouble seeing. The surgeries themselves are quick but they have a longer recovery time. My mom and I get along okay most of the time but part of that is because we live a few hours from one another and I only see them about once a month. As they get older, mom gets upset more easily especially with any technology that she doesn't understand. Usually by the end of a visit, I have to keep myself from getting frustrated. But today went well so far and she hasn't wanted to throw her phone against the wall.
I am glad that you have gotten good at cutting your own hair. It sounds like you have a good system going.
Ok, your more important question - the bipolar disorder. First of all, the fact that your father has to take medication for the rest of his life doesn't make his case severe. That is very normal with any mental illness and it doesn't make a difference when you get diagnosed. It is like heart disease. So your father isn't to blame for a late diagnosis. It is also not clear that therapy in addition to medication wouldn't help more. Usually mental illness treatment involves both. There are some people that will refuse therapy because it involves hard work of thinking through why things are happening, but it helps. It is also gets stigmatized more often.
You are also very unlikely to be diagnosed with it now. It is something that typically doesn't appear until somewhere between the ages of 18-25. It is also typically a male-inherited disease. So men get it much more often than women. Nothing that you have said to me in all the time that we have chatted indicates anything bipolar. Bipolar is much more of a mood swing disease which periods of frantic brilliance followed by deep depression.
I see some depression in how you talk sometimes but it is very much situational and based in how your parents are treating you. But I am most certainly not an expert. I do think that a doctor might be able to spot that and give you some suggestions though. So I think actually going to the appointment is a great idea. Do your best to talk to the doctor without your mom in the room. That will allow you freedom to speak freely about the depression. But if your mom won't leave, then work to be really brave and honest about how you are feeling. She isn't going to yell at you in front of the doctor and if you focus on feelings like "I sometimes don't think that I will ever amount to much" or "I think that I am a burden in this world" then she will have no choice but to listen. You can do it without accusing her directly.
We can work on phrasing over the next few days if you want to plan in your head what you want to say.
My moment of peace today was when my mother and father liked an apricot and cherry special treat that I made them for their birthday. I wasn't sure how they would turn out. What was your moment of peace?
@bestVase7265 know that it's totally okay to not respond to the whole message in one night. it's okay to talk your time. anytime you want me to wait till you finish your response, you can let me know, and i will wait. it's not a problem. don't worry.
oh dear i guess it is complicated. i dunno, but i still don't feel like that love me. and i feel like i definitely don't love them. why would i treat them the way i do, if i loved them? they could have their reasons to treat me like this, but what reason do i have to be rude to them sometimes? also, do they really love me? like if they did, would they really pretend to not hear me when i say something like "i want to d!e". i don't understand. it makes me feel like they wouldn't care if i weren't around anymore.
my father probably thinks that he's showing his love just by earning money. i think he also thinks the only thing a good father needs to do is allow your child to eat anything they want and buy them or giving them anything they want. he's quite a materialistic person to be honest. he almost never says no to anything. not until yesterday. we were visiting an apartment yesterday and a lot of stuff happened. he came to know that i want my own room and he says i should wait till i'm done with 10th grade to get my own room. all because he wants his own room and doesn't want to share one with my mother. so i have to share a room with my mother. i hate this.
yeah as for my mother, i do think she knows that her yelling is hurting me, but she cant control herself. lol, i agree she's a real person. would you mind if i asked which needs you're referring to when you say she cares for my needs?
well, yeah, hopefully i do adapt to the canteen. i agree, it probably will help my relations with my mother.
awww, i always do upvote your posts, vase. you deserve those little hearts. i just dint send any reply because you wanted me to wait. lol, i think the upvotes helped you find this thread. i know the site works weird when it comes to some things. i find it helpful to bookmark any threads i wanna come to later.
oooh, sounds like two little cats who love to be petted. nice to hear about them.
it's nice that you're spending some time with your parents during your break. when's their birthday? i do hope they get to celebrate it well and that they enjoy it. i hope your mom's surgery went well and the recovery will go fine. i'm glad you and your mom usually get along fine. haha i know many people get upset over tech they don't understand. i totally get you on that, I've seen it a lot, with my grandfather especially. i hope your visit goes alright.
i agree, the fact that my father has to take medication for the rest of his life doesn't make his case severe, i did some research online and turns out, it's quite rare for someone with bipolar disorder to not need meds. my mother didn't exactly give me accurate info, and i know that. it's nor surprising to me, she hardly ever gives me accurate info, she always changes things up a bit according to her understanding. in her opinion, when you get diagnosed makes a difference because bipolar disorder is progressive so it's supposed to get more severe if you don't diagnose and treat it in time. my father is definitely not to be blamed for his late diagnosis though. if anyone, it's his previous psychiatrist to blame. he saw that doctor for 8 years i guess and the doctor only diagnosed him with depression, never noticed the weird pattern in his behaviour.
i'm not sure about the therapy thing. i think it's totally possible that he just refused it because it's too much effort than just swallowing a bunch of tablets. i remember that my mother once told him to go to therapy and she went a few times, then told her that the therapist told him he didn't need it anymore, but my mother called the therapist to ask and turned out my father lied. so it's possible that he just refused it. i think the case is that the psychiatrist would have told him that only therapy wont work, he needs meds, so i think my father chose to do with just the meds or something. because i know he just wants to magically get better. he's not willing to take efforts for it. the doctor told him that he needs regular exercise. for some time he used to go for a walk everyday, but now he says his feet hurt so he's having trouble walking. so he's totally stopped exercising. like if his feet hurt so much, he should see a doctor about it.
i sure agree that i am very unlikely to be diagnosed with bipolar disorder. i don't think i have it. well, yeah, children can show symptoms of it, but i don't show those symptoms. yes, sometimes when something very good happens i suddenly start feeling more hopeful and less fed up, but i go back to my normal state within minutes.
i agree that my depression is kinda based on how my parents are treating me, but i don't think it's totally situational though. sometimes i have my parents treating me well for maybe a whole week or something, but i could still be feeling absolutely terrible.
i'm not sure if my mother will be in the room while talking to the doctor. it's not gonna be in my hands, depends on the doctor. if she is there in the room, I'll have a tough time. but you know what? i realised something. my mother might not actually think i have bipolar disorder after all. she just thinks something is wrong with me. why? because i keep the door closed for too long every day. and because i say i want my own room. she thinks i'm mad and that this is not normal. she says i'm being very extreme about keeping the door closed. now, i have a question for you. do you think it's abnormal for a 14 year old to want to have their own room and not want to share a room with their mother? is it abnormal to demand a few hours alone with the door of the room closed?
yeah, i do guess we could work on phrasing what i'm gonna say.
my good moment today was some relief after cleaning my table a bit. and my drawers. i came across a lot of stuff. some of them are funny to think about. some of them remind me of how i used to be a good student and how i'm not anymore. also, i was alone at home for about an hour today and that was nice.
Sorry that I missed two nights. I am trying to do this message during the day instead to catch up. The last few days were just a little later and I lost my usual typing window.
Love doesn't mean not being rude or thinking rude thoughts. Those things are going to happen in every relationship that you have. People get selfish and self-absorbed regularly. Love isn't perfection. It is figuring out how to live with our own imperfections and other people's imperfections.
Why do your parents react to you saying "I want to d**" without love and sympathy? Because they don't know how to react. They are at a loss at what to say or do so they allow their brains to say that you really don't mean it. It is easier that way. But your mom taking you to the psychiatrist for the evaluation means that she has heard you and she is concerned. She sees you wanting privacy and fears that her words are doing damage. She doesn't know what to do with that fear.
You are perfectly normal at age 14 to want your own space though. That is exactly the age most teens first realize that they are really in need of privacy. It is part of how brains evolve. Your father not wanting to give you your own room is him being selfish. He also doesn't want to share a room with your mom because she makes him miserable too. Your mom knows deep down that she is causing her family to dislike her. That sets off all of those negative voices in her as well which unluckily causes her stress and to lash out even more. By caring for your needs, I meant your physical needs like food and shelter. Just like your dad with seeing money as a sign of showing his love, your mom does it with cooking and keeping house. There is no deeper care of your emotional needs because those things are tougher. Both of your parents' own mental illnesses make them focus on the surface stuff rather than the necessary caring stuff.
It is a rough situation. The only part of the equation in it that you have any control over is you. You can realize why they are reacting the say that they are and chose to be better than that. It is really painful and hard, but you have the strength to do it.
It is interesting that your dad doesn't want to take advice like getting out to exercise. Remember that I gave you the same advice a few months back and you turned me down. You did it for the same reason that he did - your depression tells you on purpose that it doesn't work when it does if you can make it a habit. It also is a great way to get that alone time that you are craving. Being alone doesn't just mean having your own room. There are plenty of other ways to find a space for yourself. Even if you see other people while walking, you are away from the confined spaces of your apartment. I will continue to argue that could really help you.
Situational depression doesn't mean that your parents treating you better for a week means the depression goes away. Depression doesn't work like that. It is based in long-standing trauma that can take multiple years to process. So what do you think that you want to say during the doctor visit? Imagine both a scenario of being alone and one where your mom is in the room.
I am now back from my parents and the visit went fine. The surgery went well and hopefully in another month after mom's eye heals then she will be able to see normally again. She, of course, would like to see better right now.
I am glad that you had some time to search through the drawer and bring back old memories. You aren't that old person anymore, but you are evolving into a newer, better one. I am proud of the progress that you are making.
I haven't gotten into today enough to really have had a special moment, but I had a funny one yesterday. I will filing out financial paperwork and got asked a security question about whether garlic was a fruit or vegetable. It was such a bizarre question when I was thinking about something totally different that I laughed.
@exuberantBlackberry9105
@bestVase7265 it's alright, vase. dont worry.
mmm i hear you about love. i'm going to have to think about that.
i guess it kinda makes sense for them not to know how to react, so they just think i don't really mean it. also it makes sense that when she herself keeps threatening suicide but never acts on it, so she assumes that i'm just 'threatening' too. yes, she keeps stuff like "do you want your mother to die? if not, behave yourself!" or "i'm going to strangle myself if you treat me like that" or something like that. if you're wondering whether i take her seriously or not, i used to, but i don't anymore. and these threats have been going on for a really long time (over 7 years).
i remember once when i was 7 years old, my mother told me that she's going to strangle herself and then she went in the bedroom and locked the door. i got so scared and kept telling her to let me in, but she refused. so i looked for the bunch of keys at home and found the bedroom key and unlocked the door, only to find my mother just sitting on her bed. honestly, she scared the he'll out of me. also, other than that i remember that when i was younger, every time i heard her suicide threats, i'd start crying and so on. but at this point, i'm just so used to those kinda threats, so i don't take them seriously anymore. do you think i'm doing something wrong?
well, i'm not sure if her wanting to take me to a psychiatrist means that she has heard me and is concerned. like if she fears that her words are doing damage, why doesn't she apologise afterwards? also, as far as i know, the reason she is concerned is because me wanting to keep the door closed and wanting to be alone disrupts her routine. she's also worried that because i spend like 2 hrs a day with the door closed, i'm not going to have enough time to study in 9th grade. because in her opinion, in 9th grade, i should be studying for 6-7 hours every evening so that i do fine. (don't you think 6 hrs is too much on a school evening?) i might be wrong, but her reasons for wanting to take me to a psychiatrist seem incredibly selfish.
haha, i actually first realized that i'm really in need of privacy, a long time ago. i had my own room from age 4 to 11. shortly after my 11th birthday, i had to start sharing a room with my mother. it was then, at 11 years old that i really needed privacy. by now, 3 years later, that need is stronger than it had ever been. 11 is really not a good age to start sharing a room with your parents. an 8 year old can manage sharing a room with a parent. but for an 11 year old, it's hard. it's especially harder after 13.
i agree it is selfish of my father to not want to give me my own room. but i wonder why he gave it to me when i was younger. the fact that i used to have my own room and i don't have one now is what really hurts. and yes, my mother makes him miserable, but he makes her miserable too. my mother also isn't very keen on sharing a room with my father. because firstly, he snores very loudly. secondly, he looks grumpy a lot of the time and my mother hates that look. also, in my mother's opinion, my father has "poor hygiene sense" so she's afraid he will dirty the room and she hates a dirty room.
i agree the only part of this i have control over is myself. I'll have to try, but honestly, sometimes it feels like i cant control myself anymore.
as for my father not wanting to get out to exercise, i don't think the doctor specified about getting out to do it. he just told him to exercise. but he wont do anything at home too. as for me, know that i never went out to exercise and i know i'm being quite rigid by saying this, but i probably never will go out to do it either. i can never go out without my parents, so how will i get alone time if they are with me? yes, if i left the house alone, i would get some alone time, but i cant go anywhere but school alone. my parents never let me go out alone.
but yeah, i do exercise at home alone with the door closed. yes, my mother forces me to exercise in the morning, and i do it because i'm being forced to, but i don't do it properly. sometime later in the day, i take some time to do some exercises, mostly stretching exercises. and it actually does feel good. it never feels good in the morning though. because i don't understand what's wrong with my body in the morning, but i don't seem to be able to do anything in the morning, as if I've lost my flexibility. for example, in the morning, i cant touch the floor without bending my knees. but later in the day, i can touch my entire palm on the floor. so in the morning it just feels very boring because i don't do what i normally can do.
mmm yeah, i agree, my parents treating me nicely for a week doesn't mean the situational depression will go away. so yeah, it's probably situational depression. i will say that my parents treating me nicely does make me feel a bit better.
okay, so as for the doctor visit, there's something i need to share. during my father's appointment on 20th, even though the doctor had told my father to always come along with my mother, my father declared that he would go alone. so, my mother didn't get to talk to the doctor about me. so i might not get to see the doctor anytime soon. it's possible that my mother will talk to the doctor if my father takes her along during his next appointment, but that's going to after a month or so. but really, he might not take her along next time either. what this means is that my mother is not gonna be able to talk to the psychiatrist about me anytime soon, and she wont take me to see him anytime soon either. so, right now, i don't want to be thinking about what i want to say during the doctor visit, because it might never happen, and even if it does happen, it wont happen soon.
i'm glad your visit went fine and the surgery went well. i hope your mom is able to see normally soon.
do you really think i'm becoming a better person? i don't feel like it. am i really making progress?
haha glad you had a funny moment the other day. that's honestly quite a weird question, lol. mmm i dunno, i guess my good moment today was finding some relief after showering and shampooing my hair, because I've been in a lot of pain today, it's my annoying period again. maybe also making up a little joke.
by the way, yesterday and the day before was really hard for me. i had school on wednesday, and we got to see our exam papers, and turned out, i didn't do very well. especially in maths. my parents are very disappointed, and so am i, but they are more disappointed than i am. i don't want to go into details here because this post is quite long already, but do you mind talking about it? also, i'm really worried about 9th grade and some things about it, like we're going to have hindi and we'll also have marathi after not having it in 8th grade. i wonder how I'll manage. can we talk about this too?
Yes, I would definitely say that if your mom is making similar threats that she would presume that your threats were as meaningless as hers. I do agree that you cannot react to her own threats because she doesn't most likely mean them. There may be days that she does, but there is no way to know which days those are. She is using the threat to create drama and just presumes that you have picked it up from her and are doing the same. That is totally not the case, but it is how she makes sense of things.
But as I said, I think that she knows deep down something is not right with you which is why she wants you to see someone at least once. To apologize for her is to admit out loud that she has done something wrong. That is something she needs to be forced to see, but admitting to her own false drama would be extremely painful. I am not sure that you will actually ever get that. Of course, taking you to see a psychiatrist has some selfishness in it as well - she wants to prove to herself that she hasn't done anything wrong or hasn't done damage, but she has. That is why it is really important that you admit that to the psychiatrist.
The door closing doesn't disrupt her routine (but she may say that) - it disrupts her control level. That is what she doesn't want. I agree that 6 hours a day studying does sound extreme. How many hours are you in school each day? Here students usually go for six hours per day and have 2-3 hours of homework each night (though some nights are less).
You can control yourself just fine and are doing great at it. You are learning lots of new techniques here and I can see in your words that you are getting better at them. But sometimes you are going to say the wrong thing, or feel horrible, or it will just feel totally messed up. Indeed, many days that will be the majority of the time. But you are aiming for really slow improvement. I know that is tough because you don't want to be in pain anymore. But you are getting there and you are surviving. So keep patting yourself on the back. I am proud of you.
So focus on doing the exercises that help you most when you want to do them. If your mom wants some in the morning, do a few then, but then do them later too when they fit your body better. If she allows you to close the door even better. I understand not being able to walk outside without your parents except for school. When you walk for school see that as exercise too. Focus on the natural details around you (clouds, plants, etc).
It is fine not to think about what to say to the psychiatrist for a while because nothing has been established yet. There will be plenty of time later.
I am glad that the shower brought you some relief today. Water is another known thing that improves depression. Small jokes are good too. My moment was probably watching one of the cats giving herself a bath. Cats are so delicate with their paws but also so flexible. Otherwise today has been one of extreme alone time. I haven't had this few people around in a while. I will admit it made me more sad than happy trying to fill the hours. But hopefully tomorrow will be better.
Of course, we can easily talk about maths and all of the subjects that you will be adding next year. Why don't you start with that next time? @exuberantBlackberry9105
@bestVase7265 umm i dont think i threaten it though. i dont mean to hurt anyone or make anyone feel guilty when i say i want to d!e. i don't say it to make anyone do anything, my mother says it to make me feel bad and make me treat her nicely. something like that is never in my intentions. whenever i say that, it's just me trying to let them know that i feel terrible and feel like dying. i'm not trying to tell them to treat me better. and honestly, they could be treating me nicely and i could still be feeling suicidal.
well, honestly, even if she does mean her threats, i feel like there's nothing i can do about it. i agree that maybe she means it on certain days and she doesn't on others, but i have no way of knowing when she really means it. she also threatens to leave me with my father and just go away. there's been a lot of times when she told me that she's leaving, she goes till the door and comes right back. i wonder why she does it. like i feel like she just wants to see my reaction. like i'm not a baby, i'm 14 and i know that she's never gonna really leave empty handed. she'll at least need her bag. and even if she does leave, where the heck's she going to go? i hate all this drama. but yeah, she probably thinks that I've picked that " "i want to d!e" thing up from her.
mmm yeah i guess on some level she does realise that something's wrong with me. as for apologising, there are some things she does apologise about, but i think for most of the stuff she does, it feels impossible for her to apologise. yeah you're right. wanting to take me to a psychiatrist might not be totally selfish, but there's surely some selfishness in it. maybe she wants to prove to herself that she hasn't done anything wrong. like if i were to have bipolar disorder, she could say that she has no role in it and she'll be able to blame it on my father, you know, saying it's genetic. but that's not going to happen, so she'll end up feeling bad when her trying to prove to herself doesn't work.
oh dear, it doesn't disrupt her routine? like if she has some work in the room and the door's closed, it would disrupt her routine, right? but yeah, it probably does disrupt her control level. i don't get why she wants control over everything!
6 hrs a day studying after school is extreme. like it's fine on a weekend or something, but on a school evening, that's too much. well, my school timings are 7:45 am - 2:20 pm. so i'm in school every day for 6 hrs 35 mins, right? but then my bus reaches school around 7:30 am. also, we don't really leave school until like 2:30 pm. so that's technically 7 hrs in school, lol.
usually i kinda have trouble really focusing on homework and getting it done, so while i sit at my table for much longer, i actually do homework for like 2 hrs (if i have some submission the next day, i could work for longer). i totally realise that 2 hrs is not enough with the huge amount of homework we get, and in my opinion, i should be doing homework for at least 3 hrs every day. now, if i take a 10 min break after every 20 mins i study, like i do now, that would be a total of 1 hr 30 mins break time for 3 hrs of actual studying. and that adds up to 4 hrs 30 mins, and that seems like too much. so i guess I'll have to reduce my break time somehow so i can take a 1 hr long break or something after everything's done. so i'm thinking i should do something like 25 mins study, 5 mins break, then 20 mins study and 10 mins break, so total 15 mins break every hour and 1 hr total break for 3 hrs of studying.... i think i should be able to do that, let's see. by the way, i think i'm using the words homework and studying interchangeably, lol, because mostly i do the studying (like reading the chapter) during homework, not separately. but my mother also wants me to practice maths (other than maths homework) for an hour every day, and i'm not sure how to fit that in. any idea? do i have to add that in addition to the 3 hrs or studying other subjects and doing homework?
when it comes to self control, i really don't think i'm good at it. i cant control myself from getting carried away with my thoughts when i'm supposed to be doing something. sometimes i say the wrong thing, but that's more of a minor issue to be honest. it's a bigger problem when i sometimes cant control my yelling when i'm really angry, i normally don't yell, but sometimes i lose control and scream on top of my lungs. then i wonder what the people who heard me will think of me. also, when i'm angry, i feel like throwing things, but that's something i can control myself about. when i was younger, i used to throw things around all the time. i don't do it anymore, but i still feel like it. the other day my mother did something that made me so mad and want to throw something at her, but i controlled myself. but i got it out in some other weird way. i was in bed when that happened, and i could have just tried to punch my bed or pillows or something, but i somehow slapped and punched myself instead. i don't know why. maybe because i was mad at myself too and not just mad at my mother? i dunno why i did that, i never do something like that.
well honestly i sometimes get lazy about exercise. i know it helps me feel better, but i still feel lazy about it. well, i normally do it after showering or something when i'm allowed to keep the door closed for some time. well i actually asked my mother about why i never get to go anywhere alone these days even though she'd leave me alone even when i was 9 years old. she says it's because there's nowhere to go alone in our neighbourhood. and honestly, that's true. there's nowhere i can really go alone that isn't too far away. when i was 9, we lived in a different place and there was a park to go to, and i could go there alone. or i had "friends" in the neighbourhood and i sometimes went to their home. or i'd go to my singing class or drawing class alone. i don't do any of that stuff now. as for walking to the bus stop for school, it's rare for me to do that since usually my father take me to the bus stop on his two wheeler because the bus stop is like 7 mins walking distance away. but i do walk home from the bus stop in the afternoon. but there's nothing really natural for me to see in that hot afternoon sun. it's too hot and dusty in the afternoon, so i try to get home as quickly as i can with that heavy bag on my back. ugh, i hate carrying such a heavy bag. maybe i could try to take a close look at stuff around me but i'm usually not in the mood and i'm tired.
well, i shower every day and shampoo my hair very two days, but it doesn't bring me much relief to be honest. especially in summer. warm showers are nice in the winter but in the summer it's more because i have to do it to wash all the sweat off. i wish i could shower with room temperature water in the summer, but my body doesn't like it somehow so i use slightly warm water and it's not exactly fun when it's already hot outside. but that day it did give me some relief because i was feeling really dirty and disgusting so i felt a bit cleaner afterwards.
aww your cat bathed herself... that sounds so sweet and cute. mmm i see. i know i personally like being alone, but i know too much of it is bad too, i get that. how're you doing more recently? i'm sorry i didn't respond to you yesterday.
okay, so talking about the maths and stuff, so we went to school on wednesday to see our exam papers. and i did terribly in maths. i got 56/80. my mother went mad on hearing that. and she's not impressed with the other subjects either. 74/80 in english, 69/80 in hindi, 78.5/80 in science, 77/80 in social studies and 75.5 in french. she's incredibly disappointed. even my father asked me about how much i got in my exams (which is weird because he doesn't normally ask about my marks) and on hearing 56/80 in maths, he asked me a bunch of questions? "did your teacher not scold you about that?" i said no. then he's like "what's going on, is the teacher not teaching well?" and i said that the teacher is teaching terribly, and luckily he left it there, but the way he was talking to me made me feel awful. also, i belive i scored fine in all the subjects other than maths and hindi. why does nobody ever notice that? why are they both so obsessed with maths? yeah, i get that both of them are good at maths so they don't like seeing me get so terrible marks in maths. but really, just because they are excellent when it comes to maths doesn't mean i have to be good at it too, does it? and my mother's just so disappointed with my marks and that's what made her tell me that i need to do 1 hr of maths every single day. this is really hard, because i hate maths. yeah, maybe with some more practice it'll be less hard and maybe I'll score a bit better in maths exams, but 1 hr every day feels too overwhelming for me.
also, when it comes to my science marks, there's something bothering me. the teacher initially gave me 79.5/80. but then i noticed that she gave me marks for an answer that I've later realised that is incorrect. but she gave me marks for it, i think she maybe didn't notice much. so i went to her for that and asked her if that was actually the correct answer. she said no, that was a 1 mark question, so she then deducted 1 mark there, so it's 78.5 now. the reason this is kinda bothering me is because if it were 79.5, i was the one who'd be getting the "highest marks in science" prize, that's basically an award the school gives to the person who gets the highest marks overall throughout the year. the school gives this award for every subject. okay, so anyway, not that my marks in this exam is 78.5 and not 79.5, it might mean someone else gets the award now. and i feel weird about this. should i really have had gone to the teacher about that? is that honesty valued? sometimes these days it feels like it doesn't matter anymore. and i wonder, is it bad to go to a teacher and tell them "you marked me for an incorrect answer"? if i didn't go to her about that, i'd surely get the prize, but i would always know that i didn't really deserve it because the teacher marked me for an incorrect answer. but now that i did get one mard deducted, i might not get the prize. that would be awkward because the teacher already told me in front of the whole class that i'd be getting the prize. and if someone else gets it know, what would everyone in the class think? if i still get the prize after this, that would be nice, but the chances arent much. i'm really overthinking about this.
other than that, i'm worried about our subjects next year. there's a new rule that's being implemented this year. according to that rule, in 9th and 10th grade, we need to have 3 languages, two of which must be indian languages. if this new rule wasn't coming up, we'd be having 5 subjects in 9th grade: english, french, maths, science, and social studies. (in 8th, we've had 6 subjects: these 5, plus hindi). with this new rule, we're going to have 6 main subjects in 9th: english, hindi, marathi, maths, science, and social studies. yes, we did not have marathi in 8th, and we're going to have it in 9th. I've only learnt marathi till 7th grade. how the heck are we going to do this? i really don't know. and i'm terrible at marathi too. i don't understand what i'm going to do.
also, we so far knew that we wouldn't have hindi 9th grade onwards, because our school didn't have hindi after 8th grade. so we all took hindi very casually, knowing we wouldn't have to give board exams for hindi. now we're being told that we have hindi in 9th and we will have to give boards for hindi. what do we do now after taking hindi so casually? and i'm not good at hindi, I've never been. what do i do now. also, why on earth have we been learning french for 3 years? just to burden our brains with extra work when we already have so much to manage?
and the new rule also states that we need to have some skill based subjects. in our school, it's going to be art education, physical education, mass media, and ai/french (we have an option between ai and french). i'm confused about what I'll choose. my mother says ai will be more useful than french. so I'll probably go with ai. i hope i don't regret it later on.
mmm by the way, i know this post i getting way too long, but i'm just hoping you wouldn't mind me sharing something that's really bothering me. for that past few days, I've just been feeling terrible, and i cant explain why. okay, yesterday, my mother was pretty unkind to me etc etc. but today she's been fairly nice all day, nothing particularly bad had happened today. i still feel so terrible. i'm tired, i'm sleepy, i'm fed up. everything feels so dull and gloomy. i'm trying to make myself feel better. i tried to exercise a bit to try to feel better. it made no difference. i tried to go to the balcony and look into the sky. yeah, the moon looks nice, but doesn't change how i feel. i tried to talk to someone on cups but ended up just trying to deny everything good they said about me. didn't feel better after that either. i tried to watch something funny on youtube to try to cheer me up, but nothing made me laugh. right now my last hope is trying to watch something really sad, like a suicide related short film, because maybe that'll make me cry and i'll get some relief from crying. it's weird that i want to make myself cry.
and i'm also being really tired and sleepy lately. yesterday, i was laying on the floor reading a book and i somehow started crying. but by father was around and i didn't want to cry around him so i buried my face in my arms and tried to convince myself to cry later, and i fell asleep like that. the day before yesterday, i was lying in bed with a heating pad on my stomach because i was getting cramps. and i fell asleep. luckily, i turned the heating pad off before i fell asleep, or else i dunno what would have happened. i usually go to bed by 12 am lately, and wake up at 7:30 or 8 am or something. but then even if i go to bed at 12, it takes me a while to fall asleep, even though i'm really tired. i don't know why. maybe it's because the temperatures are getting really high lately and i keep sweating, i don't know. and then maybe i do fall asleep at some point, but i keep waking up so many times during the night. i fall bad to sleep again pretty quick, but yeah. and i also have a lot of bad dreams. my dreams are almost always bad to be honest, or it's really stupid. and they almost always have to revolve around my fears. but i don't get it, how do i fall asleep so easily during the day, but it's hard to sleep at night? why do i never have dreams when i sleep during the day and why do i have such horrific and disturbing dreams at night?
i'm really sorry, vase, for such a long post. i'm sorry. i just have a lot going on and i don't know who i can share all this with. i hope you don't mind me telling you. i'm sorry i'm giving you so much to read. also, sorry if half of my post makes no sense. i'm just not feeling great and i'm just saying whatever comes to my mind.
i think i didn't mention any good moments today, and honestly, i don't think i had any moment when i really felt good. yeah, some nice things happened like eating ice cream, but i never really actually felt good once today.
The new living arrangements sound like they are going to be much better than your old one. I am happy for you. What is so nice about life is that things rarely stay the same for long. So even the thought of "I will NEVER have my own room" actually isn't true because things change. Of course, they don't always change for the better, but it is one of the reasons that I try to avoid thinking in terms of "never" or "always".
I totally get the snoring thing. My husband and I have the same issue and can't sleep at night in the same room. We are lucky that our kids are older and are finally starting to move out so we have a little more space to spread out at night. He was sleeping in the living room for multiple years though and still does it occasionally when more people are at home like during the summer.
It will be easier once you are able to recognize those certain dogs. They will still be scary but you will get more used to their movements. Remember that most barking is because they want to just say hi to one another. Dogs aren't my favorite either (I like cats) but over the years I have gotten to know a few a little better and they are easier for me to deal with. You can do this.
Shorter messages are fine too. You gave me a good length one. We all get busy sometimes.
@bestVase7265 i apologise for not being able to come here to say anything yesterday. there were some things that kept me really busy, and my mother was also doing her best to make me miserable, so i wasn't able to respond to you, i'm sorry. i don't think i have much time today (I've had a long day at school and had homework and i'm tired) but I'll try to get to as much as i can.
(responding to the rest of your message from 3 days ago)
haha i can agree that my mother's not a very good maths teacher. she has taught maths (and other subjects like science and computers) in schools before, around 20 years ago, and after she stopped teaching in school she also took tuition for maths at home. i really wonder what kind of a teacher she used to be. did she shout at her students the way she shouts at me? did she scold them as much as she scolds me? i guess I'll never know. I've asked her a couple times about whether she used to teach them the way she teaches me, and she always says "no, i'm teaching you this way because you are my daughter and i want the best for you". i doubt that (the way she teaches me isn't helping) but then i really hope that her students were lucky enough to be treated better. she sure is making me more nervous about the subject.
when she's teaching me, i sometimes ask something silly and then she gets mad and tells me that i don't listen and ask stupid questions without listening. she shouts often when teaching maths and that frightens me. i might solve something and she suddenly yells "what is this?!" or "this is wrong!!" and then she checks and sees it's right. but that still makes me more nervous about maths. i already lack confidence in my maths and she brings it down even more. and i sure agree my parents' expectations are too high.
ummm unfortunately i need to go now. yesterday my mother did a lot of drama because i went to bed later than she wanted me to, and she got mad and hit me and yelled a lot. i don't want that drama to happen again today, so i better be quick to go to bed. i will try my best to get to you tomorrow. do know that i have school going on now and i'm not really getting much time for cups, especially a chunk of time to get to type a proper thoughtful response. I'll try to come here whenever i can. i wanted to post this to let you know. i may sadly take more time to get back to messages...
@bestVase7265 (continuing the message here)
i agree that there's distance, but it's actually less than 2 years. i have less than 2 years to improve in maths. we're in april 2024 right now and we'll probably have board exams sometime around end of 2025 or max by march 2026.
haha most of the people i talk to on 7 cups don't like maths, and it's really good knowing i'm not alone in disliking or hating maths. i agree that we need some maths in our daily life, but how much of it do we really need? okay, i'm a kid, i may not understand how much maths is really needed in daily life. but really, do you ever need to find the volume of a cylinder? do you ever need to multiply a 4 digit number by a 4 digit number?
it's interesting that when your kids got other, school teachers were enough for them. do you normally have good maths teachers in school there? or they just get lucky enough to get a good teacher? because here, maths in general is not taught well in schools. i believe schools struggle to find good maths teachers these days. and even if it is actually a good teacher and actually want to teach everything well, the portion is just too much and teachers get very little time to complete it, so they have no option but to rush with the portion. so it is practically impossible to manage maths without help outside of school. which is why most people go to tuition for maths unless their parents are amazing at maths, know how to teach it, and have the time to teach it, because most working parents won't have the time to teach everything at home. my mother is able to help me with maths, which is why my parents are saved of having to send me to tuition and pay tuition fees in addition to school fees.
yes, we do have a new teacher for science this year. three new teachers, actually. because from 9th grade, science is gonna be divided as physics, chemistry and biology. we've had biology yesterday, and sorry to say, but i really don't like the teacher. he sounds so boring. unfortunately, i think he might kill my liking for biology now. we also had physics yesterday and the teacher seemed quite nice. i don't know who'll teach chemistry so cant say anything about that.
"But if you continue to do well in science then your parents might not complain about maths as much." sadly, i don't think that will happen. both of them really care about maths and want me to do well in maths. they don't seem to be thinking much about science.
i still don't feel like i deserve the award to be honest. but fine, there's nothing i can do if she wants me to get it. i was honest, but she still decided not to deduct the mark. that's not my fault. what i do think is my fault is that back in july, we had our first 8th grade exams. she initially have me 38.5/40 there. and i had gone to her to ask about the mark distribution for a particular question, and she told me and it turned out she was missed giving half a mark there, so she changed it to 39/40 there. i feel like maybe i shouldn't have gone to her there. because that's the only fault i may have in getting this award because in october's exam and january's exam, everything was alright and i didn't need to go talk to her.
also, a bit of a drawback of this award that i see is that getting this award will increase my parent's expectations for science now. during prize distribution, parents of prize winners will most definitely be called at school. it's possible that all parents get called, i don't know about that. but my parents will surely be called to the school during prize distribution. they're gonna get to know everything about who got highest in what subject and stuff. some people get awards for multiple subjects. that's going to end up in comparison. also, my parents have never really cared about science much and i feel like this might make them care about it more and expect more out of me. and as far as i know, 9th grade science is supposed to be really hard. harder than 10th grade too, according to everyone I've talked to. apparently, 9th grade in itself is harder that 10th is what everyone's saying, especially science and maths. i'm worried i might not be able to do so well in science this year, and that'll disappoint my parents.
i don't think I'll be able to be more honest about attendance this year. my reason for missing school are usually (a) actually being sick, in which case I'll be honest about the reason for my absence, (b) having a notebook or project submission and my work being very incomplete (if it's only a little incomplete, i usually submit it as it is) and me not having the time or energy to complete it at the last moment, (c) knowing that nothing useful is going to happen in school that day and deciding it's just more useful to stay home, or (d) something coming up, like when my grandfather passed away, i missed a lot of school because we had to visit our hometown. out of these four possible reasons, (b) and (c) are usually the more common ones. and they are also ones that i could never possibly be honest about. they are not considered valid reasons to miss school. also, more than teachers, its classmates who ask "why were you absent yesterday", and if i tell them the truth, nobody is going to help me with what i missed. nobody is gonna tell me what was done in school the previous day. so i simply cannot tell the truth.
and yeah, i agree (b) is really related to depression. the reason i really fall behind on schoolwork so much is because i'm tired and i usually feel very down after school. i feel too lazy to do schoolwork. so what i usually do is that i open up my books and keep them as if i'm doing something. and i spend my time on the phone on 7cups or youtube. 7 cups feels way better than studying. and yeah, so i just do that and study for a very small fraction of the time i sit at my study table. oh yeah, whenever i hear my parents coming in or being near the room, i put away 7 cups or youtube and study a bit and after like 10 mins or so after they're gone, i go back to whatever i was doing. yes, it makes me feel less down and depressed, but then it brings me down in my studies, and that makes me feel terrible later on. this is really hard to deal with. i try by making myself a timetable and trying to stick to it and take breaks often and stuff. sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
hmm you have an upcoming new schedule? oh and yeah, yesterday was 1st april, the first day of school. turns out, those rules really weren't for us. we have five main subjects right now. english, french, maths, science, and social studies. do note that science is divided into physics, chemistry and biology, and social studies is divided into history, political science, geography and economics. so if you count all of them separately, it's actually 10 subjects. and we have 9 main subject teachers (history and political science is taught by one teacher). and for co-scolastic subjects, we only have mass drill, pe, yoga, library, and fine arts class. and also, we have one marathi class a week.
i'm honestly so relieved we don't have hindi anymore. and also that we don't indian music, western music, and value education now. i really hated value education class. first off, the school counsellor took that class and I've had a terrible experience with her before and i really wish i wouldn't have to see her in my life, i'm so ashamed of what i told her. and secondly, she herself has no values, she's such a liar. she's lied to my face and she's also lied to my mother. and meeting her every Tuesday during value ed was a disaster. and i'm happy about indian music and western music being gone because the teachers suck. the western music teacher used very bad language, and also treated us terribly. the indian music teacher was just so boring and made me almost fall asleep.
i wish fine arts, yoga and pe would be gone too, but sadly they aren't gone. oh and if you're curious about why i want yoga class to be gone even though it feels good is because we have "portion to complete" and we need to maintain a file and blah blah blah. yesterday we had yoga class and we were sitting in the classroom listening to the teacher and it was so boring and those 40 mins felt so long. when the class finally got over and the teacher left the class, almost the whole class started discussing about how annoying the teacher was. the class became so noisy until the french teacher came next, lol. and yeah, fine arts too isn't nice. we have to choose between five options and none of them seem nice. and pe is very boring of me, but most people love it and look forward to it. i get why, but i still don't like it....
anyway, let it be. enjoy your cooler week there hehe. 16-25 is realllllly very pleasant. it's so hot in here. cant wait for the rains to cool things down a little. it'll probably rain sometime in the summer, but proper monsoon rain might not come time july. i do like rain, lol. yeah it's gloomy when it rains but it's better than the blazing sun for me. when we come home from school, we get cooked alive in a pressure cooker, you know. i like to call the school bus a pressure cooker.
i'm glad teaching is going fine this semester. i hope you're able to get back on track soon. how was you holiday by the way? was it fun to have your three sons and your husband home at the same time?
i think my good moment today was finding out who's teaching us history and political science. she seems quite nice. she didn't teach today, just an introduction and timepass, so i don't know what kind of a teacher she will be. but i do know that she has an incredible sense of humour and incredible presence of mind. she scolds us, but in a very sweet and funny way. she made us laugh a lot today. and we actually just had history class today, the rest of them didn't happen because we had first aid training today, it was quite boring and tiring to be honest, my legs were hurting so much from sitting for so long on the floor. but then we did get to sit in the ac because some teacher decided to turn it on. we have ac in the av room and seminar hall at school hehe and it's kinda nice sitting in the ac. and afterwards we were just playing around for 40 mins by the way. not fun, but made me laugh a lot looking at the ways people were playing when we were told to do something. but after that the rest of the day has been awful. what was your good moment today?
i'm sorry i need to stop here for today. i will get back you your other shorter message another day, hopefully tomorrow.
This one also might be multiple threads. Sorry about that. The more that you can answer as one giant one the better. I am going to forget stuff and have to do it in parts.
I am glad that you have started up classes again because you are out of the house more often. I still believe that you have a much better chance of uncovering the real you at school than you do at home. School can be scary and frustrating, but you learn tons about yourself unencumbered by having your parents directly looking over your shoulder.
It is great that 10th grade might be a bit more relaxed than 9th grade. Take it all one step at a time. You found the physics teacher fairly good. So that can be the science that you focus on this year instead of biology. Each year will probably be a bit different.
Whether you win the science award or not, really isn't going to be up to you. So you can relax with it until you know. But I do think that your parents finding out that you won an award in one field may cause them in their heads to ask themselves whether they were too tough on you in regards to maths.
Just do your best with school and the absences. I know that you will. Cups and YouTube are distractions, but you can figure out how to use them in moderation.@exuberantBlackberry9105
Your school schedule sounds manageable. There will be things that you like and things that you don't throughout. That is okay. You will figure out how to manage all of your subjects.
I am glad that you have such a large variety of subjects. That means that you never have one that you dislike for too long. Try to look for the positives in as many teachers as you can this term. It will help you in getting through the ones that you don't like as much.@exuberantBlackberry9105
Ok, this should be my final thread to answer the rest of yours.
I am so glad that you liked the history/political science teacher thus far. Any teacher that makes you laugh on the first day usually turns out fairly decent. And spending some time in air conditioning is also helpful when it is so hot.
So focus as much as you can on those positive moments rather than negative ones. Those are the moments where you are really connecting to what is around you.
I did have a very nice mini-holiday (only 2-3 hours) with my whole family at home on Sunday. They usually joke around a great deal which is fun to watch. My youngest will go off to university later this summer and those moments will become even rarer.
I am having a good semester thus far. My students are a bit tired this week because we have about a month and a half left. That is usually when they can't quite see the finish line yet so things feel overwhelming. But I had a nice meeting with a student today when he realized that he is much less behind than he thought. I also got to watch an enjoyable art lecture where the professor drew Chinese calligraphy. So it was a good day. @exuberantBlackberry9105
I am going to need to reply to these two messages separately because I didn't manage to set things up quite right when I went to go read your message. Usually I set it up on two screens so I can read and write simultaneously, but I opened up the wrong thread and now need to remember everything that you wrote before responding. So I am probably going to miss quite a bit. On the Depression Support threads I have editing ability as a forum supporter, but here I can't add to messages once I have started them. Oh well.
So I can understand why your mom is making you nervous as you do maths. The key at this point is to ignore her when you can.
Now that school has started up again, it sounds like she is already yelling more. That tells me that she finds your school stressful and then projects that onto you. She was yelling at you much less during break.
I am also guessing that she yelled when she found you on the computer too late because she is so concerned about your grades last term.
Try to remember that your parents aren't you. What that means is however much they want to they can't do your work for you. You are actually doing a really awesome job, but they can't see that because you do things differently and have different talents than they do. It is what makes you you. And your job right now is to figure out how to best celebrate the talents that you do have and ignore them whenever you can. It isn't easy, but you can do it.
Ok, don't answer this thread. Just like it. I will try to get to most everything in the next thread as well. @exuberantBlackberry9105
@bestVase7265 Hello there. Sorry about my delayed response. It's been quite a tough week for me to be honest. School is not fun. But yeah, lemme get back to you know. Oh yeah and I'm not able to be on the laptop much because I have school now, so I'm on the phone right now. And if you're curious about why my message is suddenly in mostly correct capitalisation and punctuation, it's because I'm typing from my phone and this has incredible autocorrect.
Lol, yeah. Thinks change. Sadly not always for the better but they change. The fact that things rarely stay the same for long is, in my opinion, both a good and a bad thing. Its good because it means that bad times change and could become better. Its bad because a lot of times good things change into bad things. And sometimes change takes a lot if time to get used to, especially for "rigid" people like me, adjusting to change is quite a struggle.
Anyways yes, as of now, I do imagine living there to be a lot better than living here. Its gonna me super duper different living there. Also moving is a major major change you know. And its not often that we have such a huge change happening. I think where we are living right now if the 4th place where I've ever lived. The first place was my grandparents place where I spent the first two months of my life. Then major change moving to a different state in India and I spent age 2 months - 5 months in a rented place because our apartment was under construction. Then we moved when I was 5 months old and we stayed there till Jan 2021. Where we are right now, we have been from 1st Feb 2021 and will be here till 19th April 2024, and then we'll move. And you know what, I still clearly remember the place where I lived till 2021. I dream about the place at night, and honestly, some of those dreams are horrifying. But I still miss living there..... Anyhow, we're moving on 20th April. That's a lot of work to do and we don't have much time. We need to start packing stuff.
Aww I'm so glad you understand the snoring thing. A lot of people don't understand and find it funny, especially if they themselves ave never dealt with a snoring family member. I'm glad you have more space at home now and your husband doesn't need to sleep in the living room as much these days. By the way, I'm curious, while your kids were younger, did you have a room to yourself at night or did you share a room with one of your kids? Or maybe siblings shared a room or they got their own room? Of course you don't have to tell me if you don't want to, I'm just wondering.
Haha I just hope I get used to the dogs. Or hope that I can just stay away from that area. Barking does scare me a lot. I know they might just be trying to say hi to each other, but really, why do they need to be so loud? And why bark at a person? Still, barking is better than chasing. Why on earth do they need to chase people or vehicles? We aren't thieves! I guess they might do that because they need food or something. Kinda makes sense. They too a living beings and need food. Something I've seen is that a lot of the dogs I saw there had a collar, so they were probably once upon a time kept as pets and now have been left in the streets. And I think these types of dogs tend to be more aggressive than a normal street dog. Maybe they are angry about the fact that the need to live like this now when they used to have a much more comfy life before. But whatever, I still don't know how to deal with super scary dogs. They make me panic so much.
Also, the other day, I heard something that makes me even more scared. On Thursday I guess someone in our class came to school late. The teacher asked him why he was late and he said that he was coming to school by bicycle and got chased by dogs. I don't know the whole story or exactly how that made him late, but that sounds so scary. English class was going on when he came and on hearing that the teacher said "I can imagine that would have been terrifying. I got chased by a dog once on my way to school. I come to school by autorickshaw and one morning there was a huge pack of dogs on the road and one of the dogs started chasing my autorickshaw. I was thinking maybe it would get on and bite my leg or something so I was sitting cross legged in the seat." And then she laughed it off. Gosh, that frightens me to no end.
You can always respond to messages in parts whenever you need too. From what I know, you did nothing wrong when you tried to set up things. I think I didn't upvote any of your posts that day and that caused the problem. Because you know upvote notifs stick around so you can click them to go where you need to go. Because normally the "you were mentioned in a forum post" or "new post to thread" notifs go away after you click them once, so that sometimes makes things hard to navigate. I have to say Cups works in a really weird way when it comes to some things. Remembering everything of such a long post before responding is quite impossible for us humans. I can't do it either. I open two tabs whenever I respond to something long. I am usually able to duplicate the tab for that and it works out, but I know you can't just duplicate the tab if you want to set up things on two different screens. Cups certainly is weird about these things, lol. And speaking of weird things, I don't like the fact that we cants edit our own posts. Like if we could, we could easily go back to fix typos and so much more. But I believe they don't let us do it because they're afraid people are going to misuse the ability to edit our posts.
Its honestly quite hard to deal with my mother making me nervous about maths. Its so hard to ignore her. She really makes me nervous before maths exam too. Like she treats me very differently before maths exam and it adds to my nervousness. That makes me forget stuff during the exam...
Yes, my mother is surely yelling more. And I discovered that its mostly all related to her sleep. When I have school, she needs to wake up earlier, meaning she has to run on 4-5 hrs of sleep. She is obviously sleep deprived and exhausted, just like I am. And then she also has to cook and so on. Its stressful for her. It affects her health too. And then she yells at me. The other day my mother yelled at me so much in the morning. On Wednesday morning I believe. She was so mad at me and yelled so much. Didn't even say goodbye before I stepped out the door. In fact, the last thing I heard before I left was that I deserve to be beaten with shoes. (She doesn't mean it literally, when you say someone should be beaten with shoes, its like saying they deserve extreme humiliation.)
When I came home that day she told me that I need to understand that whenever she yells at me so much it means she is in pain. That day, it was a headache that was bothering her and she got all her anger out on me. But make me wonder, if this rule applies to her that excessive yelling means she is in pain, why doesn't she get it could apply to me too. I too am in pain often (not always physical pain, emotions pain hurts me more because if you stomach hurts I can tell people, but I can't tell anyone if my heart and brain hurt with everything going on in my life) and that is usually when I lose my temper and yell or throw stuff. But she never gets it. If I yell, I get yelled at. If she yells, I have to quietly listen. Very unfair.
Hmm when did she find me on the computer late? She never did find out anything like that and hopefully she never will. That day she was just mad because I went to bed late and so she yelled and hit me. But yes, you're right that I was on the laptop on Cups at the time trying to get something done.
Speaking of which, I need to go to bed now. I'll try to get to the rest tomorrow if I'm able. If you'd like you can wait till then before you respond.
@bestVase7265 (Continuing the message here)
I totally agree that my parents aren't me. We are different people. I'm not gonna be good at maths just because they are. I think my mother knows that, but she doesn't like that. This might be a bit unrelated to what we're talking about, but I thought I'd share. The other day, she was quite literally complaining to me saying that I treat her as too much of a separate person lately. She says that when I was younger, I treated her in better ways. And I do think she is right. When I was younger, she was literally my best friend and I'd tell her everything almost. Does it mean I didn't keep secrets? No, I did have secrets and some of those are still secrets, but in general, I'd tell her everything without hesitation and I would also be really sweet and caring towards her. Anyway, so I asked her "Don't you think we are separate people and that we should treat each other as separate people?" And she said "Of course we are separate people. But we used to be so close before and now we are so distant. There must be something in between! You are just going by the extremes!"
I mean I get that she don't like the fact that I'm becoming more of a secretive and mysterious person now. But come on, I don't think any 14 year old would be telling their parents everything. And even if someone does tell their parents everything, I am never gonna do it. I would never tell them about everything our teachers tell us. (For example, the other day the history teacher was trying to explain how to French revolution began and she's like "it is kind of like how we go through adolescence. As children, we are fine with most things that are happening. We kind of manage. Then suddenly we feel parents are nagging all the time and we become rebellious." That is so true, lol. But when I go home and tell my parents about what happened at school, I am not going to include stuff like that. I am also not going to include so much other similar stuff I hear at school either from teachers or other students.) Nor am I going to tell them about what I do with this little phone I have, I could never have them know about 7 cups because its the only thing keeping me alive right now. And also, my mother and I haven't suddenly become distant. Its happened over time. And most of it has really happened within the past 2 years.
Anyway, sorry about bringing up something unrelated here. Coming back to what we were talking about, what talents do I have? Talents that actually count? Also, how do I really ignore my parents?
Being out of the house more often could I guess be a good thing in a way because I will have some time away from my mother, but its not totally good either. School too is a struggle, and not fun at all. And also, I have no more chance of uncovering the real me at school than I have at home. I am an equally fake myself in both places, but again, I am two quite opposite versions of fake me in both places.
In school, I have to try to be a serious and deligent, student who follows all rules etc etc. And try not to do something embarrassing. Also trying to put on a confident face just so that fewer people try to mess with me. When really, I have no self confidence at all. And also putting on a serious face is hard especially when I feel awful and would much rather sit an cry but I have to pretend everything is fine. Also, people tend to laugh at things that are nothing to laugh about. Even if I don't want to laugh at it, its hard to keep a neutral face when you see everyone laughing. Really, I would very much say that its a lot of acting that I need to do during those 7 hrs of school and 1 hr spent in the bus. Its tiring and energy consuming, but I've grown used to it at this point.
And at home you know, again acting but of a different kind. Pretending to study when I'm not really studying, having a neutral expression on my face even when I feel awful or angry. I'm not allowed to frown you know because apparently it maddens my mother even more. Trying to look okay when inside I'm wondering about when I can finally die. But to be honest, I'm usually not that careful at home so sometimes my parents get to see things about me that I don't want them to see.... But anyway, I think both school and home are equally hard and equally bad. I don't get to be myself in either places. The only place where I can be a lot more of myself is on Cups. Hmm yeah and one things that's slightly better about home is that only 2 people can see me. If my father's not home, its only one person then. Its better than so many people seeing me at school, because I never know who all are watching me at any point, but at home I know where I am seen and where I'm not. And yeah, I get to come on Cups when I'm at home and I love 7 cups.
Hey, 10th grade will not be any more relaxed than 9th. We'll have board exams in 10th and that's not going to let us relax. Also with the new rule about possibly having board exams twice a year, it might mean teachers have to rush with the portion and complete the portion earlier. In 9th grade, teachers have time from April 2024 till Feb 2025 to teach the portion. In 10th grade, they'll only have April 2025 - Oct 2025, max till Dec 2025. That's very little time and tons to teach. There's no way its gonna be relaxed. What I have heard is that 10th grade portion is easier to understand compared to 9th grade, because in 9th its like totally new topics, but 10th is more related to what we already know.
Oh and as for the physics teacher, she told us that there might be a change of teacher in the middle of the year and that she might not end up teaching for the whole year. Doesn't sound good.
Well as for the science award, I already know that I will get it and my parents also already know. But actually getting it might cause the problems, so far I just know that I will get it, I haven't got it yet. And you know what they think, me not doing well in maths will bring down the total in their opinion.
I don't seem to be able to figure out how to use Cups and YouTube in moderation, lol. And as for doing my best with school, I'm already starting to have a tough time. This was just the first week of school and it was quite hard. I wasn't able to stay on top of all the homework, and nor was I able to get enough sleep because I really struggled to stay awake during the first two periods in Friday. I was so drowsy and almost falling asleep, and I also don't remember anything of what was taught while I was trying not to fall asleep. The worst part is that I can't even drink water when there's a teacher in the class. Because water helps me stay awake you know. And my "friend" was absent on Friday so I can't even ask someone about what was taught while I nearly slept.
Hmm not sure what you mean by "That means that you never have one that you dislike for too long." I guess you're trying to say that if we have more subjects, each subject gets fewer periods out of 40 periods in a week. That's true, but I don't think its a good thing. Economics got added this year, and we will have 2 periods for it every week. If we didn't have it, the other subjects might have gotten more periods so teachers could more thoroughly complete the portion for other subjects. Yes, I hate maths, but if we had more maths classes, the teacher could teach the portion better instead of rushing with it and we'd understand better and it'd be easier for us. But yeah, there's nothing we can do about economics being added. (That's the only subject that technically got 'added', otherwise science just got divided into physics, chemistry and biology.)
Yeah, trying to see the positives in every teacher. I will say that so far, in general the teachers seem better than last years. And yes, the history and political science teacher seems really nice and is teaching well so far. She's way better than all the history teachers we've as so far. I also really liked the English teacher at first glance, but now used that she's not really teaching very well. I dunno about the maths teacher, he sounds really weird and his English is hard to understand because he pronounces words incorrectly, but his mathematical concepts seem clear so I hope it'll be fine, and I'll get used to his way of speaking, and eventually understand him more easily.
The physics teacher is fairly good, she explains stuff nicely. Chemistry teacher also seemed alright. Biology teacher not very much, I don't like him because he's too focused on exams and what will be asked in exams and kinda seems to encourage rote learning. And I have no interest in knowing what kinda questions will be there in the exam, I just want to understand the topics well and I'll take care of exams later. Also, I cannot just memorise stuff if I don't get it. And really, the way he's teaching right now in a very haphazard and complicated way, I don't get anything. And the problem is we are learning a completely new topic right now, something we know nothing about. Also, this teacher said that he normally teaches 10th, 11th and 12th grades, but this year he's teaching 9th after a very long time. So he's really used super complicated terms and blah blah blah and I don't get it. A teacher is supposed to explain what's in the textbook in a simpler way. He's making it more complicated with his terminology.
Anyway, geography teacher seems okay-okay. I dunno about economics teacher because whoever it is has been absent for the whole week and we just had a subsitition teacher for the economics classes. We didn't get a free period though where we could do time pass because during Wednesday's economics class our maths teacher came and taught maths and during Thursday's eco class the biology teacher came and taught biology. Hmm anyway, the French teacher also seems okay okay, she's taught us in 7th grade before and she's alright.
I'm really glad that you could enjoy a good few hours with your family last Sunday. Having them joke around must be fun haha, especially if that doesn't happen very often. It's also so good to hear that you are having a good semester. I'm happy to hear that you had a good day that day.
I'd say my good moment today was ice cream. Yeah it was mostly melted because our fridge doesn't work properly, but yeah, its still ice cream, lol. What was your good moment?
By the way, I have a little question I want to ask you. What does it mean to be judgmental? I ask this because the other day my mother and I had an argument, and my mother told me that I'm too judgmental. But then I don't really know what it means to be judgmental, so I'm asking you. And do you think I'm very judgmental, and what do about it?
Your grammar is always fine, autocorrect or not. Don't worry too much about how often you can get on Cups. We all get very busy with stuff, especially at the beginning of a new term when you can't quite imagine how it is all going to work out.
You will adapt to the change just fine. Your mom in part has taught you that control over situations is everything (hence her desire to direct your homework and even if you can close your door because it impacts her schedule). You are starting to realize that such control over everything that is going to happen can make you angry and anxious all the time like it does her. The key to happiness is taking a deep breath and adapting. You are going to do that with the move and everything else. Live as much as you can in the present when the future feels too overwhelming.
As far as rooms, no I didn't share a room with any of my boys. When they were all at home two of them shared a room with one another and one had a separate room. But who was sharing rotated so they all had to share a room an equal amount. We had bunk beds (so beds built on top of one another) so they didn't have to share the same bed. But we were very lucky in that regard.
I think dogs chase people because they have tons of energy to burn off and they think overall people like running too. They are trying to entertain you overall, but they can also be aggressive. You most certainly don't need to befriend any dogs. But realize that many of them either want food or are trying to be friends with you. It will make you less tense and that will in turn make them less tense. But I understand your fear. Take it a step at a time to work through it.
Yes, Cups is weird sometimes and even weirder on the phone app. I always use my computer now. I just hit the wrong starting point last time, but I haven't here. Because I am a forum supporter, I can edit things in the Depression Support area, but I can't do so here in pen pals. They could definitely make editing posts easier.
I am sorry that your mom has been yelling so much. She is adapting to being back on the school routine too. The lack of sleep and stress will make her crankier, but she might be a bit better in another week or two once the schedule feels more normal. We can hope. You are right that it is unfair that you don't get to yell the way that she does. But there are advantages to that - would you really want to be yelling that much and have people dislike you? I don't think that you would. She is using her headaches, etc. as an excuse, but you are actually better than that. You are also learning from her how NOT to manage your emotions.
You are absolutely supposed to be more distant from your mom now then when you were younger. That is really a natural part of the aging process. It can be painful for parents but you have to learn to become independent. It is not something that you should feel guilty about or accept any kind of blame for. It just happens. You haven't done anything to cause it.
You have lots of talents and there are NONE of them that don't count. Your interests are what make you special and how you figure out how to add to the world. Every single talent could help someone somewhere. Right now is when you start to figure out those talents in your life. You aren't supposed to know what they are right now. All you have to do is keep a watch out for them. They are the things that you enjoy and bring you peace. And they can always help others in ways you hadn't thought of yet.
Of course you pay close attention to the ideas that your parents suggest right now. That is normal. I am only suggesting keeping your eyes open for other things in school and elsewhere. School may not be fun now, but I bet that overall it is better than home because there are a wider variety of things happening there. That is what you are looking at - variety.
Yes there is a fake school you too, but you can make that "you" more real faster. Keep reminding yourself of what the real you would like to do. Life does involve tons of acting, but sometimes acting becomes reality too. Have you ever heard the phrase "fake it until you make it"? That may apply to school a bit. You don't have to laugh when others are laughing, but school allows you to look at lots of other personality types in search of the ones that match you best. People aren't out to just judge you. Many of them are simply trying to impress people and are as unconfident as you feel. When you realize that most students are feeling the same it can make things easier. As you said, you are adapting to all of it.
Focus on the good with school rather than the bad. You are going to be going over more of what you already know. That will make things sometimes easier. Seeing the positive rather than the negative will make surviving the school day much easier. The physics thing can work out for the good. Your parents can actually become easier to manage if you win the science award. You have better teachers overall than last year which could make things easier. When you see good possibilities rather than just the bad that could happen, you relax. You need to stress less.
Just like your mom, you aren't on the school schedule yet. You will become better with the sleeping and feeling more rested. Give yourself time and grace.
Judgmental means make judgements about people or things and not giving room for things to be different or for people to improve. I can see why your mom would call you that, but that is more her actions causing that and those actions are worthy of some judgement. She is more judgmental than you. My only suggestion would be to think as often as you can about the possibility of good happening rather than bad.
Good for me today, hmm. I guess it would be walking around our small pond and seeing some little daisy flowers. They were pretty. I am glad that you enjoyed your ice cream! @exuberantBlackberry9105Your grammar is always fine, autocorrect or not. Don't worry too much about how often you can get on Cups. We all get very busy with stuff, especially at the beginning of a new term when you can't quite imagine how it is all going to work out.
You will adapt to the change just fine. Your mom in part has taught you that control over situations is everything (hence her desire to direct your homework and even if you can close your door because it impacts her schedule). You are starting to realize that such control over everything that is going to happen can make you angry and anxious all the time like it does her. The key to happiness is taking a deep breath and adapting. You are going to do that with the move and everything else. Live as much as you can in the present when the future feels too overwhelming.
As far as rooms, no I didn't share a room with any of my boys. When they were all at home two of them shared a room with one another and one had a separate room. But who was sharing rotated so they all had to share a room an equal amount. We had bunk beds (so beds built on top of one another) so they didn't have to share the same bed. But we were very lucky in that regard.
I think dogs chase people because they have tons of energy to burn off and they think overall people like running too. They are trying to entertain you overall, but they can also be aggressive. You most certainly don't need to befriend any dogs. But realize that many of them either want food or are trying to be friends with you. It will make you less tense and that will in turn make them less tense. But I understand your fear. Take it a step at a time to work through it.
Yes, Cups is weird sometimes and even weirder on the phone app. I always use my computer now. I just hit the wrong starting point last time, but I haven't here. Because I am a forum supporter, I can edit things in the Depression Support area, but I can't do so here in pen pals. They could definitely make editing posts easier.
I am sorry that your mom has been yelling so much. She is adapting to being back on the school routine too. The lack of sleep and stress will make her crankier, but she might be a bit better in another week or two once the schedule feels more normal. We can hope. You are right that it is unfair that you don't get to yell the way that she does. But there are advantages to that - would you really want to be yelling that much and have people dislike you? I don't think that you would. She is using her headaches, etc. as an excuse, but you are actually better than that. You are also learning from her how NOT to manage your emotions.
You are absolutely supposed to be more distant from your mom now then when you were younger. That is really a natural part of the aging process. It can be painful for parents but you have to learn to become independent. It is not something that you should feel guilty about or accept any kind of blame for. It just happens. You haven't done anything to cause it.
You have lots of talents and there are NONE of them that don't count. Your interests are what make you special and how you figure out how to add to the world. Every single talent could help someone somewhere. Right now is when you start to figure out those talents in your life. You aren't supposed to know what they are right now. All you have to do is keep a watch out for them. They are the things that you enjoy and bring you peace. And they can always help others in ways you hadn't thought of yet.
Of course you pay close attention to the ideas that your parents suggest right now. That is normal. I am only suggesting keeping your eyes open for other things in school and elsewhere. School may not be fun now, but I bet that overall it is better than home because there are a wider variety of things happening there. That is what you are looking at - variety.
Yes there is a fake school you too, but you can make that "you" more real faster. Keep reminding yourself of what the real you would like to do. Life does involve tons of acting, but sometimes acting becomes reality too. Have you ever heard the phrase "fake it until you make it"? That may apply to school a bit. You don't have to laugh when others are laughing, but school allows you to look at lots of other personality types in search of the ones that match you best. People aren't out to just judge you. Many of them are simply trying to impress people and are as unconfident as you feel. When you realize that most students are feeling the same it can make things easier. As you said, you are adapting to all of it.
Focus on the good with school rather than the bad. You are going to be going over more of what you already know. That will make things sometimes easier. Seeing the positive rather than the negative will make surviving the school day much easier. The physics thing can work out for the good. Your parents can actually become easier to manage if you win the science award. You have better teachers overall than last year which could make things easier. When you see good possibilities rather than just the bad that could happen, you relax. You need to stress less.
Just like your mom, you aren't on the school schedule yet. You will become better with the sleeping and feeling more rested. Give yourself time and grace.
Judgmental means make judgements about people or things and not giving room for things to be different or for people to improve. I can see why your mom would call you that, but that is more her actions causing that and those actions are worthy of some judgement. She is more judgmental than you. My only suggestion would be to think as often as you can about the possibility of good happening rather than bad.
Good for me today, hmm. I guess it would be walking around our small pond and seeing some little daisy flowers. They were pretty. I am glad that you enjoyed your ice cream!
@bestVase7265 Hey hey. I typed a message for you yesterday evening, but I wasn't able to send it to you. I'm sending it to you now. I think I'm just going to keep the whole message as is. I'm too lazy to edit it for today, lol. So just assume anywhere it says today further in this message, it means Tuesday, and yesterday means Monday.
My grammar is always fine? Well, I don't really use correct capitalisation and punctuation all the time. Usually autocorrect fixes those things if I'm typing on the phone. If I'm typing on the laptop or the phone that's just kept at home (which technically belongs to no one because all three of us use it sometimes), autocorrect doesn't fix those so they remain like that. I'm on my phone right now and don't think I'm actually capitalising stuff correctly, autocorrect is doing it for me, lol. I'm too lazy to do it haha.
By the way, I know this might be quite unrelated, but this reminded me of something and I thought I'd share. People tell me that my English and grammar is good, both people on cups and in real life. But I really don't get what's good about it. I believe punctuation and capitalisation and stuff are part of grammar, so when I'm so careless about that, what makes my grammar be fine? (By the way, I'm careful about these things when I'm writing by hand, but while typing I'm super careless.) Also, apparently I don't sound like a 14 year old when I write is what people tell me. If my mother ever reads something that I've written, she tells me that I sound grown up. People on cups often guess my age as something between 15-17 when I'm 14. Do you have any idea why this happens?
Haha I do worry a lot about getting on cups and also responding to people. To be honest though, things are easier when the school year has just started. Things get tougher towards the end. I agree that at the beginning there's worry about how things will work out, but still the start of the year is less busy for me. Around the end, its worry about how final exams will work out and added busyness thanks to exams, lol.
Haha I really hope I adapt just fine because I normally struggle to adapt to major changes. But really, its super hard to live in the present. I'm either stuck in the past or worrying about the future.
Oh I see. I think you were able to work it out pretty well about rooms. Rotating might have been a bit of a hassle but I really love how you did it to be fair to all three of them.
Ah now I think it makes more sense to me about why dogs chase people. I gotta say their efforts to entertain me will probably never be successful. Lol, I am most certainly not going to befriend any dogs. But I think understanding that many of them are either looking for food or trying to make friends or trying to burn off energy, might help me a bit so I don't become too frightened when I see a dog near me. Because normally I get extremely scared and my heart starts racing if I see an dog barking or something. I luckily don't usually have a problem unless I hear barking and see the dog near me.
I've never used the 7 cups phone app, hehe. You know my phone is really old and outdated and it hardly supports any apps, not even YouTube. Luckily it still supports Chrome haha. So I basically use the browser version of everything, lol. Yep, I watch YouTube by browser and not the app, it doesn't work in this phone. Same for 7 cups. I don't know what the app is like, but from what I've heard, most people say the browser version is way better than the app. Anyway, yeah, it would be nice if we could edit out posts. It sounds really nice that you can edit posts in depression support.
I agree on my mother. And also there's also the added stress of moving you know. I sadly don't think she will be better in a week or so, because the schedule probably won't feel normal. Moving is a big headache and it means a lot of work, and we're moving on the 20th so things are going to be pretty unsettled till then a probably a while after 20th too because it takes time to get settled in a new place.
I agree that it feels unfair that she can yell as much as she wants and doesn't have to face any direct consequences but I get a lot of consequences if I yell. But yes, you're totally right that it had advantages too. Would I really want to be yelling that much and have people dislike me? Not at all! I feel like most people already dislike me and I wouldn't really want to do something to make them dislike me even more.
"You are absolutely supposed to be more distant from your mom now then when you were younger. That is really a natural part of the aging process. It can be painful for parents but you have to learn to become independent. It is not something that you should feel guilty about or accept any kind of blame for. It just happens. You haven't done anything to cause it." Thank you for saying that. It makes me feel a bit better. You know what, when I was 7-8 years old, my parents would complain that I'm too dependent on my mother and that I want her with me 24/7. Now that I'm not that dependent on my mother (as in I can take better care of myself, I can do more of my homework myself, etc) and now that I don't want her with me 24/7, she complains about me not being close enough with her.
I have lots of talents?! I don't think so. Now is the time for me to figure out what my talents are? Hmm okay. But I can't really think of anything. Is photography a talent? Some people say it is, but I dunno. Like I don't really need to do anything, just hold the phone and press the shutter icon. Literally anyone can take good photos you know. And how will that ever really help anyone? Other than that, I can't think of any talent I have.
And speaking of photos, I really haven't been able to take any in the past couple of weeks. There's been painting work going on in this building, so a lot of our plants in the balcony had to be taken indoors becose of that. And then the lack of sunlight has killed a lot of our plants and weakened all of them if there's still alive. And because of the bamboo scaffolds they've put outside the building I've also not been in the balcony much lately because the scaffolds are literally inside our balcony. It is only today that they got removed and the painting work is mostly done. I hope the plants freshen up a bit before moving weakens them again. Hopefully I'll be able to go to the balcony more now hehe.
(switching to the phone that's just kept at home haha, because my parents aren't at home right now and i can use this until they return. i'm liking it alone at home!)
"pay close attention to the ideas that your parents suggest right now." i'm not sure about what that's referring to. but yeah, i agree that school isn't fun at all, and although i might not be able to say that it's better than home (school has its advantages and disadvantages), i most certainly agree thats there's a huge variety of stuff happening at school. and i get to see so many different kinds of people and get to know that so many types of people exist. and also i get to know about how other kids think and feel about everything going on.
i really dont know what the real me would want to do. i'm just too used to the fake me. yeah, i sure have heard the phrase, but i wonder if it really works. does faking confidence when you have none of it really work? hmm yes, i agree that most people are just trying to impress others. I'm not really trying to do that, but i get why they want to do it and so on. and i know that many students also are not confident but fake it like i do.
haha yes, I'm trying to focus on the good and the good teachers and stuff. our teachers in general are better and it is probably going to make school a teeny tiny bit better. and yeah, i totally agree that i need to stress less. I'm just too stressed out and dunno what to do about it. trying to focus on the good but it becomes hard sometimes.
umm I'm not really sure about how i'll become better with sleep. like i cant go to bed earlier and i need to wake up at the same time....
thanks for explaining it to me, vase. i think i get it now. and thanks for your suggestion too, i sure will try doing it more often.
i'm glad you had a good day that day hehe. i have had a very eventful long and tiring day today, but i also had some fun. i had a holiday today and we had lots of places to go to. first off, we went to a furniture store and decided on what kinda wardrobe we want and placed an order for it. we need new steel wardrobes because where we are right now we keep our clothes in wardrobes that are already here, but where we are going there is no such furniture so we're gonna have to buy wardrobes. i will be getting my own hehe, mostly my own except one shelf. anyway, after that we had to have lunch outside. then we paid a little visit to the place where we'll move just to check if all the things that need to be fixed have been fixed. and we finally came home. after that my parents left again while i stayed at home. they went to buy a bicycle for my mother because she wants one. and also we need a new fridge because our current one is old and doesn't work well. so they went to check out fridges too. i know that's a lot of buying new things, lol. and that's not all haha. anyway, i could enjoy being at home alone and spend the whole time cupsing to be honest when I was supposed to do my homework. anyway it was nice.
by the way, i wanna talk about yesterday's english class. the teacher said that she'll start teaching a new poem which is kinda about decision making. she firstly shared her own story about her daughter's career choices and so on. and then she went on saying that "you're in the 9th now. somewhere you could have been asked 'what do you want to become when you grow up?' and of course you have your own wishes and parents have something else they want for you." and so on, she had a lot to say. then she gave is something to write in our notebook that all of us need to do. we have to write down what we want to become and what our parents and friends want us to become. and to be honest, i have never been asked this question by either of my parents, so i don't know what to write. also, i am seriously not interested in thinking about what I want to become. i'm suicidal and I worry i may not be alive one year later. so who cares about whatever i want to become. i hate thinking about the so distant future. i'm only 14, i have 2 years before i even have to decide if i want to take science, arts or commerce in 11th grade. so this is something i really don't think about because its pointless. but for the sake of this activity, i must write something. and i must also ask my parents what they want me to become. so i asked my mother and she told me "whatever makes you happy". she refuses to say anything at all. so I had to go ask my father and he said "a good human being". lol. and i said what we wants me to become and a profession and he said "space scientist". so i'm just going to write that in my notebook for the sake of it. and for myself i'm just writing photographer again just for the sake of it. and we apparantly have to write two things for ourselves so i just wrote teacher for that because when i was younger, i always thought i wanted to become one, though i think completely differently now. for friends, i'm going to ask my so-called friend in school tomorrow morning an write something. but anyway, my mother's response seemed really strange to me. if she doesn't expect me to be some certain thing, they why is she behind me on studies and specifically maths? like i can not be good in maths and still become "whatever that makes me happy". also, why does she insist that i to do at least one of these things seriously, and only among these things that are: studying, singing, dancing or drawing. why is she running behind me about these?
Hmm that's all I typed yesterday (Tuesday). To tell you a little about today, I'd say my good moment was going through some stuff that I made when I was 8 or 9 years old. Some of the things I was made me laugh soooo hard. I told my parents about some of the stuff too and they laughed so much. Oh, life was so much better when I was 9 and I had so much fun back then. Anyway, school was quite hard today and we got tons of homework because we have a holiday tomorrow (teachers love to load us with homework when the next day is a holiday). I was so exhausted that I came home and slept for 1 hr 30 mins. And then I've just been looking over my stuff because my mother made me. She wants me to give away the stuff and toys I don't need, so that moving is easier. So I'll probably be looking over a lot of stuff in the next few days. One super annoying thing thing though is that the internet isn't working properly today. Its probably because when they removed the bamboo scaffolds, they must have loosened some wifi wires or something.
Also, some news, my mother's bicycle is here. Actually it's going to belong to my father too, both of them can use it when they want. The bicycle is really big compared to the one I have though, mine looks so tiny next to it. My father's telling my mother not to try to ride it before we move, because we have a bit of a busy street here and my mother's not ridden a bicycle in years so she might fall down and get injured or something. But after we move, I think she or maybe sometimes even my father could go ride it somewhere. That kinda means that I might also ride my bicycle more. I'm quite good at it, but I absolutely hate riding it because of two reasons. Firstly because the street here is busy which means I have to go slow. And I hate that because then it takes more effort to pedal. And secondly, I can't go out alone so my parents come with me and try to walk behind me and I can't go too much out of their sight, and they also don't walk very fast, so I have to wait for them and that's boring. Especially borning if my father is on his phone walking ultra slowly. But maybe if either my mother or father are on their bicycle too, it won't be so borning because they say that they're good at bicycling. And their bicycle is also bigger than mine (wheel diameter 26 vs 20), so they are sure to be faster than me, and that might be more interesting.