by Band Back Together | Dec 21, 2018 | Ask The Band, Family, Stress |
Every Friday, Band Back Together runs an advice column, in which our (wise) readers help you answer the questions you need answered.
You can even do this anonymously.
Now let’s get our advice on:
I know this may seem weird or stupid, but I think my parents are bullying me.
Let me explain why I believe they are bulling me.
The whole situation began about two years ago.
(Background: I am a 23 year old who loves technology.)
To attempt to cut a long story short, our house used to be filthy; and I mean filthy. How filthy? Well, there was actual black mold growing on walls. And with that mold, came mold mites, tiny white mites feeding on my technology.
So I went in to a panic and cleaned, sanitised, and vacuumed my stuff and desk. I wrapped anything that I wasn’t using into sealed bags: I did NOT want these buggers on feeding on my things.
Since that incident I think that I’ve developed OCD, although I’ve not been medically diagnosed, but now I clean my stuff everyday, in perpetual fear of mites.
I explained this to my family and they know why I’ve developed OCD. They have witnessed the mites. And I’ve asked that they do not let anyone near my room or stuff.
But for the past two years, they keep saying I am unwell, or I need to see a doctor. Like this is my fault.
My parents also put filthy items on my desk despite that I’ve asked them not to. They’ll also move my stuff around or put it on the dirty carpet
My OCD has gotten worse due to my parents interfering and I think they’re doing it just to get a reaction from me. Once I blow up, they blame me and call me “crazy.”
I just don’t know what to do anymore: I feel depressed and alone. I’ve really starting to think they are right. Maybe I am crazy.
I should also note: my fiancee says it’s my family that’s causing me to clean more due to their interference.
Help!
by Band Back Together | Dec 14, 2018 | Abuse, Ask The Band, Emotional Abuse |
Every Friday, Band Back Together runs an advice column, in which our (wise) readers help you answer the questions you need answered.
You can even do this anonymously.
Now let’s get our advice on:
I have a brother. A big brother.
In my mind’s eye, a big brother…they’re protective. They love their little sisters. It’s what I have strived for my entire life. I vividly remember the two times he played with me as a child. He is almost four years older than I am. So, maybe that makes sense.
When I was seventeen, I had a twenty-four year old boyfriend, who beat the hell out of me in a parking lot. My brother wanted to know “What did you do?”
A few months later, I was in a car accident on the way to Lollapalooza. Within ten minutes, the car (totaled), the cops and emergency was gone. And I was on the side of the road with a few friends, in a neighboring state. Our parents were out of town, though our grandmother lived with us. My brother was staying with her.
I called on a payphone, and was told he had to be work early, so….
I hitchhiked home in the back of a CRX hatchback.
When I found I was pregnant at nineteen, I asked him to come with me to tell our parents. He called me a whore and hung up on me.
On my wedding day, seven months pregnant in the middle of record-breaking heat, my ankles had swollen… “You look like the Michelin Man.”
His wedding “I know you don’t think I love you, but I do.”
After I had caught the other bridesmaids, sisters and friends of his wife, talking about the “fat, tattooed bridesmaid.”
I begged to babysit their children. I was the first to hold one of their twins, who were born at thirty weeks. I was only allowed three times, and it was made abundantly clear to me, I was their last choice.
So, I stopped.
I stopped trying.
It was clear there wasn’t anything there.
Ten years ago, ten days before Christmas, our father died. He was My Person. I adored him, though I clearly saw him for who he was, flaws and all. My mother is extraordinarily religious, and is much more concerned about the state of my soul than our relationship.
My brother and I get closer.
He tells our mother “I always thought I knew who she was, turns out I didn’t.”
His twins are a year younger than my youngest son, almost to the day. My son was never invited to a single birthday party. Arranging just ME paying for snowballs, at the place around the corner from their home, took a year and a half to arrange. They live fifteen minutes away from us.
I stop.
I acknowledge I cannot change anyone else’s behavior. I text my nephews on their phones, and my little niece gets hers for Christmas this year.
Our father has been dead for ten years, this year. I am forty-three years old, as of last weekend. I’m not ready.
We do not have extended family. They are either dead, or halfway across the country.
We literally only have each other.
I moved Thanksgiving to my home, when it was both my brother’s and my family’s year to be with our in-laws. Our mother isn’t getting another one, you know?
I asked him if he wanted to come. He said it was his year at his in-laws. I responded it was mine as well, but with everything going on, maybe he could switch up years?
He didn’t even bother to respond.
I completely understand that I want more out of him, than he has to give. He is an amazing father and husband, and incredibly talented musician…but I, me and mine…we just aren’t on his radar. And I cannot MAKE that happen. I cannot make him want it. And while I thought I’d made peace with that….turns out, I’m just fucking pissed off. I pissed off that I have NEVER had a relationship with my only sibling, my only family, besides the one I made….and I also know I cannot change it.
But I am SO GODDAMN ANGRY.
Our only surviving parent is fucking dying, and you can’t even show up now?
I am having coffee with him next week, and I have nothing to say. Or entirely too much to say. I could really, REALLY use some advice.
Do I keep it light and ignore it? Or tackle it tactfully? Or just bulldoze? GAH!
by Band Back Together | Dec 7, 2018 | A Letter I Can't Send, Anger, Ask The Band, Feelings, Mental Health, Mental Illness Stigma |
I am finally coming to accept that my mother has a variety of mental illnesses.
I’ve known all my life something was wrong.
Mostly I have ignored it, and even joked about it, trying to blow off steam.
Nothing was ever good enough for my mother. If I came home with B’s on my report card, she would want to know why they weren’t A’s, saying that “I could have done better.”
My father only talked to me about how to fix something. He never shared much about his life, other than stuff about his job. He would tell stories for hours that went on about nothing. In lieu of parenting us, my mother just bought stuff for my sister and me.
Mom was also a bulimic. Day after day when I was growing up, I would hear her in the bathroom throwing up after every meal. If we asked about it, she would deny it and change the subject. Dad defended her and said it was “none of our business.”
My grandmother knew they were incapable of parenting so we stayed over at her house as much as possible. My grandmother basically raised me from the time I was 12 years old. I moved in with her and took care of her after her first heart attack.
Sadly, I was an adult from that day on. I cooked, cleaned and ran her house. We had a great relationship.
Then, my grandmother found out I was gay. She told me I was a sinner, an embarrassment, and told me I wasn’t her grandchild anymore unless I was “healed.”
So I moved out on my own for the first time. We didn’t speak for years.
After Granny died, and later, my father, Mom was on her own. For the first time in her life, she had control of the bills.
It took her less than two years to spend all of the money in the saving accounts that both my dad and granny had left. She then mortgaged her home in order to go shopping and go to the bingo halls. She recently moved in with me because she had no choice: it was me or the streets. She couldn’t manage her money and had gambled it away.
Mom has always been controlling, She gets mad if I leave the house without telling her where, when, and why, even calling my friends to find out where I am. She argues with me over everything: the food, and even the type of trash bags I buy.
She claims that “I owe her” and refuses to chip in with the utilities.
If she is driving in the car with my sister or me and she doesn’t like the music or the conversation, she tells us that she’s going to ram the car into a tree.
She is home all day alone while I go to work. When I get home, if she hasn’t already called me ten times, she has had the whole day to get worked up about something – anything. She will unload on me as soon as I walk in the door.
She gets “nervous” about some story on the local news, or something she heard on the police scanner she listens to all day, or something horrible a friend told her about, and has to tell me that it could happen to me so I must be careful.
Almost every night is a war and a screaming fit complete with her shaking her fists and slamming my door. The next day, she says “Good Morning,” like it never happened.
Tonight she screamed at me, told me to go to hell, and stay there and slammed my bedroom door. I can’t stand it anymore, she refuses to go to a doctor. Tonight I told her if she didn’t get help, I would call an ambulance and force her to see a doctor. I have no support, no family to help.
She badmouths me to her friends, and they always act like I’m such a jerk.
Despite how it sounds, I love my mother.
I know there is help for her, but she will not go. She says therapy is stupid, and she just bites her nails when she gets upset.
Is anyone else going through something similar? Does anyone have advice for me?
by Band Back Together | Nov 30, 2018 | Ask The Band, Family, Help With Relationships, Infidelity, Romantic Relationships |
I’m a married woman
My husband and I separated for two months, and during those two months, I cheated and was unfaithful to my husband.
He found out.
We did end up getting back together, but I didn’t admit to having an affair to him.
Now, every time I want to go out – especially if it’s someone he doesn’t know – he doesn’t allow me to. I have no social life.
And every fight we now have now, he brings up my infidelity, and when he does, he calls me terrible, hurtful names. These insults hurt me so deeply that I don’t feel I can handle it.
I feel so trapped in my marriage – he insults me, he doesn’t let me go out with friends – ever. It hurts.
I don’t know what to do. Do I stay or do I go?
When will this stop?
