Me and my pile of problems

[Stygimoloch]

Hi, so I'm 15 years old girl from central Europe and on the outside, when I look at it, everything is okay, but when you think about it, it's not.

Well, where to start? I live with my parents and three younger sisters in small family house. Our family is weird (and we admit it) because of lot of things, but main reason: our parents. I always admired them for being so different from others - we always ate together, they never persuaded us to do any kind of activity if we didn't want it(I mean like sport,music, etc.) and they always have been here to listen. But about half of year ago it turned other way around - I started to listen to my mom's problems. Sometimes I just found her crying on the kitchen floor and all I can do was hug her and ask her whats wrong. Often it was something related to dad or money - we live only from one paycheck because all of my sisters were diagnosticated with asperger syndrome and one of them is having it so strong that she is totally unable to work in group with more than three people around, so my mom's homeschooling her. Rest of us is going into special school for kids with higher intelligence or some kind of diagnosis. That means every morning 24km to school. Anyway, my family has been having problems with money ever since, because my parents wanted family, not a career and now we have terrible mortgage and I don't know what more. Mom and dad had also bunch of problems between each other, and last year it got even worse. So now it is my mother stressed 24/7 and my he's often angry or at least grumpy. I know I should not meddle into they problems, but it just hurts so much to see them in such a state.

What I feel bad for a little, that never really had a choice about it. I was first child and after turning 12 I started to help with daily chores willingly and I was trying to help with everything I could and I'm not planning to stop, I just hate myself for times I don't want to, because I'd like to do something else, but I know they need a help. Sometimes I just don't know what to do anymore.

Another thing is school. Because having high standards I never really had friends,(except one girl from older class I often talk to, but she's going on exchange year to Canada) by high standards I mean, that my friends won't just ditch me whenever they can benefit from it, or they are just not in mood for me. 'Cause this happened to me before. My so-called friend was like: "Today we are BFF's, tommorow I don't know you, next day I'll bullly you and other we're friends again!" After her torturing me like this for two years, I started to ignore her and she started to bully me full-time. After another year she left to Sweden and she's been there for six years. After returning we just peacefully ignore each other.

On the other hand, what do I expect? I always hide behind wall of sarcasm and act unfriendly but that's just my self-protection mechanism. In the end, there's nobody left to listen to my problems.

Whenever I feel down, I just want to change something, so I change my hairstyle, room decor, last month I bought contact lenses(I wear glasses) but it never helps, it's just, if you look however, it may attract some people, but if you always repel them with your behavior, it's useless. I never felt good about socializating, and some of my attempts ended up really bad, but then I realized that I have nothing in common with them. When I was little, I often lied about myself and my interests just to get friends, but they weren't friends in the end.

Aside of that, I was always "that weird kid" because until sixth grade I had no after school activities. I didn't like sport, I hated robotics and lego club and etc. and all I was ever talking about were animals, especially dinosaurs. And I still have and old animal enciclopedia in my locker.

After entering a sixth grade, I told my parents that I want to play a flute, so they bought me some cheap second-hand instrument and paid for lessons. They expected it to be same like with my sisters - they always bragged about wanting to do something but they just give up after talent isn't enough and hard work is necessary. But after three years of playing flute they finally understand that I won't stop it just from day to day. It was really hard to convice them, but here I am.

 

I know that from this whole post it may seem that I hate my family, but I don't. I love my sisters ,they just got on my nerves often, and I love my parents also, I just see that they have enough of their own problems and I don't want to add them mine.

 

I guess just writing this all down helped to sort out things in my head, so if you read this to the end, thank you for listening, because I know it was one hell of post...

 

:-)

[Remi]

Hey there @Stygimoloch

 

Thanks for sharing this all with us here.

 

I also found that as I got older I started to have to be there for my parents a bit more and as you get older your parents will tell you more things and be a lot more open with you, but you can't take on too many of their stresses because they are adults and it is their responsibility so although of course, you feel their pain because you are family, it isn't up to you to come up with all of the solutions for your Mum and Dad.

 

It doesn't sound like you hate your family at all - we all get annoyed with our families from time to time so don't stress that. They love and care about you and won't mind listening to you.

 

Who would you class as your real friends now? Is there any other instrument you would like to start playing that you could sell the flute and change?

 

Remi

[Stygimoloch]

I think I made a little misunderstanding there - actually my parents bought me new flute this year. It just took three years to convice them that I'm taking it seriously and believe me, it wasn't easy, 'cause lot of kids at my music school started to play instrument when they started elementary school - I started at age of eleven and I just had to catch up all theory within TWO WEEKS! Man, it was so crazy, and my first teacher didn't really give me any feedback. But after one and half a year I switched teacher's, and everything's great from then. I really love music and it took me so long to figure out what I love.

You know, I was never interested in music or any art before. Firstly I was the scientific type - I loved biology, chemistry, astronomy and all this stuff, but in last few years, I figured out I'm more of an artistic person, 'cause except music I also love drawing and writing. My newly set goal is to make a comic from story I planned for last year, but I'm still improving my drawing skills. I also tried composing my own music,(you can take a look here -> https://musescore.com/user/28481472) but I wasn't very successful yet. I still need a lot of practice...

Sometimes I just think I want to do so much things and end up doing nothing fully, 'cause you need to go to school after all, and I feel like biting more than I can chew. I need to organize my time better.

 

And that question about my friends, whew, how do you describe "real friend"? Person you can tell everything? Out of my family I have nobody like this. I have that one friend I mentioned before, but we were mostly joking around while talking and never spoke about something more serious than "What is for lunch today?"

But I had one girl I talked to about, yeah, everything.

I get to know her about three or four years ago, and she was quite a loner too, so we were always talking during breaks and we had so much things in common - she loves horses and all animals in common, hated math and etc. Over last year we became really close after sharing almost everything from our secret dreams to our family troubles.

But sometimes just our talk went little of the road and I realized, that she was expecting from me to go on same school with her after we finish grammar school (she wanted to study agriculture 'cause she want's to own stud) To be honest, I don't even know if I want to go on university or what I want to study, so I was quite confused back then and I didn't know how to tell her that I have other interests. Horses, dogs, cats and fighting for animal rights was her life and she expected that it will have same importance for me. Of course I love animals and think that people should treat them better, but she was just extremist.

And this wasn't the worst - please don't freak out, but few times we just casually talked about what is the less painful kind of suicide. Back than it didn't seem that bad to me, 'cause sometimes I also taught about it but in clearly hypothetical way. My brain just sometimes started to make scenarios of what would happen if this, this and this... Lately I realized that I've been thinking about horrible things with straight face and on a day basis. There's always been that little piece in my mind that's been rational in any situation - for example, when I was arguing about something with my parents and I was already angry, crying and screaming, my mind was totally clear to some point and I could've stop in any moment and just start to pretend like nothing happened. I just felt like I can switch to some kind of ignorance mood. I always had trouble understanding people and ignorance was just better then never ending confusion.

 

Unfortunately, I realized just now that what I've done may have seriously endangered my friends life. 'Cause that time, I gave her some ideas and now I regret it. I'm amateur writer and I've done lot of research about this topic too and it wasn't that hard. For me, it was just another question. Same as when someone asks "How many species of crow family are there?" or "What's a Hokkaido wolf?" Only another question, and another fact as an answer. I realized too late, that she may doesn't have that always-rational piece in her mind. Now, one year later, I'm really concerned about her, because I know that if she decided to kill herself, nobody will suspect a thing. 'Cause all her parents do, is bugging her for not studying enough, she does not have any siblings and she hates rest of her family. Problem is, that we didn't talked together for almost year now. I don't know how did it happen, but after last summer we became really distant. I just hope she won't even think about anything I told to her, because I know it would work.