I've been thinking more about why I wanted Ray back in my life, even after the emotional abuse. It's not that I have low self-esteem or anything (because I have a healthy amount of self-esteem). It's because I'm used to people who care about me not treating me well emotionally. People like my family and my friends, who I know care about me, just don't treat me well emotionally sometimes. So now, it's in my mind that people who care about me will treat me badly emotionally. It's not that I think that the behavior is ok, it's that I've come to accept that that's the way things are. I had to lower my expectations because for the longest time, I didn't have any close friends who were respectful of me 100% of the time. Now, I have friends who treat me the way I want to be treated, so I know that my expectation wasn't too lofty. It's just that before, I didn't know that it was possible for people like that to exist. I simply thought my expectations of people were too high. You know?
And also, it's one thing if friends don't treat me well, because I just won't talk to them again. But family? They're the ones who are SUPPOSED to treat me well 100% of the time. But they just don't, and they never have. And it's not like I can just stop talking to them and cut them out of my life. That wouldn't solve anything.
I give my mom credit, because she is trying to improve. The problem I've had with my mom is that she is not empathetic at all. If I'm upset about a problem and try to talk to her about it, she ends up saying the wrong thing because she doesn't know what to say. When I was younger, I thought she just didn't care about my problems. But now, I understand her better.
Things with my dad have improved since I've moved out of the house. However, he still makes me feel small sometimes and stupid. For instance, when I was setting up my bank account here at the beginning of the semester, I was going to put money into my new account from my credit card, because I had forgotten to bring my checks with me. My dad seemed like he was really annoyed with me for forgetting the checks and his response made me feel like I was stupid for having done so. It would have been one thing if it wouldn't have worked to do it from a credit card, but because that option WORKED, he had no reason to be making me feel like that. Also, the fact that my dad gets upset about the smallest things causes me a great deal of stress that I shouldn't have to deal with. For instance, he got mad at me because I didn't wake him up at 7:30 am, because I got up 10 minutes later than I thought I was going to at 7:40 am. We didn't have anywhere to be at a specific time, so it was ridiculous for him to get so mad about it.
Things with my sister have gotten worse. She decided to take out her feelings of discontent on me about our parents' divorce, by yelling at me about pants that I donated that were hers. I thought the pants were mine, because she gave them to me 8 years ago and had never requested to wear them again in all that time. But when she learned I had donated them, she went on and on and on about it, ruining my vacation and almost ruining my dad's wedding. Even though I apologized and accepted responsibility for donating her pants, she just wouldn't let it go. Finally I asked her what the actual problem was, and she started talking about the divorce. Yeah, thanks sis. Because I'm the person you should be angry about over someone else's divorce.
Plus, both my sister and my dad have poor tone usage when they talk to me. They make me feel like I'm stupid for things like having long hair and liking Dan Brown books. They make me feel like I can't be myself.
So that's what I've had to deal with for my whole life. Then on top of that, I've had to deal with friends treating me badly emotionally sometimes too. Ever since my mom moved closer into Boston, only a few of my friends have made any effort to come to my new house or do things closer to where I live sometimes. It was really upsetting to me. I invited two of my friends over for New Years Eve, and 15 minutes before they were supposed to get to my house, they called me and said they weren't coming anymore because they "didn't feel comfortable" driving all the way there at night. I think that's so dumb. If they felt that way, they should have at least given me more notice, before my mom went out and bought snacks for everyone and I was getting everything all set up.
Also, they set up a Yankee Swap on my birthday. They apparently forgot it was my birthday, and didn't care that they had scheduled something on my birthday after I told them about it. Nobody would even go out for a drink with me after the Swap because it was snowing and they couldn't drive 1 mile to a restaurant. Smh.
I don't know what it is, but my high school friends don't care about birthdays. I see evidence that friends are supposed to care about each other's birthdays on my Facebook feed. People are always posting statuses about wishing their friends happy birthdays and going out for their friends' birthdays. Well, not me. I'm stuck with people who could care less about my birthday and never want to go out and celebrate it with me.
Then, I have John being emotionally abusive by saying I'm a bad friend for dumping an emotional load on him, that I'm responsible for a decline in his grade from when he talked to me when I was having an emotional crisis, and that I'm not allowed to have an opinion on anything until I have thoroughly researched all possible avenues of the subject, because otherwise I'm narrow-minded.
So all this is probably why I was all set to take back Ray after he treated me like crap. I'm just used to people in my life treating me like crap.
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