(Handling a toxic living situation)
I talk to myself more than anyone else to a considerable degree in this pandemic. It’s a taboo that should be broken by now. I think my best case of a near-miss was at work once; a colleague entered the room I was working in only a few seconds after I’d finished talking alone. I couldn’t quite be sure if they’d heard me or not. But I promptly shut up.
This post, rather, is of a less-jovial nature than appearing mad in public. It was the other evening – if I’m being honest, it was the very early morning – and I’d yet to retire to bed, lacking the will to leave the lounge. As the fire was dying, I began speaking to my audience of the empty room just out of habit and I realised something that was becoming a pattern.
In these moments alone, you find yourself having the conversation you need most. In a general climate of being stuck in one place, and personally living with the creature of frustration, I know the horrible feeling of being unable to put into coherent words your biggest issue.
Before now, I’ve been told by my trigger – to my face – that they would prefer to repress problems that arise caused by them rather than discuss them and work towards solving them. It’s not a trick, solving these issues would lead to a much more palatable living situation and my better mental health – a good thing. However this trigger didn’t want that – continues to not want that – because it means they would have to face their toxic attitude and behaviour. I live with the frustration of being unable to make things better. Because confronting issues would make the situation far worse (something unimaginable). The easier option is to not say anything.
I am not advocating repression. I am merely indicating the vast wealth of being able to sit down and have that conversation alone for your own benefit, to talk about and give coherence to all those twisted emotions and issues. It is unbelievably tiring to have a back-catalogue of any size that you can’t do anything productive with. It just sits there. For the sake of not making the status quo worse.
As much as all those superhero stories are inviting, it is not feasible in a real-life, home situation to call out your trigger for all the woes and wretchedness they have caused you. All of the poison over the years, the months, however long it’s been. And it’s not fun to know your trigger will likely never know the extent of what they’ve done, to know that you can’t do the one thing that may very well alleviate the burden of frustration you live with.
The line that brings a tear to my eye in Guardians of the Galaxy 2 is Nebula screaming at Gamora: ‘I just wanted a sister!’ The raw simplicity of her being able to express her grievance gets to me in a big way.
My sanity has been embroiled before, many times over, in the nonsensical heat of intense emotions. I don't wish it on anyone. To be at the possible point of feeling calm - the first in a long time - and then have the overwhelming paranoia and anxiety that you logically shouldn't be able to feel peace. You should still be angry, still feel cheated out of happiness and basic respect in the home you live in. You don't have to be a genius to see that thinking is poisonous. But its a reflection of what you live in. Its not healthy.
Because if you don’t live in a fantasy land, and can’t clutch a flaming sword of vengeance whilst screaming your woes in the face of your personal evil… then sit down, perhaps with a glass of something, and monologue to thin air. There’s power in at least being able to form a comprehensive, level-headed (for the most part) speech on what you have to live alongside of. There is so much clarity in being able to breakdown and unravel your chaos of emotions. You can put into clear sentences how you are being treated, how horrible it is to live in the way that you do. There is peace of mind in knowing why you hate who you do, why you feel so angry. You are a ball of rational reactions of frustration and anger and wretchedness rather than just a self-frustrating ball of anger blinded by the intensity of what you feel.
And when you finally can unstick yourself from the toxic entity, scream bloody murder into the night’s sky until you are red in the face.
(Edit in expletives at your discretion, advised for a performance of this piece.)
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