Mother's daughter

 so i talked with my mother while i was at the gym - actually, while working on the punching bag. she told me about her negative experience(s) while job hunting in the city i now live in. she grew up here and wanted to move back, to work as a pharmacist. i remember she interviewed for several jobs, most of them told her 'we'll call you back" which just means "sorry". well, she didn't know that, but that is not the point. one of the jobs took her on for a trial week - she quit after a few days, because she didn't feel capable. and while yes, as a pharmacist you're responsible for people's health, their lives even; i think that might be also in a very large part due to her perfectionism.

which is mirrored very nicely in how i am always so scared that whichever company hires me for whatever role, will then later find out i'm not good enough and just fire me. even after all the trainings i'd been through at amazon, which were all intended to enhance my metrics to the group average or above (which, in my opinion, would just land another person in these trainigs but whatever). so, in conclusion, i have to be reallly bad for them to actually fire me.

another thing is my fear of - of what? of happiness. it has taken me months to realise i have this self talk of me not being allowed to be happy, and i need to constantly remind myself that i do. i dondeserve the happiness i feel when running to loud music. i do deserve the happiness of the tatami. i also deserve the happiness of a healthy body. and most importantly, a healthy mind.

in secret i might be hoping that by getting to lisbon, i will loosen ties with my family. but as my father had said, distance is no solution. i must learn how to set boundaries. but they are exhausting!

i'd already written about this, at quite the length, at least for a text message. i wrote about this to my friends. about how annoying and frustrating the act of one (1) simple boundary is! to tell my grandma not to pack me food. i don't eat it (for different reasons), so it's just wasteful. and yet she insists! and the family narrative is that she always gets her way. if you don't take meat, take a banana. if you don't take food, take this water - because they buy mineral, sparkling water specifically for me. this water i actually cannot refuse. but if i do, the pressure is still on. and i can only imagine what would happen if my boundaries were about something major! if i called someone out for belittling me at a family dinner - the mood would be Ruined! because i didn't want to put up with someone talking down to me. other times, when i try to circumvent communicative blackmail, i get the stares.

[what is communicative blackmail? well, you see, our family deals in nuances. you may have read the story of Liquid Ass getting a lazy husband to clean. well, if our house smelled of Liquid Ass, we wouldn't say "this smells like shit" or "something stinks", we might say "wanna open the windows?" or "wanna take this out?" requests must be phrased as questions. this also gives people chances to dance around you if you don't have the authority to make veiled requests. if an Adult is sitting in your way, you cannot ask "can i go past?", as i did on accident. they will say yes and continue with their stuff, not moving an inch. you must ask "can you please move because i wanna go there". this is the exact situation i was in, and i found it so frustrating - it was obvious we were communicating in nuances, hidden meanings that i call trojan horses of speech - but you can only deal with nuance if you have Authority]

i am honestly tired that this family doesn't treat me as an adult. my mother was quite young when she had me (2 years older than i am now) and then my brother a bit later. when i was young i only had one (second) cousin (also on the other side of my family, they don't do gatherings), and we slowly grew apart. another second cousin was born when i was about 12. and even smaller cousins have been popping up lately, but that means that neither my now 15 year old cousin, nor i have an actual friend group at family events. the small ones have each other. i could bring a lover perhaps, but i usually donxt have one (that i can present to them). so yes i am a child, i do not vibe with my parents' generation, but i also don't vibe with the kids.

so what remains for me?