I didn’t get downvoted this time

As I wrote here, I got downvoted for even thinking the kid could be ODD so take him to the doctor, I got down voted like crazy and I found it disturbing how anyone could call that normal behavior for a three year old.

This time another mother wrote about her four year old son. This time she wrote:

My son has always seemed borderline obsessive to me. When he was almost two, an ill-advised bedtime routine (saying goodnight to the house, walking around it to calm down) turned into a ritual where we had to turn on and off every light in the house in specific order. At the same age, his first trip to a splash pad was no fun and ended in tears because he couldn’t control when the water turned on and off. At the time I brought it up with his doctor and she set up a test through the school district (I think they were testing for autism or developmental delay). He was off the chart for intelligence and average for social and communication skills, so we relaxed and continued to roll with the quirks. Some things got better. We no longer flip light switches and we have tons of fun at splash pads.

Now he’s almost four. He has a baby sister and just started preschool (which he loves; always reluctant to leave). So granted there may be an underlying source of anxiety there with the life changes. But he has out-of-control (not manipulative; just beside himself hysterical) tantrums about weird things. For example, he likes to use the microwave. If dad forgets and tries to rewarm his own coffee, son insists not only that we stop and let him do it but also that the coffee go back in the fridge until it’s exactly as cold as it was. If we comply, when it’s time to try again he asks us if we’re SURE it’s as cold as it was. Even if we’re very certain and reassuring and try to logically show or explain how we know the coffee is cold, he just enters a downward spiral of “how do you know, are you sure, how can you be sure.” Just flailing, screaming, hysterical “but how are you sure; I’m not sure; I need help to calm down; I need help; I need help.” (We do our best to help him very calmly and reassuringly at this stage assuming his requests are reasonable. If it’s something like “don’t scoop the cat box; I wanted to scoop it; dump the poop back in,” well, he’s SOL there.)

His worst tantrums are with his dad, either because dad is less adept at not triggering them or because dad is the working parent and son is acting out because he doesn’t see his dad enough (they have most evenings and weekends though; dad doesn’t take “me time” until son is asleep).

Lately he has even started asking questions like “how do you know this is a shirt and not pants,” “how do you know that word in the book is ‘come’ and not another word,” etc and sometimes getting upset if he isn’t satisfied with our best explanations. I get that he’s trying to understand his world; I just wonder where the line is between normal preschooler behavior and an anxiety disorder or something. I’ll be checking with his doctor in a few weeks but maybe you can tell me how worried I should be until then.

TL;DR: son is experiencing philosophical crises about controlling and understanding his world and often cannot be consoled; how normal is that at this age?

It sounded OCD to me because oft he fact she wrote that her son can’t calm himself down because he said he needed help to calm down. He sounded very distressed to me and not something he likes but he can’t stop. I suggested it and said to ask his doctor about it and anxiety and I couldn’t understand how anyone is calling this normal. Luckily another person agreed with me and said she is a pediatric nurse and other people in the thread said it sounded like OCD while other people are saying it’s normal which I find disturbing. I am also getting a lot of upvotes for my comment while last time I got downvoted as hell. What is wrong with the picture here? Life is so inconsistent.

 

Let’s Talk About Kevin (my thoughts)

This post contains spoilers:

 

I have heard about this movie and it’s used as a meme online by saying “Kevin.”

I finally watched it on Netflix and the Kevin was obviously disturbed from the very beginning from birth. People have bashed on the mother saying she is a terrible parent and that she is the cause of how her son turned out. I disagree because she did try to bond with him, she did what all mothers would do. She held him, trying bouncing him, playing ball with him, teaching him words to talk, reading to him, teaching him to count. He was obviously intelligent because he knew lot of stuff already like he could count to 50.

Kevin took a dislike to his mother right away because he wouldn’t act “normal” to her. He bonded with his father and doctors said he was normal when Eva (the mother) showed concerned and thought he might have autism but Kevin responded to his doctor and didn’t ignore him like he did for Eva despite not saying a word in the office.

Kevin also refused to toilet train to egg his mother on as I read in one of the comments on IMDB and after pooping his diaper twice, Eva snaps and tossed him on the ground breaking his arm. Kevin surprisingly covers for her by making up a convincing story that sounds true . That part confused me there. But maybe he did it so he could torture her more because if he had told the truth in the hospital, they would have called CPS, Eva would have been arrested and he wouldn’t see his mom again so who would he go after next? His dad? But I am thinking of adult logic here instead of kid logic. Would any kid that young be aware what would happen if a parent hurts their child?

Kevin always ignored his mother except for when he was sick and then he pushed his father away and the kid liked to terrorize the mother and verbally abuse her and not treat her with respect.

Then finally he gets to his teens they and they are bonding a little bit but there is still no emotional connection between them and no conversations between them, only a few sentences and words and that’s it.

People say how the mother ignored the problems, she did try to get her kid help I but got shot down for it by her son’s doctor and husband. But when the dad did finally know, why didn’t they take him to a doctor is beyond me. But even if they did, he still would have manipulated the psychiatrist and he would have turned out to be “normal.”

The mother also seems emotionally distance herself and seemed to not also be able to bond with anyone but could with her daughter but you could tell she still wasn’t all there.

Why did Kevin pick his mother to be his true self around is beyond me.  He also did his “school shooting” but used bow and arrows to kill his dad and little sister and then kill students at his school locking everyone using the same method. Then he turned himself in.

He picked his mother to be alive by not killing her so she would suffer more. The mother also punishes herself by taking abuse from her neighbors and still sees her son in prison and makes a room for him for when he gets out.

I found this movie to be disturbing because Eva loses her whole family so I can understand why she would still have Kevin in her life because he is all she has left for her family and the fact how manipulative Kevin is and how charming he is and how he treated his mother. People harp on about how she did nothing about it but IMO that is irrelevant because he would have just manipulated the doctors and there wouldn’t have been anything the mother could have done to help her son. Instead she would have looked like she had Munchhausen Syndrome by proxy.

The movie did make me wonder if this is how parents of school shooters are treated.

But this was just a movie so it was meant to be a thriller so I don’t think anyone is going to take it seriously and parents still got blamed about Kevin go figure. He showed no signs that he was going to kill anyone (except the fact he got a bunch of bike locks and took them out of the box for his parents to see but how would anyone know what he was going to actually do with them?) nor was he violent except the fact he causes his sister to lose her eye by pouring some chemical in it. He might have been if his parents tried to be actual parents to him so that part is also irrelevant. According to peoples opinions online, the more Eva tried to bond with her son and kept on trying to show him love, the worse he got. So the mom was just being a “normal” parent and did what she was supposed to do so I can’t blame her there. How was she supposed to know it would make him worse?  But then at the end she finally figured out she had to be distance to her son and not bond or show love and that got through to him. But sadly she was too late.

 

9/11 Jokes

These are jokes I found all over the web. Some people find 9/11 jokes offensive because people died in it. But I wasn’t the only one who made jokes about it. In fact the day it happened, people were already putting them online. The first one was What does WTC stand for? What Trade Center. Even I was already making them just about shortly after. Mine are way at the bottom.

 

Why is everyone posting about 9/11? It’s only two months away.

Q: Who are the fastest readers in the world?

A: New Yorkers. Some of them go through 110 stories in 5 seconds

Q: Why do tourists flock to New York?
A: It’s a blast

Q: What is world most efficient airline?
A: American Airlines, leave Boston 8:15…be in your office in New York 8:48!

Q: Why were the people at the WTC so angry?

A: Because they ordered two pepperoni pizzas, but all they got were two planes!

Q: Why did Osama Bin Laden go on ready steady cook?

A: Because he wanted to make the big apple crumble

 

Knock knock.

Who’s there?

911.

911 who?

You said you’d never forget

 

Q: What was Bin Laden’s favorite NFL team?

A: The New York Jets.

Q: What did the North Tower say to the South Tower?

A: I’ll talk to you later–I have to catch a plane.

 

.084% of all Jenga games are played on 9/11.

Americans are so bad at League of Legends because they can’t defend the towers

“Oh really, there’s a problem with your marriage? When did that start?”
“Well I don’t want to blame it all on 9/11, but..”

We’d be hot enough to melt steal beams at prom cause jet fuel can’t melt steal beams (Two teens on Twitter with this joke and a picture of them holding the sign and half of the other joke in their text)

9/11 jokes are plane wrong (not sure if this was meant to be a joke or if someone did a typo in their post)

We have to wait 12 years for this to be funny. Oh it’s already been over 12 year so this is funny now.

 

 

My own 9/11 jokes:

Every since 9/11 had happened, more people have turned into Rain Man

We are now back in time because of no more World Trade Centers

Every time I have to destroy the World Trade Centers in the N64 game of Rampage, I am always doing 9/11 and people are jumping out of the windows

People jumping out of the windows on the tower are playing the real live game of Rampage and the towers fell

 

 

 

 

 

9/11 Anniversary

 

 

It’s been 15 years since the planes have hit the Twin towers and crashed into the Pentagon and in a  field in Pennsylvania. Pretty much everyone knows where they were on that day and what they were doing when the plane hit the first tower.

I remember I was in bed sleeping when my dad comes in telling me they were talking about planes crashing. I  of course got annoyed with him because I was not interested in hearing about a disaster that happened somewhere in the world. That was his way of getting me up that morning. I remember he came in again a few more times and with my bitchy teen attitude, I yell at him about it saying I do not care.

Then I am out of bed and I get dressed and I see the towers are on fire. Oh pitiful. But I still don’t take notice. I have breakfast I remember and then I remember Dad taking us to school and then I go to choir for first class and there it is again. The TV is in the room and it’s turned on and there is the Twin towers again burning. Instead of warming up and singing, we have to watch this on TV and listen to the news anchor people talking and watching the video of the burning towers. I learn in that class the planes were actually hijacked. What’s hijacked? It’s when you take over the plane. How do you take over the plane, what happened? Oh the terrorists got control of the plane and flew them into the towers. Oh they did it because they hate us. Oh our country is under attack. Kids are excited about World War III had started, I get upset and scared. My aide decides to take me back to the resource room.

All day long I am in there because the teachers have the TVs on in there and have everyone watching it.

I still didn’t understand the big deal and why everyone was obsessing about it. Had everyone gone OCD this day and I was nor the normal one?

But lot of the kids didn’t seem to care either and were also sick of hearing it. I could remember them complaining about it and one girl got sick of hearing about terrorists and them going to attack our country.

Our Culinary Art teacher was stuck in Mexico for a few weeks and I had lots and lots of computer time in the resource room because there was no school work thanks to those darn terrorists. Also our school principal made the Freshamn take down the Twin Towers from their homecoming float.

And I remember being called cold hearted for this day. Lots of teens this day were all cold hearted so I don’t feel guilty. I assume this must have been a kid and teen thing. I did 9/11 jokes back then and I saw them on Reddit yesterday.

This was the song my school played for this attack and we heard it a lot.

It’s been 15 years and over 3,000 people died. Families lost their loved ones, parents lost their kids, kids lost their parents,.people lost their friends and it’s now a nuisance to get through security in airports and what you can bring on the plane and you can no longer go to the gate with your family or friends when they take off. You can no longer go and watch planes land and take off.

RIP everyone who died on this day.

My ex might be dying.

It’s amazing how one can still feel bad and have sympathy for their ex who was abusive. When I stalked mine because I was curious about how his life turned out and if he ever got custody of his kid and if he ever found anyone else and if he ever moved to be closer to his child, what I found instead was she came out as transgender, was suffering from multiple scoliosis and her whole Facebook page was filled with sad sad stories about how bad her life is and I couldn’t help but feel sad for her because I wouldn’t wish it on anyone else.

Dealing with self doubt

 

Lately I have been feeling if I made this all up about the abuse because I was so hurt in it so I needed to make it up to make myself feel better. But yet I can relate to the stories I read about being with a narcissist. Please note that when you read about domestic abuse, it’s always about narcissists, never about someone who has many issues or someone who is “normal” but likes control. I wonder if I have been dealing with cognitive distortions because you can read about something and it might seem like it fits but that is not what is going on. It’s like how you can google a symptom and a bunch of medical conditions pop up but it doesn’t mean that is what is going on, same with disorders.

My memories feel so real but I know I am not a schizophrenic. If I was, then I would have already been in treatment and be on medicine for it and my parents would have noticed because no way would they have let me fall into despair and let me get sicker and sicker. Plus I would have had other delusions than just this and I would have showed other symptoms. My husband would have noticed too if I were sick.

Plus my parents were there when I was with Jerry. They heard him argue with me when I would talk to them on the phone, him telling me what to say and him asking what we were talking about. Plus my mom remembers how I would abruptly hang up when he would come home and my mom told me the story about how I called her one time and I was crying but she couldn’t remember what I was upset about and then all of a sudden I say “Oh no he is coming out, I gotta go” and I hung up. My mother decided they were coming out there to try and get me to live with my aunt and uncle. But this can’t be a cognitive distortion can it?

But I know the abuser can make you self doubt and make you question yourself. I just have to go back and remember what my parents told me, how he acted towards me and tell myself this is all real, it really happened, you are not crazy. You are not lying to yourself or creating these fake memories, that is what they want you to think. Remember what you read online about gaslighting and how the victims self doubt and wonder if they are crazy. If you are still getting triggers and flashbacks, it is most likely real. Don’t let anyone make you self doubt. They were not there and if they have never experienced domestic abuse, they wouldn’t know what they are talking about. If your former ex comes back and acts like they did nothing wrong or acts like they don’t understand why you feel this way and they say they never did those things and if they do contradictions, don’t let them make you self doubt.

But what if the abuser claims to have medical diagnoses, that makes it even more confusing. But that is what they want right? Make you self doubt, make you question yourself, make you think what differently you could have done.  Remember that. Don’t let them make you self doubt.

A genuine person would have told you how sorry they are for everything they put you through and apologize for everything they have done than denying it. They would have validated your feelings and apologize for how they made you feel and what they did to you. They might tell you what they have found out about themselves and say they are working on it and seeing a doctor but they wouldn’t demand you read about their diagnoses to understand them better. They wouldn’t say “Sorry you feel that way about me” or say other things like “Sorry you felt that way” “Sorry you think I did those things” and they wouldn’t toss their medical labels at you and tell them how they wish you would read about them and understand them better. That is like they have basically admitted to how they treated you but they are saying they are not responsible for it and you have to put up with it and deal with it. They are avoiding responsibility. A genuine person might also say they don’t blame you for how you feel and they would understand if you don’t respond to them. Think about how you would want someone to apologize to you if they treated you horribly. That is how you do a genuine apology if you wanted to do amends to the people you have hurt. Never put the blame on them. Take full responsibility, don’t make excuses.

Will the Real Victim Please Stand Up

After Narcissistic Abuse

It’s NOT EASY using the V word.

Personally, I don’t LIKE it. It’s not a word I’ve used to describe myself through very many situations in my life, because I am the kind of person who takes responsibility for things that happen to me. While, I certainly had choices and consequences (thus responsibility) in my relationship with a narcissist as an adult – it is the only experience I think the V label accurately describes and depicts.

I was caught unaware. I was told things that weren’t true. By relying on those things, I made decisions that put me in harms way. I was sold a bill of goods and promises by a person who was well aware that they had no intention of ever delivering on those promises nor being capable of being a good person towards me, so that he could use me for things that benefited one…

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The time I thought my mom was closed minded

about guys I was dating.

Disclaimer: dislike and not like are not the same thing.

When I first met Jayden, my mom didn’t seem to take a lot of like to him. he was nice and sweet and he even organized the pantry above the oven where my parents kept their cookie sheets and pie pans. He did talk about his school life and how incompetent his school was with special ed kids. He also had troubles with school work too like me but he didn’t have an aide like me. I didn’t like how my mom was critical about it. She told me he wasn’t very smart and said it was because he barely graduated. I told her it was because he didn’t have an aide like I did and they didn’t give him the help he needed. I told her I also wouldn’t have graduated if I didn’t get the help I needed.

She had other criticism about him and I said kids also thought I was weird and other people might think the same of me because I am also different and parents also didn’t want their kids playing with me and I have been banned from homes as a child just because I didn’t know the rules in their home and didn’t know how to act. Also another reason for her not liking him is because he had a history of being violent. I had to remind her I was also violent too as a child so how would she like it if another parent told their son I could be violent with him in the future because of my past? Also another reason was his memory problem and I thought she was being closed minded about it. Memory problems, big deal, I will just deal with it and help him with it. My mother refused to believe Ritalin did this and said it doesn’t work that way. Also the fact he didn’t have a job but that was because he didn’t have anyone to help him so I was helping him.

But then at the end it turned out their judgments about him were correct. He really was a jerk (I thought then) and I realize now he truly did have too many problems and he wasn’t just someone who was lazy and mooching off me and messing with my head and being manipulative. He did apologize deeply for hurting me and he called himself a screw up. But back then I had a hard time accepting his apology because I was confused. He was contradicting himself and that left me confused. I didn’t understand what his apology meant. Now I know it was because he had a undiagnosed mental illness and my mom was right about him. She knew he had more going on that what I thought. I just assumed he lacked motivation and needed help to succeed just like me, I assumed he had a learning disability like me, I assumed he needed explicit instructions so I was giving them to him. You could say I saw him as “normal” who was just different and had a learning disability and ADHD. I saw him as functional. My mom still says he was a jerk because anyone can be one. I am sure he had some flaws that were bad that had nothing to do with his illness such as being too into being true to himself.

Then I met Jerry and my parents also didn’t take a like to him (she was a he then so I am referring to her as a he in this post) but they kept it hidden from me because I was defensive the first time about Jayden. I remember I kept correcting them about him. They kept insisting he was trying to not let me talk to them but I said he was no because he isn’t stopping me from calling them. I also told them he is just too worried about what people are going to think of him and me not presenting the situation correctly and he doesn’t want them to get the wrong idea. But they saw this as all controlling. They were also critical of him and my mom told me afterwards she was so worried I was being abused. Not understanding abuse at the time I told her he had never abused me. He had never hit me or called me names or broken anything. I also remember telling my mother about how poor my self help skills were and how low functioning I am and my mom told me the whole meaning of having good self help skills is acknowledging you need help and getting it than trying to do it yourself. She told me it was not very good self help skills to not ask for help and trying to do it all on your own and figure it out on your own. My mom also insisted he was after my money and they said other things about him I thought were untrue because they were reading it all wrong. I then thought no matter what guy I date, they will always find something wrong with them. Everyone had flaws and problems and I had my own so how would they have liked it if someone’s mother told their son to stay away from me. Now I realize my parents judgments were right about him.

I didn’t learn my lesson at all from these two because when I met my husband I was worried about what my parents would think of him. He was also in special ed, he was also a loner, he was ignored and then teased. He had been held back three times (his mother says two) and he had three different learning disabilities and brain damage. He didn’t drive. He didn’t have a college degree and he never finished high school because he got too old to attend. But he was a sweet and understanding guy and he worked hard to not be limited by his birth defect in his ankles. He didn’t let pain stop him. He took public transport despite having poor sense of direction and always getting lost easily and turned around. I was impressed. I always like people with disabilities who try to find a way to live a normal life and find their ways around their limitations. I have also always tried to live a normal life I can and work my way through my difficulties. I could never understand how others can’t do it or why they would refuse to learn or try. But after what happened to my husband in 2012, it has changed his perspective about people with disabilities. He had realized the reason why he was having so many seizures was because his body was going through a breakdown because he was making his body do stuff his body isn’t meant to do and it couldn’t handle it anymore so it started to break down. His body couldn’t handle the pain anymore so he got more anxiety from it and then it was giving him seizures because of the pain. It was all a domino affect. Now I had learned something too. If there were a job out there he can do, he would do it but he has all these limitations. Can’t get a job that involves counting or he will make too many mistakes, can’t get a job that involves writing because he has difficulty in spelling and reading, he can’t get a job that makes him work on his feet because his body can’t handle it and he isn’t supposed to be on them for no more than two hours a day. So what job out there can he do that doesn’t require reading, counting, math, and movement?

I realize now my parents were only looking out for me so they didn’t want me to date anyone who had too many problems and they could tell Jerry and Jayden had too many of them. They knew it would be too stressful for me and the fact I am sensitive and it would have destroyed me being with those guys. But yet they were fine with me dating my husband go figure. Maybe because he doesn’t have that many problems.

How can one tell if someone’s problems is due to problems than just personality? How can you tell if someone has a mental illness? Surely not every rude person out there has a disorder or a narrow minded person or someone who is extremely judgmental and critical of everything, same as if they do abuse. Plus plenty of people have strange thoughts so how can one tell if they have a mental illness or just have that weird opinion? And lot of people are paranoid so does that mean they have some mental illness? So how can you tell if someone had a condition or not based on these behaviors? Some people even have depression so how can one tell if it’s just depression or clinical depression or a illness stemming from a serious disorder?

I don’t know how much of Jerry’s thoughts were due to her illnesses, that is if she is telling the truth. But I can never tell because everything is normal to me. For years I just thought medical labels were created for a list of behaviors we all do and doctors like to give out a label for it to anyone. People had personality disorders because they did behaviors people found annoying and found them difficult to be with, people had Asperger’s because of too many narrow minded people who didn’t like someone who is different and strange and weird and because they didn’t know the social rules and didn’t know how to act in a situation and people refuse to tell them how to do it and because they did routines and didn’t like change and because they had special interests and did behaviors like fiddling with objects or playing with their fingers or doing rocking and because they didn’t look people in the eye and didn’t know about reading body language. I thought anything that wasn’t considered normal doctors made it into a condition. Want to get your way and don’t like not getting your way, just be an asshole by threatening your mother and breaking things and making her afraid of you so you get it, oh you have ODD so here is your label. People were psychopaths because they didn’t care about people and they did cruel things and killed people. I thought this way about mental illnesses until my twenties. This is all still very confusing for me.

 

My small stomach

I haven’t had much of an appetite lately. I don’t know if it’s because of the anxiety I have been having or because I need to poop. Today we went to Hometown Buffet. When I was a kid, they were all Old Country Buffets but I haven’t seen those around since my teen years. I only had one plate there because I got full very quick and I couldn’t even finish my cake. I only had one bite and my daughter wanted it so I gave it to her. But I was pretty stuffed from one plate of food. I used to have on average of three plates when I was a kid when we eat at buffet restaurants. Then I would always feel sick to my stomach because I would eat too much and feel like throwing up. My kids also end up having one plate of food and never even finish. My husband has more and I am so glad he doesn’t make a big deal about how little I eat like my last ex used to do.

But I am never hungry anyway until I am starving but I have been getting that less often, a lot less often so I tend to not eat.

In a way I feel sorry for abusers who suffer from a mental illness

mental illness.

I wrote this in a thread online when someone asked about NPD being a mental illness and if they are clueless and helpless.

Yes NPD is a mental illness, it’s a medical condition like anything else in the DSM. In a way I actually feel sorry for them because they don’t choose to be this way or otherwise it wouldn’t be a condition. Yes most of them are not aware so that is why they rarely change. It impacts their social relationships and people skills and puts a strain on everyone around them it alienates them from others. I see them as being dysfunctional. It doesn’t mean we have to excuse how they treat others and excuse their behavior and put up with it. NPD is not something anyone would want to have. Because it has such a horrible stigma to it, I am sure it makes it harder for them to change because who would want to be a narcissist?

My ex is mentally ill.