June 1st

Halfway through the year today huh? 

I went to the mall today. It's an innocuous sentence, but I haven't done that in a long time, and I've never gone by myself. So that's what I did today. Homebody girl dressed up, put on jewelery and makeup, rolled her bike out of the driveway and just went to the mall by herself. 

I could get used to the feeling of doing things on my own. I was afraid of feeling "unadultlike" before, like it'd be obvious I was inexperienced and had no idea what I was doing. But it's really not that hard. Initially I dressed up and then didn't want to go as some anxiety made me feel uncertain. But I remembered a friend's words from the other day, this friend who forces herself out of trauma and stress through self-imposed exposure therapy: "why not? I don't think of it as hurting myself. I think of it as trying." 

So I went, and I enjoyed it. Though admittedly I was wiped out afterwards. I thought I would get sensory overloaded again, but I didn't. Though I felt kind of dissociative (as I have lately) it wasn't because there was too much auditory and visual information. I actually just went and wandered around and enjoyed a mall like a normal person, and that's pretty incredible to me. I found a lot of new shops I've never seen before, this is a mall in an asian area so it has so many unusual stores I've never seen in other malls. For example I saw a store dedicated to funkopop (and several other anime/game related stores), a huge store dedicated purely to dried asian goods (i saw deer feet, bird's nest, sea cucumber at $200 a pound), plus so many asian makeup and cute-things stores (they had a Sanrio store- that's the company that owns Hello Kitty and Gudetama and the like). I'm glad I was able to go and just experience that. The feeling of being around people was nice too, even though I inevitably feel a little lonely and far away from everyone else clustered in their groups. 

I've found that I can be like a developing child sometimes- lack of sensory stimuli is detrimental to my mental health, and doing anything that gives me sensory information seems to help. It's the same with children- if you take them out a lot, it apparently helps their brains develop faster. So I've discovered a new trick to help combat my funks. 

Other than that, I came home and folded my laundry and organized things a bit. I was really tired from all the people exposure and walking for an hour or two. I only bought a few things at the mall; some cheap hand creams, a pair of egg-in-a-frying-pan earrings, a lip butter, and a sweet almond pretzel to eat. It was the first time I used my credit card, actually; I used it on egg earrings! Heh. I'll attach a picture of them. 

I had an unfortunate conflict with my dad over dinner, one that was admittedly partially my fault. I feel ashamed thinking about it. It was because he was making a point of telling me my job is too far and he won't interrupt work to send me there, plus I should look into jobs closer by. I took this as him saying he didn't want to send me, and it stung. I'm kind of used to my dad not liking to send me places and being grumbly about it, so the thought wasn't surprising, it just stung and it always has. Finding a part time job has been a big milestone for me, so believing that he was going to be grumbly about sending me, it stung. It also fit in my mind into earlier rhetoric of him just being... insensitive. He always has been. 

My mom made it worse by yelling at him for it. She's been yelling at him all day. We're all on edge for it. Even when I don't say anything to defend myself (because most of the time, there's really nothing to say) she jumps to my defense all too quickly and actually worsens the situation significantly. I really.. hate it. And there's not much I can do to stop her, because she's a stubbon hardheaded assertive freaking person. What ends up happening is I get partially roped into the blame for the situation escalating because of her, or I'm expected to avoid creating any kind of conflict because neither me or my dad want to deal with her. So part of the reason I felt so bad after that whole debacle was because I broke one of our hidden "rules": don't piss off mom. 

Honestly I didn't even do much. I was in an obvious bad mood after he said that stuff to me, which my mom picked up on and snapped at him for. I was also snippy with him as he clarified his intentions. For some reason even after that and me saying I understand, "that's fine I get what you're saying now", we both kept being snippy with each other. I lost my appetite and went upstairs and heard him getting lectured, and felt bad. But what am I supposed to do? 

I'm used to feeling awful when this kind of thing happens. But in a normal family, this wouldn't be a big deal. It would blow over and everyone would forget. Why does it matter so much when just one person's in a bad mood here? Why do things blow up so easily for such small reasons? 

I'm used to feeling like a source of conflict. Like my existence here just makes people fight. It's situations like this that force children into submission and silence, even with the parents' best intentions. A hidden kind of suppression that's not immediately obvious.