One of the hardest parts of ADHD for me is RSD. There are so many words I have been told as far as I can remember that still go through my head a lot of the time. Some of the worse ones still haunt me:
You are so selfish. How can you be so selfish? Don't be so selfish.
I can't even say who said this to me the most. I know my mother rarely said it. Other family members said it often. I have such a horror of being selfish that at times I made myself as small as possible. At school, I had a reputation of being a chatterbox. At home, I was silent, depending on who was home. The last time the three of us spoke to our father before he basically decided we no longer existed to him, was when we each we asked if we would move with him and his wife and stepdaughter to a farm in Texas. We all said no. I was 10. We hadn't heard from him in months. I explained why. I asked if we would visit mom, I don't remember his answer, I told him I don't like to be outside, the sun and heat make me sick, Andrew is allergic to the sun, I don't like to get dirty, and I don't think I can help with taking care of animals that stay outside. I have no idea what my brothers told him. I was just told that I was being so selfish by not going to live with my dad.
It took until I was in my 50s to understand why his words felt like he told me I was the worst person in the world. I couldn't tell him the biggest reason I didn't want to move. He didn't pinky promise he would not ever leave me. Mom did.
I have been working on getting some hacks so that the criticisms and mean commits do not keep going on and on in my head. Who knows? Maybe someday criticism won't bother me after the situation is over and done. I can only hope.
No comments:
Post a Comment