I don't have the mental energy to write at the moment as recording my current situation is overwhelmingly repetitive and negative, and attempting anything comedic feels forced.
It's been like this all year to an extent, although it worsened recently. I've been treading water, which I hate. Work has been stripped back to the bare bones and is mostly too much to contemplate. Meanwhile, negative events in my life are being reframed and debased, while my acts of support and forgiveness are forgotten. And I'm trying to navigate a situation I think anyone would struggle with, let alone when they're prone to mental illness.
Perhaps the most commonly recurring lesson from therapy is you can't change the way other people act so much as how you respond to their actions, which I think is true. But, my God, that theory's being tested at the moment. Patience is the key, but it's devastating when the penny drops that you'll never be able to reason with the other party to make them understand what they did was wrong. And any expression of the pain they've caused will lead to them administering punishment; something I suspect they would have done either way, but they probably feel more justified in doing when they're angry, irrespective of whether they know your accusations are true. It's a nasty byproduct of dealing with the self-absorbed from which you can't escape unscathed: you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.
What hurts me most is I always assumed they understood they'd made mistakes and that things just escalated due to the circumstances. I thought they knew the damage my messy childhood had caused and wanted to fix it. But I've now learnt that to them the pain meant nothing. They were out for themselves and I was a thorn in their side for questioning their motives. Every word I write or say provokes anger because they don't understand the fundamental principle that I'm a person too, with as much right to be put front & centre if the situation requires it. It's a gap in their makeup that's excruciating to bear. They will never acknowledge what they've done without attributing an excuse, and at this stage, an admission of guilt would bring their case crashing down so they're never going to do it; now that my dad's gone, they'd sooner choose the money over me.