mostly david ephgrave

My mood has been very low over the past few weeks as I try to express and process the scale of unaccountability of a relative who's caused so much pain for years, yet won't acknowledge or understand it. What's horrible is they've crossed so many lines throughout my life that amount to emotional abuse, but their disordered mindset won't let them recognise this. They seem to believe that any negative comment about them is unjustifiable even if you can prove it, and can't process criticism healthily, yet they'll act disrespectfully and dishonestly all the time expecting no ramifications. And they won't do anything you ask, however small, to put things right and make you feel better. The most destructive thing I'm coming to terms with is how they have no concept of how they compromised my childhood, and therefore impacted my adulthood too. I've spent years in therapy adopting strategies to cope with my past and process the dichotomy of a pers...

I'm trying to find a little pocket of calm in a difficult time of change. It isn't easy. I have to accept I won't be able to reason with the person at the root of it because they're in denial. So I have to come to terms with their behaviour again. I now know this was inevitable, but it's still upsetting, particularly when I consider how quickly they apparently decided to abandon me for good. I miss my dad: the other day, I had a crisis and my first thought was to ring him for advice, then I remembered a beat later this wasn't possible. Coming to terms with the fact the conversation's over is such a horrible part of grief; I get out of a friend's car at the same spot he used to drop me off at and he's on my mind; I reach the end of a pack of coffee filters I bought when he was still alive and have the morbid thought that he went first. The other night I had a dream about him, and it was only the next day that I realised it wasn't the f...