Oh noez! I have to go away this weekend.

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For over two weeks now I have been trying to prepare myself for my trip to my parents house this weekend. This trip requires a drive of over three hours there and over three hours back. I am a bit freaked out by this. Cars make me jumpy and I get all tense and one time I managed to strain my neck from that stupid drive. After the drive, I will find myself alone... without my husband or kids... with my parents. My mom wanted to spend a girls weekend with me. Her first suggestion was to go to some touristy town and hit the coffee shops and window shop. She knows that is my personal idea of hell, but for some reason she keeps thinking that I will suddenly become someone who likes these things. I had to explain to my father that I would kill someone if she made me do that. He talked her out of it.

So now I am going to their house. Their house is big... with these tall ceilings and they are old and half deaf and feel the need to have four televisions blaring from four different rooms at all times. My mom takes it personally when I show up with things like my own food, linen, shampoo... things like that. I really hate leaving my house. This is causing me an enormous amount of stress. Mostly all I have done for two days now are puzzles. I keep trying to get all the calm in that I can while I can. I do not like this.

I like my dad. I am confused by my mom. I just do not know how to get on well with the woman. She is hyper emotional and heavily medicated due to her chemical imbalances, so dealing with her is more of a task than it is with most people I encounter. Some people can never understand each other. Every time I go there, my mom makes it clear how much it saddens her that she and I are two of those people. I have tried to explain what is going on with me as far as autism goes... hoping that might help her understand. It is not. She is not hearing me. She has something else in her head, that I can be fixed with pills and be this outgoing, mall loving, spa going, chatterbox who loves talking about how the other is feeling. I will never be what she wants me to be and she thinks it is because I hate her. It is weird. So now I have to go and try to seem as comfortable as I can in a place where the noise alone makes me want to bury my head in the sand so that my mom, who will still think I hate her, might not think I hate her. People make no sense... right now I make no sense either.

I have, for years, told her why I have issues going there to see her. I have told her for years that her buying me things does not make me comfy... you want me comfy? At least let me bring my own stuff without having a panic attack on me, lady! I have told her for years that it is not that I dislike talking to her, it is that I dislike talking to everybody. If I am a hater, I am an equal opportunity hater... she is not singled out here. I tell her again and again, no I do not like shopping, I do not like going out to eat... Stop asking me to do those things and then yell at me when I say it is too much for me. I have tried being logical and calm, I have blown up and needed to put myself in time out and everything in between. I know I am supposed to love my family, and I think I do to some degree or I would have just told her to go to hell and not bothered to go see her at all up there. Ever. Meh.

I'm just stressing and needing to vent. I need to think good thoughts, right? My mom is artsy... Maybe I could try to get her to do some crafty stuff with me. That could work. I think after my first meltdown due to the tv assault, she should be cool with me wanting to drown out the noise with my mp3 player. God I love that thing. Just turn it up and ignore the world... Anyway... Art stuff can be a fun way to spend time. Usually my kids are there and wanting to get up into the artsy stuff so we stay out of it... so I have never tried that approach with her. I wonder if I go there all enthusiastic about painting she and I could set up space and paint. I need an activity that keeps me near her or she will get all hurt and blow up at me. If we paint near each other that counts as close, right? It is an activity we both enjoy and we will be in the same space. I don't know. I'll be heading out tomorrow around 4. I do hope this goes well. More so, I hope she and I find something to do that will not only keep us from flipping out on each other, but something that can give her something that she feels she needs from me in order to be ok.

I have a similar problem with my dad. In all honesty I am not really emotionally attached to him in any way. He has moods swings, he is usually very annoying and at times incredibly rude. I just never felt comfortable around him even in early childhood, and things haven't changed.

The thing that annoys me most with him, is that he wants to make me into someone he hopes he'll like. Someone loud and talkative, and someone with many friends. I got forced to join a sporting team in my early teens, because he felt it would change me into becoming like the rest of the team, whom he had more respect and admiration for than me.

I got mercilessly teased and bullied by that bunch. If anything it made me more of a withdrawn person. Now he wants me to get married to someone he chooses. He hopes this will make me like more of a 'man'. Loud and with a chip on my shoulder.

It can be really difficult to please a parent like this. I think you should put your own needs ahead of anyone else'. If you are uncomfortable with doing something don't let guilt drive you to it, or the feeling of wanting to please someone. It can be harmful to you, something I found out first hand. Anyway I hope your trip goes well.