I am one who will agree with your observation. I do care too much about too much in a world where many people do not care. One of the things I keep attempting to do is to create caring in people who are unloving or people who pretend to be loving but are putting on an act for reasons that are only later revealed. In a sense, the latter sort of people are forcing me into behaviors where I must "leave my own head" in order not to melt down or act out in their presence. This is taking a toll on me, to stand for mistreatment and be unable to speak sense to such people without suffering torment or kicking myself for having ever told them anything about myself or any harm that was ever done to me, such as my mother abandoning me at age 7 to a violent and mentally ill alcoholic father. To have a "normal adult woman" tell me "my mother abandoned me because I am COLD", when I am having to hold my temper and keep from having a melt down by emotionally distancing myself from games a woman is playing with my head, when I've done good, hard physical labor for her and she believes it is correct to have paid me about $2 per hour for 50 hours work and thinks she can continue to do this and is weeping copiously and claiming to have treated me WELL? omg, the woman is either crazy or evil or both, I am thinking -- but I am unable to EXPRESS these thoughts to her. I regret having told her I have a form of Autism.
This woman's elderly mother IS trapped, afraid to ask to be transported by her daughter except to medical appointments or occasionally to have her hair done. The mother NEVER has any real privacy, except while her daughter is asleep. I spoke up on behalf of the mother -- and oh, you would think I was some sort of criminal for having done so! The mother fears her daughter and truly I can understand her reasons for feeling this way. How dare I care for someone else's plight? And then there are the bees the daughter fears and has killed en masse, when they were no threat whatever to her...but she was SO fearful she not only murdered them unnecessarily and cruelly, but dumped two cans of poison into the air and on a large wooden pole that absorbed the poison which will leach out into the ground when it rains and travel directly toward her house. She doesn't like the sounds of leaves brushing against a window of her house in the wind and so makes sure to show me that she has cut down an entire tree "to stop the problem." She is well aware that I will not work with poisons, that I do not cut down trees unless they constitute a true hazard and cannot be moved to another location and that the killing of bees is not even a subject within consideration -- the type of bees in question could have been relocated and I'm seeking a way of having this woman prosecuted for her actions. I had told her how to make a safe repellent to spray on her screens and windows and skin that would repel bees made from dilute pure essential oil and even told her I would make this for her. Oh, no.
I have to fight very hard against a rising feeling of vindictiveness against this woman, because she has been cheating me by paying me less money and expecting me to do the same amount of work. The change I fear is the change that occurs when insane people make decisions and do not have the capacity to read the instructions on how to open a cereal box correctly. She pretends to feel friendship and understanding for me while calling me insulting names and then telling me that those names are ones she considers "endearing". When I explain very calmly (which is difficult, under the circumstances) I do not call people names -- because everyone reacts differently and I do not presume to know how someone else will react, she will derail onto other subjects and become very negatively emotional, tearful and blaming. Attempting to remind her that I have a form of Autism is just one more weapon she will exploit against me -- "oh, you ALWAYS use this as an EXCUSE." I don't ALWAYS anything and rarely default to Autism to explain my behavior. In this case, where someone insists on interpreting calmness as a lack of caring and keeps acting in ways that are intended to provoke reactions of horror and deep sadness in me (and she does, believe me she does) I do not allow these reactions to show. Inside of myself, I may imagine what it would feel like to unload two cans of bug spray into her open mouth or cut her off at below the ankles or just home in on what I know to be her vulnerabilities and start calling HER names and act surprised when she tells me she doesn't like being called names, then ridicule her when she makes an attempt to explain herself.
I DO care, yet I must practice such self-restraint when this woman speaks tearfully of how hard her late husband worked and then denigrates my friend who has been suffering from moderate to severe chronic pain for decades and only within the past few months was properly diagnosed and given treatment for Major Depressive Disorder. She demands of me: "Are you telling me your friend suffered worse pain than my husband did, so he cannot work?" I respond: "I am saying that my friend has a rough row to hoe & he is seeing medical doctors and a Psychiatrist to help him. Your husband was self-medicating by getting drunk (et cetera) every day ~ and you did nothing to intervene and get him the help he needed. There IS a difference." What I WANT to say is: "And your husband died four years ago because he did not get proper medical care while he could and you, who were not disabled, were in a position to help him. Yet you did not. So what is your reason for lamenting about him, now? You are collecting his Social Security money and his VA pension and have a comfortable life. Had he NOT been such a hard worker, you wouldn't have a pot to piss in." I care that I do NOT become ugly and hateful and cheap and dishonest like this woman and this is something I can control. If this is caring too much, this is a painful way to be but I can't see ever becoming someone like her.
12 May 2013, 3:00 pm
