Freaked out again today. Stupid scanning stuff again and Arda came round with the care agreement (stupid term, but it is the thing which you have to sign in order to stay here). Didn’t want to sign the thing, and still don’t. Arda dramatized saying that then it would be over by the 15th. 18th, I corrected, but I hardly care. I wanted to leave anyway. I don’t feel there is any place I belong, but there is no point in wasting taxpayers’ money by staying in an agency that can’t serve me anyway. The only reason I stay, and sort of hope for some magic inspiration to change the thing about myself that is blocking my progress, is that I have no other place to live. I’ve always dreamt and hoped that somewhere out there, there was a place I would belong as far as services or the lack thereof are concerned, but I have lost that illusion about training home. I still had it, back in February, when I wrote about the disability service field and the difficulty in being atypical, but I lost it as time went by and I got only more confused instead of less (I’d hoped I would develop that magic thing called “realism” as I went along making progress here). Maybe I should go back to the old attitude, pretending I don’t have any difficulties or impairments. After all, that’s the state in which I managed six years in the same setting. But honestly I know that it was not the uninvolvement with agencies that gave me that stability, but the consistency in people’s expectations of me and my inability to decide anything else. Now even training home folks don’t agree on some things that I find important – particularly, Renee and Arda seem to disagree considerably -, and even if they did agree, my parents and my sister wouldn’t. And besides, there’ve been moments when I truly did make my own decisions, even though I’d most likely not have gone to rehab if my father hadn’t said that he agreed. In other words, at least for the most part of my high school years, everything was quite clear and my only duty was to do what I was told to do. There were some situations when expectations were inconsistent, but most were solved by my parents – in fact, the first that wasn’t, was the Van O. issue in 2004 -, and I did rebel of course – like not doing my schoolwork in ninth grade -, but I mostly let others make the important decisons for me. I want to make the point that this is not something decided by my parents per se, but as much by me. In fact, it *is* safe to let others make my decisons. Recall the situation of late 2004 and early 2005, when I don’t even think the main problem was that I was not making the same decisons my parents wanted me to make (though they were obviously disappointed) but that I was *not* making decisions. I was resenting my parents for making important decisons for me (or so I thought), yet at the same time I was longing for them to support me in my decison-making like they’d done before. It seems something similar is happening now, both in the studying thing and in my statements that I want to leave: I know that the folks here have their opinions – they want me to do these studies and they want me to stay here to complete my training -, but they can’t make me do these things. The thing is, I know this is getting nowhere and I don’t know how to change it – obviously, I should alter my behaviour, but I try and apparently it doesn’t work out -, and yet I don’t know where I stand at all.
I’m sure that a lot of my behaviour stuff of 2004 and early 2005 was related to my difficulties at the time – not everything was, cause I have always had a low frustration tolerance, but there is certainly a huge difference between just getting frustrated easily and the situation I was in then and am in now -, and yet at the same time I saw my behaviour problems as a reason to feel that I wouldn’t function in some places, like college or even rehab. It’s the same again. Someone made this comment on Tuesday that she thought I wanted the folks to kick me out of here so that I could think negatively about myself. It’s not that way. It’s just that I’ve begun to lose faith that I am not an anti-social, behaviourally disturbed bitch. In fact, I cannot recall any specific time when I was not this way, though I know that I used to be doing better, and I find it hard to draw a line between “normal for me” (whether that is just having bad qualities or really being disordered) and “not normal for me”. In other words, I’m not sure I should hope to be able to improve, even though I still expect myself to (cause it would be unacceptable and distressing if I didn’t) and I don’t show my uncertainty in rational discussions (cause I fear people will believe me then). Yet at the same time I want to show my uncertainty, cause it’s still there and it really impacts what I call “realism”. I don’t want people to believe I’m normally fine when I’m not, just like I don’t want people to give up on me when this might (hopefully) get better. So it sometimes seems “realistic” to kick me out cause this is not the right place for me, and at times it seems “realistic” to allow me to stay here cause I’m expected to go to college and move out on my own after training here, or even not to allow me to stay here cause I’m capable of living on my own already. And I want to be realistic. And everyone has different opinions of what that means, and I defy them as a rule cause I don’t know.
Now what do I do? Part of me wants to give up and go out of here, wandering the streets till I end up in some homeless shelter (which I don’t as long as I still have this apartment, but you know what I mean), or convince the staff to give up on me and kick me back out to my parents, or see that I get on the long waiting lists in the psychiatric system cause that’s where I belong. Part of me wants to call the agency in my area that is involved with housing (don’t even know which) and see that I get a room to live in on my own cause I want all these professionals to stop caring for me or “teaching me independence” and pretending they’re superior and I’m inferior cause I’m the client and they’re the staff (not saying anyone says so) or because I have a romantic image of living on my own or because I should’ve been in Nijmegen by now. And yet another part of me wants to stay here cause the other two options are too polarized and it’s not worth the effort pursuing either now. And I am free to go if I want to. It *is* my choice to stay here, and yet I don’t want it to be cause it is not at all my choice at the same time. I’m rational enough to know that I can’t separate these parts too much, cause I simply cannot do more than one of these and there is no in-between consensus to be reached. (You could say that staying here is an in-between thing, but it is not cause therhe is no greater agreement inside my mind about thsi option than about any of the others.) I’m not sure about the whole thing. I want to pursue my college cause it interests me and I don’t want to pursue it cause it really does take more energy than I can currently handle and I’ve been told that it will get a lot busier in a few weeks, and I have to pursue college cause I have to learn to combine housekeeping and studying and because most of my classmates have jobs along with their studying and can do it as well. And I want to stay here cause I want to pursue my training and I hope I can still make progress and I don’t want to stay here cause I want to be independent now and I have to stay here cause I have no other place to live and I have to leave cause I should be too good for this and I might be too bad for this. And I want everyone to stop defining me cause I want to define myself and I want them to define me completely so that I can stop taking responsibility for my situation. Guess I’m still confused.
