Frustrations

Life is frustrating. This weekend has been a long exercise in frustration and difficulty although there are some bright spots. First of all, I have to learn over and over to avoid the so-called friends of mine who can't deal with me expressing my truths. Frankly, some of the people around me are narcissistic people who lack empathy for others and have their own problems that fill their lives so that they have no room for those of others, not even to listen. It's disappointing but it's really my own reaction to them that has made me upset. I've often felt that the only option is between ignoring that in other people as if it weren't true or being upset at them. There is a middle way, which is to take note of it and stay away from them when I'm upset and to remember who my true friends are (shoutout to Dan and Christina, Jon and Deborah, Karen H., etc). What I don't like also is how some of my so-called friends like to come to me when they are upset and need someone to listen but if I want to socialize or talk, they basically want to have the friendship on their own terms. This is not true of everyone, of course.

I'm also really upset that my cousin is joining the army. He hasn't signed the papers yet but basically I feel it's a death sentence--if not for his body, then for his mind. It's true that you can't make choices for other people, he has the 'right' to do it but he's doing it under condtions of manipulation--I kept asking him if the recruiter had told him of certain options and no, he hadn't. The people he's living with feel he's doing it for the wrong reasons and want him to stay there. They think he feels like he has no place, like he may have felt when he was with his mother. It seems like he doesn't understand himself and hopes that the structure will give him something. Maybe, but it sure is likely to take a lot of his humanity away. There is so much about this that makes me sick to my stomach. The way that so many people (not only my parents) see men who kill and become callous as real men. They like to see people happy in a structure and there is structured ignorance of the PTSD, the maiming, the loss of autonomy and the death, of course. How can people ignore this? Who would make the choice, maybe, if they really looked at the likely consequences (and they -are- likely). Who agrees that men and women should risk their empathy for the nation? It also kills me that if something does happen to him, there is no one, including me, who could care for him for the rest of his life. He would be homeless or a ward of the state. I wouldn't have the resources. I'm really scared for him and I love him.

On another topic that upsets me when I'm home, my father basically ignores me and seems to resent me for some reason. Maybe because I'm my mother's favorite and my brother his? I'm so disappointed, not that I ask much from him. But I think he both loves me and is repulsed by me. I just have to think that relationships are complicated and he doesn't want to think that I automatically support my mother over him, which is true. Nothing I can do about him when he is frustrated with me or doesn't want to be around me.

Basically my frustrations are from my own reacions to circumstances although I can also have some compassion for myself--these are not easy to face, regardless.