Dear Anita,

I will reply more fully later. Now it is getting late and I want to try to read a little bit in a novel before going to bed. That’s ages ago and I should start doing relaxing things as well.
I find this visit highly stressful and alienating, and there are 2 more days + one morning more to come. It is showing me clearly why I am having so much trouble connecting with people (like I had with S, but in general, with people that I like) and with myself.

I did not tell the truth about my current situation.
Before I had told them that I had to work Saturday and Sunday and couldn’t get time off. Yesterday on the phone I said that I have a week holiday so that i was free those days. Today, we were eating in a restaurant, the girlfriend went to the toilet and my father asked me ‘they didn’t keep you in that work anymore, do they?’ I got so annoyed with his negative interprations, always immediately thinking that I am not good enough, that I lost my job, that i don’t do well, that i replied to that. I told him that I had asked for a holiday because I am so exhausted from the workload in my previous job, and did they did. But I also told him, why do you always think so negative. Is that only with me, because I am your daughter? And i went on about that for a little while. He doesn’t understand it, and came up with some explanation, but he really doesn’t understand what i mean, and why it is wrong. So i got the same feeling as so often, that I didn’t want to give him the pleasure to let him know that i had ‘failed’ again. I don’t know if that is right, but that is how I feel it. I got so irritated with his negativity, that i decided not to tell the truth and keeping up appearances. I don’t know if that was good or not. But I seem to want to keep in control about him, not allowing him to know that I am ‘weak’ ( which i actually don’t think i am), but giving a more succesful impression.
It was also annoying that i told them that i live in tent in the garden of the hostel, and i showed them the tent, it’s really tiny, one of those quick hiker tents. They found it ridiculous. But I told them, that that is not my problem. So told me that it is not possible, that i am warm in there in the night. Well, what can i do, i guess she has to think what she wants. So i was honest about that, but with the sick leave i wasn’t. I don’t know if i have to be honest about everything. With such a distant, cold way of behaving, and not feeling any emotional support or emotional space, i don’t see the point. I don’t feel emotionally safe with them, so i hid things.
Even though it sounds twisted, that i can tell a stranger honestly how it goes with me, and not my father.