Hi Anita,

Thank you. Its nice to hear someone say that they believe you.

The leg situation is going to have to wait till i get further tests, i reckon it means physiotherapy for a while but for now it seems to have calmed down a bit…i have new respect for people living with chronic pain or disability because its the first time i had this situation..it makes you so tired, it makes you feel desperate sometimes too, it affects your mental state.

As i think ive said before, i struggle to define my mother as purely narcissistic or selfish. As the children, we dont want to believe that our parents can mean to hurt us. although her main behaviour has shown her selfish tendencies there are also times where she has shown to have thoughts that are caring..but just not carried out in the way some other mothers might. I never thought about it when i was younger but in our family we don´t really hug or anything like that. My sister has always been a very difficult person to get a word out of..and so i have more or less had to work these conclusions out by myself.

I learnt from a young age to rely on my own company, my own strength and my own council. which of course doesnt always work and sometimes feels like i need superhuman strength to get by. When i was younger, my older sister never took responsibility and instead would lash out and get angry, so i took on the “older” role while she seemed to just be resentful.  I reckon that i developed a lack of awareness of myself, a detachedness, so that later on, people trying to get to know me…get a cold response, or at least a very brief , dismissive one. I realise that now but it may be too late to change..how do you get the respect? how do you protect yourself from the reactions of others? ive no idea. I just dont seem to learn.

Instead of spreading my net wide to have more options of friendships or meeting more than one guy, i chose to be very very loyal to one or two people…it doesnt work out. This has applied to everything including of course, my work, which i should have left at the first signs of negative bias, years ago. They all take for granted that they can abuse what they want. Arrogance seems to be the norm these days.

Im tired of always being strong, of ignoring comments made to me because im always alone with no one behind me to back me up. Im tired of being kind to disrespectful people who if im honest, were educated to be rude to others.

If i recognise being a victim, then i want to know a solution. At 44 i need answers becuase i have been patient, i have tried and failed in so many ways. I have high standards for myself…and these are ones i never pass.

Hi Anita,

Thank you for the reference to the book as maybe this is the way to go. As for nr (1) i kind of feel like i continually try to assert myself but don´t get far! And i think that making gentle assertions is something i find hard to do, i think that to others i can come across as quite hard but that is because i go along with everything until i get completely fed up because ive allowed people to push and push for so long..they dont expect a reaction but then they get one and its unexpected so they react badly? i dont know.

My sister for instance, who i havent spoken to in about a year….these are the kind of “punishments” i receive for standing up for myself. I wrote to her in an angry email as she had left me with missing and torn clothes after her stay and was fairly demanding to us (me and our parents). Her reasoning is that i “dont want to be involved in the life of my niece” which is mean and an excuse, but in fact i just wanted her to stop some behaviours she is used to doing whenever she comes over to stay.

Then there is a girl at work who ive always had a love-hate relationship with. I like her humor and we were always able to get on one on one but at the same time she turns jeckell and hyde and seems to bully me at any opportunity she gets in front of others or clients. Its been years of this. I thought it was because of my role which used to be more office-based but now i see her being very friendly with the young girl who has taken that role over. So if it is just a jealous pettiness how do you deal with it? She has a relentlessness that has driven other people out of the company screaming. My solution was to leave my former role and become a sales person which means i dont need to be in the office as much…but at our meetings she picks on random things that are in my control, just as she used to point out mistakes in my work from my old role. All i can do is just stay away from the team as much as possible which i now do! On the few days i must be in the office, she seems to come in and wants to be friendly but i feel there´s a weird edge to it…im just not playing ball anymore.

I dont need to point out the difficulty with my mother either. Like my sister, if she doesnt get what she wants she will shut everything down and my father is under her thumb.

So, im surrounded by childish, jealous and demanding women and all the men i know which is very few, are submissive, passive or dismissive.

Fun world.

Ive always used humor to deal with the difficulties and because that always worked its just an escape hatch. I like watching stand up and if i didnt have a mind like this i feel id probably go nuts or lash out, which of course wont help anything.

I like to escape sometimes into fantasy in that way, coming up with sketches, in different artistic ways. I make up song lyrics, come up with satires and comic ideas in my head…its a way i can laugh at it all and basically amuse myself and sometimes my friends or family. Im not saying i stop everyone to listen to me, but i just sometimes comment on things i cant resist to say something about. My parents find my ideas funny and encourage me, my friends too, im not sure what my sister thinks..i think she feels competitive for attention so its hard as she doesnt have the same ideas but can laugh at them. My ex boyfriend seemed to hate my comedic side and usually told me to stop acting crazy. It was the one thing i really didnt like about him, he took himself very seriously when sometimes it was comical, for me, humor is essential.

Hi Anita,

Im supposed to have some vacation time..this should be fun but these days i dont really know what to do with myself, Im so used to just working and have no family of my own, my current friendship circle has become non existent. The only thing that drives me is making money..to feel secure.

Today i had another issue with work, out of so many. It seems impossible when i cover every angle but somehow im always dumped in the ditches. A colleague didnt make clear some figures and it has put me in a difficult position to my detriment and will also mess with my reputation. It makes me mad. I wont get any help, i asked for it but they cant help and thus i have to fix this myself. It makes me tired because i cant work harder than i do…and the owners obviously always come out looking the best…the most influential colleagues will be protected…and life goes on without you.

Asserting myself. Yes, i think i have said that ive tried, and yet, people just dont want to take it from me. they will from others. There is respect for them, but somehow ive never found the key to respect. One girl who used to work with us complained to me about respect and i had to laugh at the time, i had already suffered years of abuse by then. ive never had any, no matter how obviously i worked well, how much praise i got from clients, how many hours i put in of extra time or how much money i made for the company…im still treated badly, talked down to at meetings, left out of decisions etc .the only way is to leave and suffer the consequences i guess.

If im really honest, the truth will hurt people´s feelings…because in my opinion these are people who feel really they are beneath me…they think because of my nationality, that i have more and that i have access to more. They are wrong. But nepotism and favouritism and manipulation are part of the corruption game that will hurt the economy. This is a problem for their country i see that will keep them down. I realised also how the beginnings of racism start just in small cultural differences..small levels of racism happen to me almost on a daily basis. Ive kept quiet about this for many years…. Shaking things off are not always that easy when you are living in another culture, you think you can handle it and im told not to get upset by it..but i guess you could compare my experience to what others of a different race feel in their own country, or just simply being physically different. Ive enough material to write plenty about that but i know its not in fashion right now.

Therefore the comedy.

My ex simply didnt like any of my witty comments, nothing “crazy” as he called it…but something rather more “clever” as that would probably bother him. In my opinion, he was very very clever..but not confident..someone who probably suffered a lot as a young man. A bright and funny and pretty woman would probably be too much for him, frightening maybe. Far easier for him to control someone who was insecure in some way and that fed his need for security. I dont doubt that his current girlfriend is suffering in some way and suppressing it, hoping she can manage it, so that she can keep him.