Woke up in fight or flight because my parents and sibling are having a screaming match. Heard the sibling start crying from anger and it just triggered me into a rage and unfortunately I was blinded by anger and joined in on the fight. You’d think we’re in teenagers right? Nope, grown adults, still living with our parents because of money issues. I’m working on my finances so I can move out soon but man, having emotionally immature parents is exhausting. They never understand, they’re so scared of their own emotions. God forbid we even get angry or feel any negative feelings towards them. Now my dad exploded on me, asking me why I never tell them anything about my life, then proceeded to tell me my life isn’t going well because I’m not a practicing Catholic and I don’t pray enough.

I told them I don’t trust them enough and that my life isn’t their business. Now they took it as extreme disrespect because I didn’t help them regulate theit emotions. How? What they don’t know about me makes them feel anxious. I need to tell them stuff to alleviate their anxiety. It’s not gonna work that way. I’m tired of being their emotional punching bag. It’s always us kids that need to adjust to them. Mom has severe anger issues? We adjust. We don’t trigger her. If she gets triggered, we tolerate it because “she just needs to vent” and then she eventually calms down. Dad has severe anxiety? We stop whatever it is that makes him anxious so the anxiety goes away.

God this is so much. I’m not even blaming them anymore for what happened with my life. I’m working to fix mine but it’s taking time. It took me years to even figure shit out about why I feel so alone even when I’m with them. Shit happens, emotions rise and fall. But today it’s finally clicked in me that they can be nice people and be shit parents at the same time. The intention is to do good but damn the execution is insanely flawed and now that they want a closer family relationship with us, it’s just not gonna happen the way they want it to.

I’m tired of feeling all the guilt I shouldn’t even be having. I’m tired of the passed on anxiety of things I don’t even know is gonna happen. I’m tired of catering to emotionally immature parents who can’t even see their own behaviours and reflect on it. I’m working on getting out of this house, it feels like a crawl sometimes but I’ll get there. You never really know what happens behind closed doors.