I need a job so I can move out NOW!

Tuesday, February 15, 2011 “Please review your contract. I want you to get better, but I don’t see any change or impetus from you to make things better or at least headed in the positive direction. Please make an appointment with my counselor. I believe you need to talk and you don’t want to do it with me,” Mom’s letter reads. She leaves me a letter with things she needs me to do every day. Mom wonders where I get my feelings of inadequacy and that nothing I do is ever good enough. I was livid. “Forcing me to do things that you believe will make me feel better is not going to make me feel better at all. It is only going to make me resent you. You want me to get better and get better your way - talk to a counselor, work out, volunteer etc. This isn't about you and what you want. Just because this is what you do when you feel down, doesn't mean it works for everyone else. Not only do I not want to talk to anyone, I have nothing to say. I am not sitting here dwelling on how I've been wronged by others. That is not what depression is about at all. Depression is about me. I am not holding grudges against anyone and whatever anger I have towards certain family members I'm working on letting go. I don't need to talk or want to talk. I write instead and then you ask to see what I've written like its homework. You want to keep tabs on everything I do. Do you want to read everything I've been writing? Is that it? Would that make you feel better? Or are you just bothered because you want me confiding in you instead? In your eyes, I haven't made progress but to me, I have. I am writing every day, I already had an interview, I am spending time with my cousins and I am spending time with family. A month ago, I wasn't doing any of this in DFW. You keep saying one day at a time and then contradict yourself by waving a contract with inane rules on it in front of me every couple of days. I will eventually build up and feel better to where I am in a place where I want to be around others, but right now I don't. I keep trying to explain this to you. Being around other people won't make me feel better. It will make me feel worse. I get anxiety thinking about being around other people and begin to panic. I am trying to focus on me and only me. You keep saying that I can't make others happy until I'm happy myself but then you're insistent that I volunteer. I can't help anyone right now until I help myself,” I email her. Why won’t she leave me alone?! She sends me an email apologizing and telling me to forget the errands she had wanted me to run for her. The old Puerto Rican mom guilt trip. It’s the oldest trick in the book and I am not falling for it. Lito is in town and calls me to hang out with him and other cousins. We stop by my cousin Daniel’s house and go to the mall where I decide to spoil myself. I needed a long cute top to wear with my skinny jeans, I convinced myself. I found a top on sale at Forever 21 and continued to spoil myself with a caramel frappucino and peanut M&Ms for lunch. I always restrict myself. I rarely indulge. Especially with the way she controlled our finances with an iron fist, I rarely got the chance to do things I wanted or things just for me. That was going to change, I swore to myself. Never again.