Frita wrote:Is your lawn chair one of those with colorful webbing, aluminum armrests, and foldable?
I wish it was that cool.
Jin+Guice wrote:I think the way to defeat this is to figure out what need this is meeting for people you want to continue to engage with and what need your relationship with them meets for you and then creatively figure out how you could keep seeing them without spending a bunch of money on something you don't value (one of your needs).
Well, the sad truth is that I generalized, simplified, digested and semi-anonymized the situation in my original post. I wish what happened (is happening) was just a clash of ideologies with a workaholic-spendaholic friend I could readily cut from my circle. It has now become very clear that what is going on is that yet another member of my immediate family* has been stricken with severe mental illness. Her husband, who is a high-functioning INTJ epidemiologist-at-major-university kicked her to the curb, because "he no longer wants to be her punching bag" and now my decrepit-mentally-ill-mother with whom she was staying has also kicked her to the curb due to her displays of verbal viciousness. After the weird event on which I based my original post, she also independently went off on my other two sisters, after gaslighting me that they shared her views on my cheap-skate behavior, etc. The weirdest thing is that, as I wrote about in my journal, she oddly, and spontaneously purchased a mini-wardrobe from Walmart for me, saying that she wanted to perk me up, but "hoped she wasn't acting like our bi-polar spendaholic mother" and because she described her own odd behavior in such a "meta" fashion, it took me longer than it should have to realize that she actually is exhibiting all the symptoms of a major manic event.
*My mother, my paternal grandmother, my second sister, my son, my youngest nephew, and now my youngest sister. Bi-polar disease in one family tree combined with tendency towards mild schizophrenia/major depression in your other family tree is a serious bitch my friends. And when I describe these members of my family as suffering from serious mental illness, that means that I consider my third sister's post-partum depression/anxiety that was so crippling I had to care for her first-born child for his first year of life as minor. Oh, and let's not forget my severely dysthymic first husband who later attempted suicide, my human steamroller of a second husband who also had a bi-polar mother, and my seemingly sweet BF with bi-polar disease who stopped taking his meds when he fell in love with me and went into a full psychotic loss-of-self state as he was having sex with me. (Yes, I realize that my romantic relationships have been a matter of choice. My DD33 thinks that it is the combination of my easy-going, open, oblivious personality type and my early exposure to chaos that causes me to never see it coming.)
I love my family, and also very much like them, because they are all extremely bright,creative, interesting, fun, loving people on a good day. But I simply can't take care of any more people with severe mental illness. I am not feeling mentally, emotionally, or financially/practical-matters fragile myself, but I am still physiologically way below par due to Crohn's disease and drug/treatment side effects. I am afraid she is going to ask if she can stay with me, and I am going to wimp out and say "Yes." Luckily, her performance on the job has not suffered due to intense hyper-focus and she has plenty of money, so not like she will end up on the street, unless the disease progresses and become worse. I would estimate that she's at an extremely rage-exhibiting level two mania at the moment. I did confront her about maybe getting off the Adderall, but because she is oddly obsessing about power and money, she argued as though the fact that she is spending a lot of money for top drawer NYC psychiatric care is proof that the care she is receiving is appropriate. What sort of marginallyh competent psychiatrist puts somebody with family history of bi-polar disease on Adderall and Prozac simultaneously? Aaaaaaaaaaargh...!
Anyways, never mind about this being a problem applicable to anybody else attempting extreme frugality or gently outlining the science/math related to global climate change in social situation. It could have been the color of my shoes she went off on. Although, it also is the case that humans in a manic state can kind of act as canaries in coal mine with bright lights on tiny helmets. IOW, they HUGELY exaggerate, but aren't necessarily entirely wrong.
ETA: It's pretty clear that my top three coping mechanisms are 1) Classic Ostrich Head in Sand, 2) Sunshine Optimist Whitewashing, 3) Make it All Theoretical Detachment.
ETA: This event is also making me feel like I am living in the sort of novel in which you don't know which character is the reliable narrator. A few days prior to the first weird melt-down event, my currently-cuckoo youngest sister actually noted to me, "It's important to have a therapist who is as intelligent as you, because otherwise you can easily gaslight them." as she was obviously-in-retrospect engaged in the process of gaslighting her therapist. My mother has never been a very reliable narrator due to bi-polar disease and now she is also becoming geriatric forgetful, and has called me with the same update about my sister's behavior three times. And my mostly recovered from her severe mental illness second sister (who is the only other human frequently directly interacting with both my mother and my currently severely cuckoo-bananas youngest sister) still suffers from a 5% edge of paranoia, along the lines of truly fearing somebody might steal her mangy dog for political reasons.
Even in high school, I had friends who were cheerleaders, burn-outs, preppy, nerdy, drama/emo, or cute 22 year old guy who drove a potato chip truck. My personality type, the eNTP, or 7 Enthusiast on the cusp of 6 Traditionalist is also known as the Con-Artist, because we are often so chameleon-like in our social behavior.