Titles, labels... what's the difference?

Things are stuff. Today I was reminded that when I'm engaged with a client, I have to make sure I'm passing attention to everything else, too. I find it funny that the person who said it must not realize my background or work experience. My whole life enabled this magical power.

I can't English today so I'm done even though this was short and boring. I have to get up early anyway.

Hostilities

I'm thinking a lot about my daughter's relationship with her dad and step mom, and theirs with me right now... I think my daughter may have actually called him (which she never does) to arrange plans for Christmas... This got me thinking that maybe she enjoys visiting more than she lets on (which would be ok). This also led me to wonder what she says about me, which made me wonder if *she's* the one talking all the shit... Every time I repeat anything she's said to me to anyone, the two of them say I'm shit talking them. What if my daughter is purposely (or accidentally) causing all of the issues between our two families..? Then what? There's been a war going on between us for years, but it intensified and escalated (despite all of my efforts to deescalate the situation) since my mother passed away. She's been incredibly disturbed since my mother's death, and was horribly traumatized by it.

Then I think of reasons this notion is ridiculous (to fact check, a skill I slowly and intentionally learned)... I thought the phone call took place on my watch, perhaps while I was sleeping, but the record shows my last call to him was immediately followed by a call to my therapist, which means I talked to him. But why wouldn't she just tell me she called him? She would've mentioned that...
She says horrible things about them that they don't seem to know she's upset about when confronted, but whenever she's upset with me, she readily tells me, or I can get it out of her easily. Her face gives it away such that anyone paying attention could tell. That's consistent with her stories of them... I've gone out of my way to build a relationship of trust and comradery with my child. They've done nothing but lie to me for all the years I've known them, including her childhood. Even I've seen them fight. She used to come to me for advice on how to put up with his shit. I'm sure he talked her out of that. She puts up Facebook pictures that blatantly rub my nose in the bad history I had with him. He is most likely a pathological liar. No one I know has ever believed anything he had to say, even when they first met him, many people he knows feel the same way. Nobody takes her seriously, including my sister, who is her best friend. She refers to them as the bitch and the asshole (yet sides with them on everything, including his child support).

Nah... It's totally my sister. Not my daughter. I can trust her. My sister, on the other hand, I've never been able to trust.

The crazy

Every woman in my family since my grandmother has been bipolar. We're not the mild kind, either. My grandma used parking lots as demolition derbies when I was small, for example. She and my sister are probably the most extreme examples, but I'm probably biased... Other people always seem to think I'm crazier than I do (though I do get the occasional, " but you seem so normal!". I'm very vocal about my mental illness. I think there is a huge stigma that strangles treatment, and there is a general consensus that we're all murderers or something, too)...

Anyway... Original point... The women are batshit crazy, and the men just sort of abandon us, which beats the alternative, I suppose, since we've all attracted many just terrible - think being pushed down stairs and hit with huge ashtrays - boys. I call them boys because we've known few men. Men flee us. Boys stick around and cause further trauma. In fact, the ones who abandon us typically treat us like crap before they vanish... Even family.

Dust in the wind is playing in my house right now... It reminds me of death and other losses of life. My grandmother wanted this song played at her funeral. One of the last serious conversations I had with my mother were planning her funeral arrangements. Then, a few short days later, my mother died. This song reminds me of both of them (my grandmother is in a dementia ward, 20+ years into frontotemporal dementia, still in stage 3 - average lifespan is 8-9 years) and I can't help but bawl the whole time it's playing. I only miss my grandmother part of the time, probably because she threw me down stairs, hit me with ashtrays, hit my mom, etc. She did teach us to fight though, it would've been boring for her to fight us if we didn't know what we were doing...

The train has left the station, leaving me in a pile of dust. This cycle of crazy has been going on a very long time. My solution for my life is to choose to not deal with it. I can live without a partner just fine. I have friends. I don't need anyone any closer. Certainly not right now. Although there was a man at the cash and carry today that made me kinda silly... That's the last thing I need, though. 

Being bipolar kinda sucks. My psychiatrist has decided he'd prefer to put me on depakote because I'm still cycling off cliffs. I told him as long as he puts me on only weight neutral stuff, I really don't care. 

I got a fantastic energy drink for free with my groceries the other day. I didn't think starbucks would ever make anything I would like. Weird.

This is getting stupid.

My daughter is most likely bipolar also. What a surprise. I just wonder why none of the men in the family get it. Maybe they do, but they aren't around enough for us to know. I'm done.