- Date posted
- Yesterday
Family issues
I am seventeen, turning eighteen in a month, and things in my family have been rough for the last couple years. I have a few subtype of ocd and most likely autism, though my family doesn't want an evaluation. I'm not the best at phrasing things or noticing my tone, and a lot of the time get asked why I look sad, even if I'm not. Emotions aren't easy for me to express, and I struggle with noticing things out of place around the house, and certain compulsions are inconvenient, mainly when I cook or wash my hands a lot. Anyways, things started getting worse a couple years ago. I started keeping up with politics and ended up despising both of the major political parties where I live. I respect everyone's right to an opinion, but I am the only one not aligned with the party they support, so I normally get told to stop talking to avoid a fight, even if I'm asking questions to genuinely understand. Like I said, I struggle wording things less bluntly, but I've tried to explain my intentions. We got into a fight after I mentioned an assignment to my father and he turned it into a race and politics issue. Now, my faith has always been important to me, and that is a large part of why I disagree with the people they support. I mentioned something about how avoiding generalizations and viewing everyone the same, as children made in God's image, and was told that I don't have enough experience for what I say. I am a sophomore in college and live at home, but I don't think that means I can't say everyone deserves the same respect. He started talking about how my "ethics and morals" (to which I corrected my faith) would get me killed because I was stupid. I said that defending my faith even with my life was quite literally one of the things Jesus talked about and would not go directly against His teachings and got seriously yelled at for and told that it didn't matter in the real world and then, as I tried to leave, that if God was so important to me to respect my father and mother. I said that I do, but not more than God. So that also got me yelled at for, and I finished the housework and attempted to workout and then journalled for a few hours. When my mother got home, I tried to explain that I do respect them both but wouldn't go against God, the same way I argued when my father defended Nazi ideas and Nazis. So she said that he didn't mean it and that it was months ago, so why was it a big deal? I said because it was a moral issue. She asked why we couldn't agree to disagree, and I said that didn't apply to genocide. Then I said it was against the religion that they had raised me in, and that it made me feel unsafe. She started yelling and said if I felt so unsafe she could call someone and put me in foster care, but that they wouldn't tolerate my ocd. I said I just wanted to know it wasn't true, so my father came and it still took a few minutes to convince him to say he didn't believe it, and that I hurt him by saying he was a bad person. Also, he mentioned again that I b could just move out when I turned eighteen. He said I should get a dorm in the fall. So now they are both saying what I said was hurtful and my mother asked me earlier to apologize, which I didn't, but I don't understand how what I said was more hurtful. I called other family members just so I wouldn't spiral and have been on this app for a while. Does anyone have any advice? I genuinely don't know what to do.