My cousin confronted me last night. She wanted to know why I was laying in bed, depressed, unwilling to go out and have dinner.
I live with her, and she is my best friend, so she
Now, my cousin is a happy-go-lucky type who rarely talks about anything deep. But last night, she became very stern and told me:
"Get over yourself! The world doesn't revolve around you! Stop being so controlling! Your reaction to this event is psycho and out-of-line! You're not really mad about the birthday - it's just a handy excuse to berate him for not 100% fulfilling YOUR needs 100% of the time. You're punishing yourself and making the situation 100x worse, so that you can feel justified in punishing him. You're like a 5-yr-old kid, so narcissistic! Grow up."
It was an "a-ha" moment for me. I hurt myself in order to make people compelled to take care of me. I hurt myself in order to punish others. I have spun the "victim" web around me, and I believe it so totally that I wasn't even aware it existed. Talk about "once I was blind, but now I see."
