[CW: Mental Health, Racism, Suicidality, and Trauma]

Context:

Anyone who has read some of my posts that go into personal detail, I'm sure you know that I've been in a stressful situation for some time now. I've been unemployed for a bit, seeking out jobs and struggling to land one, and receiving mutual aid assistance to adequately keep me afloat. In the first post I made in reaching out for mutual aid assistance, I vaguely refer to an unexplained "mental health crisis" that got me in these circumstances to begin with. Well, now, I'm gonna talk about it because the context is relevant for the explaining what "This" in the title means.

On February 10 of this year, I left my complex to go to a restaurant to get some food for the night. Upon leaving, on the porch, I saw one of the residents. He seemed all friendly and kind, and he didn't show a hint of a bad mood and even happily greeted me. Upon coming back home, it was around 6 PM, and I still see him on the porch, but this time, he's livid.

He told me that he noticed a mess on the shared kitchen stove, and he seemed to be very accusatory in thinking that I was responsible for it. There are 6 people in this complex, all who use the same kitchen, so it seemed there would be a possibility that it could've been someone else, but he was really centering his frustration with this towards me. He tried to gather just ONE piece of evidence to figure out if it was me who caused this, and apparently this was enough for him to lose his shit. He asked me:

"Did you use the kitchen today?"

In this situation, I said "Yes, but-", and then he got mad and shouted at me saying to "clean it the fuck up" and that "We don't live in a dirty house here.", and this fucked with my mind really harshly. It's incredibly reminiscent of how my parents had a tendency to put me down for every shortcoming that occurred in my childhood and even my early adulthood, and they always assumed bad faith. If I fucked something up around my parents, they would assume I did it on purpose, with the intent to sabotage, and I got yelled and shouted at, and harshly degraded for it. This just sunk in memories of how I've had to endure treatment like this throughout my whole life, even beyond my parents.

Let me clarify a few details:

  • I did use the kitchen, but I mentioned the time of arriving back home at roughly 6 PM for a reason. I used the kitchen around 10 AM earlier that day, and that was it.
  • At the time of the incident, I didn't consider this, but later on, I realized that it definitely wasn't even me who left the stovetop mess, which makes sense because I take adequate care to deal with it every time I'm done using the stovetop. I know that it wasn't me because I put away the dishes after I washed mine when I was done eating around that 10 AM time. When I came in the kitchen a bit later, like possibly around 3 PM, simply to get some water to drink, I noticed more dishes in the dish rack. This means that someone besides me definitely used the kitchen before this altercation. Obviously, the dishes didn't just show up themselves.
  • I sense that it could possibly be due to a sense of bigotry that he felt so inclined to get upset with me in particular. There could've been ageism too. I'm black and queer, and this resident is an older white man who said the n-word with a hard R in front of me, although not at me, and since I'm the youngest resident in the complex, he might also be putting me down due to age.
  • The very next day, immediately after I woke up, I walked into the kitchen to make breakfast and saw a huge mess of crumbs and shit on the stovetop, and the "stovetop on, hot surface" light on, and I JUST WOKE UP AND LEFT MY ROOM.

With all of this in mind, for him to be so aggressive, and not only speak as if he's automatically assuming that I was to blame for this incident, but also to assume that, if I were to mess up the stove, that I did it with bad intentions. This explains why he went with phrasing that assumes it was done out of malice rather than ignorance. This explains why he felt prompted to say "We don't live in a dirty house here.", which comes at an angle assuming that he thinks I knew of the mess and was just like "Well, fuck! I don't give a shit about cleaning THAT up, so I'll just leave it!" instead of, in the case of me actually making the mistake, that it simply could've been done by accident.

I was so distraught when this happened that I actually became deeply suicidal, and I immediately performed impulsive actions because I thought my life was over because of how bad I felt. Some may say "It was just a small mistake. It's no big deal!", but to me, this was deeper than that. Like I said, my parents and other people have put me down and shamed me and believed me to be incompetent and worth nothing. Any incident for someone to get really upset with me over a mistake I did is something I see as a part of a series of examples of my "worthlessness" as a human being, and the intense emotion this man had put far out of my ability to properly reason about why I should possibly carry on.

I threw away a lot of my personal belongings, I called my boss and told her I am quitting without notice, and I just lied in bed and was going to go to a department store the next day to pick up a rope to end my life by hanging. I really wanted to make this seem like it was irreversible. I also didn't bother reaching out for help because I felt extremely and actively suicidal, and I considered the fact that my parents, whenever I brought up suicidal ideation to them, literally told me things like "Suicidal people don't reach out for help. They just go ahead and kill themselves! You just want attention!" in the past. This led me to believe that suicide was the only way forward because the suicidal feelings just seemed so bleedingly genuine.

(Un)fortunately, when I woke up, I decided, despite the moves I had made last night, I was going to carry on, and that led me to here. I was able to get caught up in some ways and even repurchase many of my belongings. But that's just the backstory and context for you to know exactly the details of why what happened today pissed me off.


What Happened Today:

I go into the kitchen to cook some dinner tonight, and I take a pot to boil some spaghetti. I look in the pot, and I see a ton of stains, mostly red and brown in color. Immediately, it dawned upon me, and I got extremely pissed when I realized what this meant.

The older man that got pissed off on February 10 used this pot literally two days ago, and I saw him using it. He was using it to make a huge pot of chili, as this was the biggest pot the kitchen has, and to make it worse, I was the one who BOUGHT THE FUCKING POT. Obviously, this kitchen stuff is for community use, but there's some layer of that factor that makes it seem even more awful. In addition to the residue on the pot, another piece of evidence that it was definitely him is that the huge pot is rarely even used, so I highly doubt that, within the span of two days, someone else could've been responsible.

The pot was pretty fucking awfully stained. I had to wash it out extremely well to see the markings on it, as there were lines that measured the amount of water in cups and liters, and I could hardly continue cooking my dinner with how mad I had become.

What this tells me is that this huge piece of shit who got mad at "me" (assumed) for leaving a mess in the kitchen, literally fucking left a huge mess on a dish without washing it out properly. To think that this man is the one that drove me into this crisis and has the audacity to pull a hypocritical move like that fucking made me insanely angry.

I'm disgusted, grossed out, and just completely torn that this entire incident has led up to this, and I'm still not over it, hours later.

It's no surprise that a man who got extremely vexed with me simply because I said I like Iron Maiden more than Judas Priest would be this fucking terrible.

deeper-sadness

  • Nakoichi [they/them]
    ·
    4 months ago

    I can relate, the dipshit kid that called the cops on me and tried to get me evicted with a string of bogus noise complaints (who eventually went so far as to illegally record me in my apartment and got himself evicted instead) used to wash his dishes in the bathroom sink (we don't have a proper kitchen) and I was the only one that ever cleaned the bathroom or plunged the sink.

  • allthetimesivedied [they/them, she/her]
    ·
    4 months ago

    I am often accused of shit I didn’t do and have absolutely no mind to do—and no matter how hard I insist I didn’t do anything, the accusative shit persists.

    One day this awful fucking person in a Facebook group decided I was scamming the group to buy meth. They “knew,” too, because addicts will of course say or do anything for dope, and they’re a former meth addict too, so of course they’re right that I’m lying. I absolutely had a meltdown—my knee-jerk way of responding to shit like this is to melt down, the idea being, they will take it to suggest genuineness, but it never works—and even after screaming insane voice messages about how they were making me want to kill myself, they persisted.

    This other little shit from the group kept calling me a scammer, and when I said she was making me fucking suicidal, you know what she did? She replied with the link to this trans suicide hotline. What an absolutely smug, heartless response. And these people were in an “Anarchist Buy Nothing” group.

    The one instigating this clearly has brain worms. One bit of their “evidence” was that I had posted a request for a guitar in the group, and when someone replied offering me one, I…didn’t reply to them?

    They also screenshotted this comment from a little Two Minutes Hate that took place after I left the group. Someone who had responded to a request I made for wigs, almost a year before, lamented how “cold” I was, and how I made another request of them or something, I forget what—which they never expressed any opposition to. So I’m such a mean piece of shit because I wasn’t in a good mood, and because I asked something they could’ve said fucking no to.

    And then a year later or so I start getting tone policed in another group, because I wasn’t happy with the patronizing tone of a comment on a post I made about looking for a car. One of the admins of that Anarchist Buy Nothing group chimed in to say how much of a nasty, rude person I am—something she had absolutely no right to say. When I DM’d her calling her out for being a lying bitch, she screenshotted it and commented with the screenshot attached. I was kicked out of the group.

    All of these people were aware that I was trans, and homeless, but they didn’t care. I wasn’t one of the trans lives who mattered.

    • Angel [any]
      hexagon
      ·
      4 months ago

      They are better to a good degree. The worst part is finding a new job, which I've been trying to achieve like hell, but it's still been a pain in the ass.

      • idkmybffjoeysteel [he/him]
        ·
        4 months ago

        I am glad to hear that things are feeling better, it sounds like you have had a really hard time.

        I hate to give unsolicited advice, so feel free to ignore if you think it's stupid or inappropriate, but have you thought about reaching out to your old employer and explaining honestly your situation? I would have been really worried about you if I were them, and I would be glad to have you back.

        The worst case scenario that they could turn you down feels scary, but ultimately leaves you in exactly the same position as you would be in had you not called them. It would be more an indictment of them than anything else, and they would look really shitty if they didn't try their best to accommodate you.

        I don't think it is too late to shoot your shot, but you would know better than me whether or not this is even an option for you.

        • Angel [any]
          hexagon
          ·
          4 months ago

          I already did. Unfortunately, they said they wouldn't mind taking me back, but they said they still had issues with staffing in that, at their current status, they have enough people already and can't hire me back due to only a limited amount of labor being allowed.

          Hell, even my manager knew something was up before this happened. She was taking notes that my mental health had seen off, and literally the day before, I had a crying spell at work, and she let me leave early to take care of myself.

          • idkmybffjoeysteel [he/him]
            ·
            4 months ago

            That is so frustrating, good thing you tried though, hope you can catch a break soon.

  • sharedburdens [she/her, comrade/them]
    ·
    4 months ago

    I like Iron Maiden more than Judas Priest too, they even have a dune song. This guy sounds like a turd, clearly projecting the shit she does onto everyone else

  • Thief_of_Crows [none/use name]
    ·
    4 months ago

    You really need to get professional help, if that situation got you actively suicidal. Don't wait for another episode, at that point you won't want to reach out. That is a major overreaction to someone being a major asshole towards you. There will always be people who are shitty to you, but you can't give them that sort of power over you. You still control how you react to them.

    • Angel [any]
      hexagon
      ·
      4 months ago

      I'm currently with a nice therapist helping me overcome some of these hurdles.

      Throughout my life, I received virtually no praise for anything but excessive criticism for everything.

      My mindset now seems to be:

      "If someone got upset with me over something, then that means it's my fault, I'm incompetent, and there's no way that it's simply them reacting the wrong way."

      I lack the ability to think that another human being can be more wrong than me.

  • heartheartbreak [fae/faer]
    ·
    4 months ago

    This loser is a scumbag and the sooner you can tell him to fuck off forever the better off you'll be. Things will definitely get better, sending u energy and love meow-bounce

  • Sopje
    ·
    4 months ago

    That’s awful and your response is very understandable and logical for what you’ve been through. I’ve been in similar situations where my trauma is channelled into an extreme anger that I wasn’t able to control. Honestly I still have no idea how to deal with that type of anger, it’s just awful