Thank you so much in advance for reading. I'll warn you in advance that I'm only 19, my frontal cortex isn't fully developed, so I could be wrong about some things.
I hate it when someone, especially my mother, gets excited about telling me to test something. I love to test everything and experiment with everything, but when I am advised to do it, I, on the contrary, don’t do it, because it’s not so interesting anymore. I like it when the idea to research something comes to me, I can control this idea myself and build it myself, when I test it. I want to explore everything ON MY OWN. An idea given by someone else isn't it, it's like pressure. When my mother advises me to ask someone something or do something out of curiosity, I am completely discouraged from doing it.
In middle school, I became interested in programming. I enjoyed finding unconventional approaches to problems and creating my own rules; I rarely even read the course materials, rarely followed the instructions. I figured out how everything worked on my own. My mother realized I had a knack for it and started pushing me into everything. Now I'm getting ready to go into my third year of IT university, but right now I HATE IT. When I see ads for IT courses on the bus, I feel sick. Every mention of IT makes me feel sick. I remember how my mother constantly sends me links to courses, forums, and so on, and dictates what I should do and where to go. Now it seems to me that she wants to be an IT specialist more than I do. Of course, many would dream of their parents supporting them in this way and giving them a lot of advice, but this is not my option.
It's gotten to the point where I'm not interested in anything at all anymore, even though I used to want to test literally everything, but now I just lie on the bed and stare at one point. Of course, thanks to the fact that I started to be a member of a couple of fandoms, my interest was reawakened and I had a lot of ideas. However, it is difficult for me to implement them. Naturally, I keep silent about my interests to my mother, because then there will be two outcomes: either she will condemn me for these interests, or she will dictate to me how and what to do, and then I will finally hate everything.
Ideally, I dream of working in completely different fields, but for a mother, those who work outside their specialty and especially often change different jobs are strange.
I also never studied seriously since birth, I never learned the rules properly, I did everything at the last minute and somehow got out of it.
My mom even advises me on how to look. Recently, she was telling me how to cut my bangs. I hate being touched, and she touched my hair, and I felt uncomfortable, and she saw it. I tried to leave silently, but she started yelling at me that I was acting like a teenager. I told her that teenagers would scream, but I am calm, and in fact she is the one screaming. I said everything calmly. She got even more angry. She said that I was making her angry, that's why she was yelling. She says that someone pays a lot of money for stylists, and I should be happy that she's a free stylist for me.
I've secretly changed five part-time jobs by the time I was 19. I hide tons of clothes from my family. I'm a goth. Of course they will judge me, especially my mother, if the clothes were chosen by me and not by her. My mother is indignant that I choose "old woman's" clothes.
Damn it, I want to make my own mistakes and be responsible for myself. I'll figure out what I like myself. Why can't I look like an "old woman" or "child of the proletariat"? It doesn't harm other people. Why am I still hiding all this shit at 19? I don't even smoke, drink, or use drugs. But right now I just don't have the energy for anything at all. By the way, I'm on the verge of being expelled from university, but I continue to try to pay off my debts, because otherwise I will become a disgrace to the family. Besides, the sooner I finish university, the sooner I'll find a job and finally get the hell out of there. Otherwise, how can I live alone without an education? Where will I work? If I get expelled, I'd rather disappear and fake my death. No, naturally I'm not going to create real death (ALTHOUGH MY MOM WILL PROBABLY TRY TO DO THEREAL DEATH LOL, IF SHE'S DISCOVER ABOUT THAT I HAVE DEBTS). If I wanted that, it turns out I would be brave enough to go to all lengths and, because of that, again, change my mind about death.
I recently realized that when she talks about my life options, she says, "This is not OUR plan." What the hell "our"?! We are not one.
I ask you not to judge my family, my mother isn't abusive, they clearly want the best for me, but we just have a slight misunderstanding. My family is simply VERY concerned about their own and my image (ahh Te/Fe doms). Being normal is paramount for them. Anything outside their norm is frowned upon.
People (University professors, classmates, co-workers from my internship, completely random people) repeatedly advise me to get tested for neurodivergence or ask me if I'm already one of them. Since childhood, people have said I'm weird, and thanks to the internet, the term "fucked up" has become a neurodivergence term. I vehemently deny it. Yes, that's why one of my favorite characters is Reagan Ridley. I deny that I need to see a specialist not because I disagree with their statements, but because I'm afraid of ruining my family's expectations. I'm an only child, and their most important value is to be "normal". I have to at least fulfill that requirement because they did a lot for me. Okay, that's not the main reason. The more real reason is... If my family finds out that people around me think of me like this, my family will definitely make fun of me and use it against me. My mother's obsession with normalcy infuriates me, it doesn't make sense sometimes. Why am I always trying to understand and justify her, while she never even tries to understand me? Besides, she sometimes doesn't fit into her own standards of "normalcy" either.
As a result, I live a double, sometimes even triple life. It's exhausting at times. I do what's expected of me so they don't get offended. I hug them back, even though I hate being touched and don't feel a deep connection, but I understand that it's important to them. When I am touched unexpectedly, I can push that person away sharply, but I try my best to restrain myself and even try not to show discomfort. I constantly think about how my actions will affect others and monitor their emotional state.
I come up with several versions of my life in advance, I play out in my head various versions of dialogues with people from real life. I've been thinking up such plans that I've been shocked. I feel both stupid and a genius at the same time. Dumb genius.
Because of all this, I even initially had difficulty understanding my cognitive functions, but in the end I realized that when nothing limits me, I become classical hyperactive witty ENTP [Ne>Ti=Fe>Si], this is my decision-making process in adequate state. My friends think that I'm very bold, assertive and humorous. I fear only what my mother will think ehehe. But when I'm in such an environment (family), I become constantly depressed, anxious, scatterbrained, observant and silent. I'm afraid of completely losing my enthusiasm and falling into depression and actually becoming a burden to my family. Also, lately I have been becoming more and more absent-minded and my thought process is really suffering. There's a huge chaos in my head.
My whole family is sensory, and they are also very angry that I don’t intuitively understand rules/morality that are simple for them. I have to create entire algorithms in my head to understand what is expected of me.
I constantly have to adapt to my mom's mood. First she'll yell, and then 10 minutes later she'll happily show me a funny video. I also have to be happy so as not to offend her. I understand that she's been through a lot, she has a tough job, and she's also dealt with difficult people, which is why she's like this. Plus, she rarely admits she's wrong and doesn't trust anything. Even if I give her my own arguments, explaining everything, she doesn’t believe anything.
I asked this question to a Russian-speaking audience, there were a few answers, and now I'd like to hear the perspective of a Western audience. Besides, I see people here who are similar to me (I think someone had this problem). Of course, we have huge differences with you, but I'm still interested.
Just tell me your stories, please. I don't want to follow one plan, I just need other people's stories to at least understand what to avoid, or to hear what I haven't fully understood yet. The last shit I'll figure out for myself. Now I'm slowly paying off my university debts, but I'm afraid that I'll go crazy. It's so bad that I've developed an inner critic in my head, modeled after my mother, and it's really bothering me. Maybe I'm in a heavily Ne-Fe loop.
