Wednesday morning. Very pleased to announce that web traffic to BetseyHorton.com is through the roof! We are currently averaging 200-300 page views a day and it’s all thanks to viewers like you! Thank you for taking the time to make a significant investment of time, energy, and emotions to sort through the messy, unedited pile of crap that I’ve created to make me feel better about my sad little life. Seeing that hit counter gives me a feeling of purpose and meaning, even if it’s only there because everyone is laughing at my humiliation at my own expense.
Just want to give a huge shoutout to my dad for making sure I ended up this way. Thanks for locking me in a tower and refusing to let me experience real life in a healthy, meaningful way. Thanks for ignoring every single problem and issue I had in life because you were too busy working to actually parent your children. Thank you for setting a TERRIBLE example for what a loving, healthy relationship should look like. And, of course, thank you for dedicating all your time and energy to help total and complete strangers get ahead in life while making sure all I did was make bad choices and blog about them for free. Thank you so much. I don’t actually miss you that much, to be honest. And I definitely don’t miss my mom. Hates her!
I know, strange, now that I’ve delved down into the depths of my anger, I can see clearly now that most of it actually comes from my parents and their whole Britney Spears Conservatorship-style of “parenting.” Pretty much everything bad that has happened to me in life is because they failed to intervene when necessary and actually do their jobs as parents. Why set me up for success when you can just lock me up in a tower forever instead?
Yeah, maybe I should get Grief Counseling. I don’t know. Isn’t that for people who actually miss their deceased loved ones and can’t move on or imagine their lives without them? I feel like what I actually need is deprogramming from a high-control environment. That’s probably why I got so obsessed with cult documentaries. How did these people finally make it out? How did they finally get away from the people who were controlling every aspect of their lives down to a tee? Unfortunately, based on what I saw, it takes a long time. Most of them struggle to make even the smallest of choices, which is something I definitely have an issue with.
Honestly, I really just don’t want to get involved with a counselor. There’s no point. You know me. You sit down with me and I’m gonna monologue your ear off for an hour because I was literally raised by shrinks who taught me how to fill the silence for an hour because I, a 9-year-old child, had no idea why my parents suddenly decided out of the blue that I needed to come see this lady once a week. And wow, look how well that turned out for me. They really saved my life by drugging me from a young age and giving me new diagnostic labels every few years that just so happen to coincide with the latest batch of experimental drugs on the market. And when those drugs messed with my mind so much that I wanted to die? Give her more drugs! Just keep drugging her! Drugs, drugs, drugs, drugs, drugs! Ya local dealer Big Pharma is in the houuuuuuusseeeeee tonight! *air horn blows*
And when she finally turns 21 and you force her to move to the middle of bumfuck nowhere and send her to a new shrink who finally says, “Hey, your file looks like a bunch of bullshit. You don’t need this. You’re an adult. Go live your life!” and sets her free forever, what is the reaction? SCREAMING MELTDOWNS over everything all the time! Try to transfer schools? Screaming meltdown. Try to get a job? Screaming meltdown. Try to study abroad for longer than a month? Screaming meltdown. Want to move out of the house into a college apartment with my friends? Screaming meltdown! Want to take the car and drive all over the US and work in a National Park for the summer? Screaming meltdown! Getting ready for her first big critique at the Paris Writing Workshop? Screaming meltdown with scary threats designed to shake her up, make her late, and deprive her of being present for the biggest moment of her entire life that she’s been working towards for literal decades! And don’t forget our favourite classic: Taking a dance class online during the pandemic! That’s right! Screaming meltdown with the added bonus of shutting off the internet so I can’t show up to my final dance recital, therefore humiliating me in front of a group of people I actually respect. Guess who had to quit after that? But I’m the problem, right? It’s all meeeeeeee.
Want to do literally anything? Screaming meltdown!!!! SCREAMING MELTDOWNS over everything all the time! Please, tell me more about how I’m the “bipolar” one for trying to assert myself as an independent adult after a lifetime of literally being drugged against my will? Seems like you two are the ones who have ZERO control over your emotions. Literally, all my parents ever did was yell and scream at each other and their children. Anytime anyone would confront them over anything, it was a total DARVO meltdown. My mother was especially terrible about it. If anyone needed therapy, it was those two. They needed individual therapy, marital counseling, and a court-ordered 8-week parenting class. I’d love to see how much my mom would actually enjoy being on Lithium and being forced to go to a lab to have her blood tested every few months to make sure they’re literally not fucking poisoning her. My guess is… she probably wouldn’t like it very much either.
So, yeah, my dad’s biggest dream for his vision of my life was to have me write a book. Well, here it is, Dad! How does it feel to know that your daughter is making $0 off her sleazy stories about picking up some gross, old married man at a bar who turned out to be a #MeToo situation waiting to be exposed? How you like dem apples? You proud of the person you didn’t actually raise because you were too busy working? Yeah, get ready to have your legacy ruined forever. You wanna call me an embarrassment? I’ll show you embarrassment. Now that you’re dead, I can talk all the shit I want and nobody is gonna stop me with a screaming meltdown. Yee haw!
Wow, ya’ll. Writing that down was so much more cathartic for me than sitting in a room talking at someone for an hour. That shit does not work for me, like, at all. I can talk circles around anyone. I have tried to talk to several counselors out here and I overwhelm them with my life story every single time. It’s very clear the only solution is to write my own life story, make a book out of it, and try to sell it for some cash. In the meantime, have my drafts and scraps for free. Also, this is exactly why I have to do group therapy via online message. I can’t talk, so I get to read everyone else’s stories instead. I get to see real life examples of other people who have overcome similar issues and found their new beginning. That’s what I need right now. I need to know that people can survive what I’ve been through and make it out okay on the other side. A shrink can’t do that for me. They just can’t. I don’t trust them, I don’t like them, they don’t work for me, and I’m not gonna let another asshole give me some arbitrary label so they can push drugs on me so they can use the kickbacks to pay off their student loans. It’s a fucked up. I refuse.
So, yeah, hot yoga it is! I finally figured out why it’s doing it for me! Because it helps me feel like I have actual control over my own body. I get to decide what I do with my body. It’s mind-blowing to actually feel so connected to my body. I felt it when I was taking the dance classes, but as stated above, my mother saw how much those classes were helping me and immediately felt the need to destroy that opportunity for me. Why? Because clearly *I’m* the sick one, right? Anyway, yeah, so I started feeling really great about myself when I was taking the dance classes, mom shut it down, so then I got lost at the bars again. BTW, they know what they’re doing. They can see the credit card statements. They say nothing about a $300 bar tab, but spending $300 on dance classes is cause for a screaming meltdown of epic proportions! EXPLAIN THAT ONE TO ME! Exactly. *Someone* (my mother) has both an untreated mental illness and a raging addiction to alcohol, so if I get better, then suddenly everyone is gonna look at her and realize she’s actually been the one with the problem all along. And she’s the more fucked up one because she projected it all onto her child Munchausen-style! Is this shit a Lifetime Original Movie waiting to happen or what?!
I DIGRESS. DO YOU SEE HOW HARD IT IS TO BE ME RIGHT NOW? I can’t even write about what it’s like to feel in control of my own body without immediately having a flashback to all the times my parents tried to rob me of that control. You have no idea. I am not kidding when I say I feel like I was in a Britney Spears-style Conservatorship. I still can’t read her book because it’s too triggering and it’s all I want to read in the world because I have related to her for as long as I can remember.
Yeah, so obviously, I’m still working through a lot of crap. It’s so hard. There’s so much. It’s like an endless well. Just when I’ve cleared one level, there’s another one waiting. And god, I’m really hoping this is the bottom of it. If I just come out of the darkness and finally tell my story in a coherent way, everything will finally get better. I am putting the pieces of this trauma narrative together. It’s taken me like, ten years, but I’m getting there. I’m doing it. I’m going to be free soon. Then I can finally go live my life for real.
Okay, I’m done with the trauma dumping for now. I’m gonna go organize some stuff on my site so it’s easier to click right through to the Holidate Guy stories. That shit’s on FIRRRRREEEE! What a relief. At least he was useful for something. Thanks for getting my writing back on track. Apparently that was just the inspiration I needed. Yay! Thank you!
Work work work. I like to work on my website. I like to write. It’s just so difficult right now because of the insane levels of emotional processing happening. Thank you to my audience for still being here after a 5-year break and for always supporting me, whatever I write. ONE DAY YOU WILL BE ABLE TO HOLD A REAL BOOK IN YOUR HANDS! It might be on a Kindle, but still. It counts.
More coffee first, then work…