A place for Vase and Berry

Your pictures are really lovely. So many different, fantastic angles and beautiful flowers. I am not particularly good with plants myself but we are right now trying to redo some of the backyard which is basically a sand pit. Right now doing some planting feels like a way of fighting all the evil that I see in the world.

So asking lots of questions is a good thing overall. It means you aren't just accepting your reality but want to understand why it exists as it does. That's what makes you a good analyzer. No one explains themselves well all the time, but if you saw some of the papers that I grade I think you would clearly see that you are a good writer. And I am talking about people who have only even spoken English.

I am doing okay some of the time. I am struggling right now with medication for sleeping which I have taken for at least 8 years. Due to my high stress levels (the horrible politics in my country, my career choice under attack in the media, the financial difficulties at my school which means I still don't have job contract for next year (I could lose my job in May), and the two hurricanes from last fall), I haven't been able to stay asleep and thus am not getting enough and am waking up depressed each morning. The doctor finally increased my medication but it hasn't helped. I had gotten to the point where I only needed to see the doctor every three months and the therapist not at all. Now I am back to once a month for each. So it has been a step backwards. But I think I am starting in general to adjust a little more. I am very much limiting my social media and news which helps. And the short two day vacation last week helped too. 

I am positive that an 87% is fine for a year in which you struggled. You could have gone so much lower. I have a feeling that once those vitamins and stuff start helping that you will have more energy and do better this year. 

The best way to break the pill might be with a knife. Have your mom try to cut it in half for you. 

You don't need to read anything from the English book. That's fine too. I was just suggesting it because you sounded like you wanted to attempt some school work because you were nervous about it. Doing some stuff away from school and just sorting pictures or reading some light novel online would be good. I know that it is very English, but have you ever read Pride and Prejudice? You might like it as a romance story. You could also try books by Katie O'Neill like Dragon Tea Society. 

As far as the sleep schedule goes, yes it would be good to try to go to bed earlier. But depression very clearly messes with sleep and that isn't entirely your fault. As I said above, I am struggling right now and I go to bed at 10 pm promptly every night. So yes, you should have a consistent sleep time because that can help. Yes, you should take few naps so you can get a longer sleep at night. Yes, you should avoid turning on any computer or phone within an hour of planning on going to sleep and you shouldn't turn on any screen if you can't get to sleep. But all of that is really tough. Just keep trying to do your best. 

Yes, I have been on the peer appreciation thread just briefly. I sometimes get notifications from it. I hadn't heard from IsayUncle after helping him through his bad bout with depression a few years ago. It was really nice to see his name again and to know that he is still on a good track.

You don't deserve any of your parents' anger. They are simply being angry and self-absorbed. Your mother has literally known for at least 6 months that you were in serious trouble if I had to to guess. She made a bad decision to ignore that fact until you were on break which made things much worse for you. Anything that they are throwing at you now literally belongs on them. 

But the key becomes you not absorbing any more of their anger. You know they are wrong. You don't get to choose your parents, but you do get to choose how you respond to their anger. Don't accept it as a fact or anything you deserve. Work to get out of that house as much and as often as possible. I am actually hoping that you are able to attend school much more often in the 10th year simply to keep away from their poison. 

Sunscreen is very much something that you should be using. It doesn't cause vitamin D deficiency. Where in the heck did she hear that lie??

Okay, I am sorry to have not gotten to the end of your message. I will start where I left off tomorrow night. 

hi. so i read your message and it was good to read but i cant reply right now. feel free to finish that message and i'll read but might not really respond. i think i need to vent a bit and let you know about some stuff, and also, i need your advice.

so last night, my mother called me and asked me "what is your problem with making up early in the morning?" i just said that i hate it. so she's like "what about school? you need to wake up at 6 am when you have school." so i said "yeah, i'll wake up when i have school. on weekends and holidays, i'm waking up at 8 am." and then she accuses me of 'abusing my own body', whatever the helll that means. i hate hearing that, okay? it makes me mad. so i got mad and got rude and argued and stuff. by the way, is it really bad to wake up at 8 am? what's wrong with it? at first i used to think the 8 am thing was because of the maid, but apparently it's not. i remember you telling me once that you'd let me sleep in, right? what's so wrong with it? it's 'abusing my body'?

then at around 11:30 pm, i closed my door but didn't really go to bed. i was falling apart and hurting myself, wanting to d!e, panicking, banging my head, crying in my room after closing the windows, laying on the floor (not in a good way) and stuff. i wrote stuff and cried and whatever. then i was talking to my friend for a bit. then at around 1 am i decided to try to sleep. so i was still at my desk and about to do that, when i heard my mother calling. it was like 1:17 am or something. and she was calling because my door was still locked and under the door, she could see the lights on. so i pretended as if i feel asleep like that and i did unlock the door soon and went to bed.

this morning when i woke up, of course i felt like crap. but my mother was being super sweet. but then i got out of bed and realised my phone was gone. i frantically searched for it and even moved my bed to see if it had fallen off my bed on the side of the wall. but no. then i looked at my desk and saw that my laptop was gone too. so i understood that my mother took them away. i panicked. i did go to the bathroom and got ready, then i immediately started working on what i need to do to d1e. so now i have it ready for whenever i want to use it.

so then i got water and got into several arguments with my mother because i was in pain and a very bad mood and so close to attempting suicide. and then argument upon argument and me refusing to exercise and eat and getting yelled at and all kind of stuff. then she expected me to clean my room but won't give me the mop and told me to wipe the floor by hand with a rag. i refused to do that or vacuum and asked for the mop which she refused to give. so told me to get ready. i had 50 mins to just get ready, which is longer than i need. i was actually about to k1ll myself. if only i took one more small step, i'd be dead by now. but i thought of my friend and wanted to talk to me one last time so i stopped. and went to bed. then got yelled at and got late.

the the dentist appointment was pure helll. helll, just helll. sorry if i say helll too much but i love using the word, it just feels good. i hope you don't mind. so the doctor pointed out that i haven't brushed properly. i finally got caught not brushing well. it's been a mess lately to be honest. i've been skipping brushing a lot. and today morning i should've been more careful but i was panicked and forgot to be careful. so yeah, got a bit of a scolding. and my mother said i made her fall sick so she didn't come in, she was sitting in the waiting room. and the dentist and orthodontist were chattering away about stuff i don't even understand and the orthodontist was being so loud right in my face and not even talking to me. ugh. and the light was badly angled and blinded me. anyway, i got the wire on my lower teeth and now they hurt like helll.

also, on the way to the dentist, my mother told me that i can no longer have the laptop with me after i close my door at night. and i have time till 31st march to clear her google photos. if i don't she'll just delete everything because her google drive is 93% full. so i really have to do that now or i'm done. right now i'm on the laptop with that excuse but i'm not really working on it right now. i do have to do it though.

i'm worried that i will get my laptop taken away soon tonight (it's 10:05 pm). also, i start school on tuesday and i'm worried she'll take away my laptop then. which will absolutely not help me focus on studying. i need this laptop to survive. i can't so without this. if she forcefully takes this away, it will only make me keep thinking about it and be distracted and not study. and it'll make me likely to attempt. 

it's unlikely that she'll let me have the laptop after 31st march. i dont know what my mother has been thinking about my laptop use and why she's trying so much to take it away. but since i start school on tuesday, she might take it away again because i should be doing schoolwork and dont really need laptop for school that much. so i might not be able to have it on my desk like i have for all of 9th grade.

i dunno how much longer i can stop myself and how much longer i can really keep going. it depends on if i'm allowed phone and laptop or not because these are literally my lifelines. i cant do without devices, i dunno how to cope without them and i cant keep hurting myself all the time. so i dunno. but i have stuff ready so if i get impulsive i might end up attempting. how am i even supposed to live without this laptop or my phone? what do you suggest i do? how am i supposed to cope? without my devices, i literally have no source of support or any good coping skills. i cant help out, i cant get help, nothing.

i'm trying to remind myself about the times like in 7th and 8th grades when i did not have laptop with me all the time. but back then, i used to have my phone on my desk and could use it to use cups and watch youtube whenever my parents weren't in the room. and that phone was totally mine. my current phone is not really mine, both my parents can use it whenever they want. i want to buy myself a charger and phone case for it and i have the money but not the permission. so great.

anyway, what am i supposed to do? what do i do if she does take the laptop away? and maybe even phone? how do i study? how do i keep going? what, just what do i do? and how do i make her happy?

also, about the sunscreen. "Sunscreen is very much something that you should be using. It doesn't cause vitamin D deficiency. Where in the heck did she hear that lie??" i agree. and i love how you say "where in the heck" and the two question marks. what do i do though? the doctor said i should avoid using sunscreen because it forms a barrier and doesn't let the body make vitamin d from the sun. so in a way the doctor does say sunscreen can cause vitmain d deficiency. but she also said that it's more about lack of exercise than due to sunscreen. she did mention that i can apply sunscreen from 10 am to 4 pm. what what do i do if i leave for school at 7 am and can't carry sunscreen to school? my mother's mad about me applying sunscreen at 7 am. for now, i have enough sunscreen at home so i can go on using it and if she asks about it, i can say that i'm not using it. but eventually i will run out of it and i'm scared she won't buy me any more sunscreen. and i need it. so what do i do? i mean, i can pay for it and that's no big deal, but what do i do if she refuses to let me buy sunscreen? i really do need it. but she'll say that sunscreen is the reason i'm sick and if i wanna use sunscreen, it means i wanna be sick all my life. and take meds all my life.

basically what my mother expects is that i don't use sunscreen when i go to school. and i can be out in the sun for 10 am to 12 pm without sunscreen. after 12 pm, she will ask the school to not let me out in the sun. which is impossible and the school doesn't care. and on the bus ride home, there isn't any direct sun exposure so i should be fine without sunscreen. she thinks. now what the helll do i do? what do you think?

i do want your advice. andbout devices and sunscreen.

hey, how're you? you okay? no need to apologise or anything, but i really hope you're okay. i have some good stuff to tell you. first off, i didn't get the laptop taken away last night, and i did go to bed on time (around 12:40 am and i'm counting anything before 1 am as "on time").

and secondly, my mother told me that she thinks i've had a vitamin d deficiency since i was like 7-8 years old and no one knew it because i never got tested for any deficiencies. like at that age, i used to have a lot of leg pain every day but the doctor at that time just said that it was because i was growing. i dunno how the leg pain then and vitamin d deficiency is related in my mother's opinion. but of course this has been going on for ages and only got caught now that it's so severe. but why this is happening is a question i don't have an answer to.

my teeth hurt really had today and eating is a true pain. i've been struggling to chew anything at all. we went shopping today and now i'm home working with my gigantic collection of photos on my mother's google drive. you know why the storage is full? because i always photograph the same thing from multiple angles and i never delete any photos unless they are blurry. i cannot let go off my photos, i never delete any of them. which is not that much of a great thing.

i've been looking through my photos as well and i gotta say they're fun to look at later on. i can't believe i actually took them. sometimes i wonder if i should share some, but nah, let it be...

Sorry that I missed a night. I just need a little time off occasionally and I needed to research some of the plants that I was going to buy.

Ok, I am going to focus on the new stuff because there is a lot there. But first a quick thought. I am beginning to think that your mom is bipolar. It would explain why she is okay one day and then impossible the next. My guess is that she has never been tested and never will be tested, but it might be helpful for you to look at the symptoms and see if they apply to her. They don't really apply to you because you very clearly have classic depression. Just a thought

I agree that waking up at 8 am on weekends and school holidays is in no way abusing your body. In fact it is very typical for your age group. There are many of my students who struggle to make it to class at 8:20 because they oversleep their alarms.

I am sorry for all of your morning struggles with your mom in your first message. She keeps trying to come up with solutions and changing her mind so regularly that it is really hard to tell what she will do next.

I knew the braces were coming and that they would hurt. I am sorry. When they are both top and bottom it takes some days of adjusting. But it will get better.

Worry about what your mom does with the laptop at school time when she does it. It isn't going to help you worry beforehand. Hopefully she will let you have both the laptop and the phone. But my guess is that she will take them away for brief intervals and then return them. She has no ability to follow through long term on her threats. So what you need to figure out is how to deal with not having a laptop or phone for a single night without making it into a catastrophe. The more she sees you upset by it the more likely she is to do it again. So make a plan for just one night without. Maybe you can pull out some paper and draw, exercise before bed or read a book. Keep telling yourself that you will survive one night.

Try to do the sunscreen in smaller doses if you are applying it multiple times per day. Maybe that will help it last longer. I do think you should carry sunscreen to school. The burn time for the sun is one hour, not two. Here we urge everyone to wear sunscreen daily because of climate change making the sun's rays even stronger. Skin cancer is a huge risk.

But the doctor is right that the cause of the vitamin D is really exercise. That exercise should also be done outside when possible. The more that you get away from your house in particular the better. It doesn't make any difference what time you exercise. I think if your mom takes your laptop and phone away at night that you should exercise then. It will make you more tired and keep you busy in addition to being healthier. 

I am glad that you had a good second day. I am okay overall. Your mom is right that the vitamin D deficiency could have been going on for a while and perhaps recently caught up with you in terms of you needing more to grow. But your parents are the reason that it hasn't been caught. They didn't take you to the doctor often enough. However, the big key is that someone is looking now. You can get on a better path with those vitamins.

Glad you have been working through those pictures. My son will take hundreds and then limit them to just a few within a day or so of taking them. They are great to look at later on, but one angle is usually enough (especially if you might lose your ability to use your mom's phone because you have taken up too much storage). But it is awesome that you enjoyed looking through them so much. 

Have a great night!

It is harder when you get too hot. Any time that you can get outside of your room, do it. I know the room feels like a safe space but it can also become just a hot prison.

Sit out on your porch as often as you possibly can, especially in the early morning and later evening when it is cooler. 

Your mom is quite manipulative and doesn't have much in the way of following through on her threats. That is a good thing in the sense she isn't likely to take that computer away for long if she does take it away. Make sure to not overreact if she does and she will probably do it less often because she will recognize that isn't effective.

i feel like k1lling mysellf. and i could very much do it if i want.

Ok, this message is going to be very hard to write, but I think that this is going to be my final post to this thread. I will keep posting on the other "Good Moments" thread anytime that you have a good moment to share.

But I was just heavily urged by my own therapist to control how much I am doing here because of the state of my own mental health. I am slipping deeper into the hole and my brain simply cannot handle any more trauma or trying to keep you from taking your life.

I absolutely want you alive and strongly believe in everything that I have posted over the last two years or so. 

But you are ultimately the one who has to have courage enough to live. Life is hard and challenging at the same time it is wonderfully glorious with ice cream and laughter and taking pictures. You very much have that courage and strength within you. I have seen it.

Once you escape the clutches of your parents' belief systems, you accept the mental health help that you so desperately need, you will be on a better path. But up until now you have been unwilling to take those steps and I cannot live in the *** that you create daily for yourself.

I will pray deeply for you and I will answer any time on that other thread when you post something positive. But I need to be able to sleep at night and not have anxiety worrying about you. I need to take a stand for me in the same way I am saying that you need to take a stand for yourself.

I am going to add one more thing on here to make sure that I am clear. I help bunches of people on 7 Cups. You are the only one who has refused to get any psychiatric help from a professional.

It is a choice that you are making. Not your parents, not me, not your friends, or your school teachers. You need to take that step to help yourself. You had an opportunity a few weeks ago in talking to the doctor and being honest. YOU made the decision not to do that.

Yes the decision involves heavy risks. But nothing is worse than where you are at right now. Your parents could discipline you for speaking out or maybe even toss you out of the house. But still nothing is worse than where you are right now. YOU are making the decision to be there.

YOU ARE NOT SOME KIND OF WEAK COWARD WHO CAN DO NOTHING. You can do this and go back to the doctor and say how things really are.

Choose differently and I will be there for you. Every time you write something positive on the other thread you are starting to make that choice. I will support you in that. But I cannot support you here as you make constant threats and get angry for my own psychological well being.