I had a really busy week working, and I had a bunch of overtime so I took a half day and started my weekend early.
I was at a job site this week that is less than 5 minutes away from my parents house. J and I spent last sunday afternoon at their house to check out their new deck, and I told my dad about it. He said he’d have to drop by and see me working. Pretty much the rest of the night was talking about J’s work and airplanes; flying kind of runs in my family, and my dad is a pilot and works with airplanes at his job. I’ve been pretty down lately, and I think a lot of it has to do with everyone being so into J’s job and work, and I’ve felt pretty boring and uninteresting in the meantime cause no one is interested in me or my work, so I felt better that my dad wanted to come see what I did.
I’ve had a hard time with my parents throughout my life, and always felt nothing I did was ever good enough. I was an excellent student growing up, never did drugs (I hated alcohol until a couple years ago, even), was well-behaved, etc. They seemed convinced I was the “bad child” however, and was just hiding it all from them, and hence treated me as such. So we didn’t get along well to say the least, because I felt punished for things I never even did or wanted to do.
As a result I have the hangup of never feeling like anything I do is really good enough for them. J has told me several times that he knows my dad is proud of me and into what I do - my dad has always been into geology, and now that I’m finally working as a geologist I thought he would finally be interested in me/my work more, but dad doesn’t even really seem to care about it. He was happy for me when I got the job, and got a raise, but he hasn’t been very interested in talking about what I’m doing or aspects of projects I work on. On the other hand, he’ll email me 6 times almost every day asking about where J’s going, or if J’s going to fly over their house and trying to take pictures of him, etc. He went out on the day J flew the first time and took pictures of J taking off (he works on the other side of the airport from him so it’s not a huge out of the way thing). I was delighted to be able to have them, and I think J liked it too.
But… now I feel horrible that I was less than 5 minutes away from the house for an entire week, and he couldn’t even bother to come out and say hi or see what I do. Just reinforces how I feel, that they’re not really interested in what I do or me, but he’s half obsessed with what my SO does. At least I feel I’ve made some progress in recognizing where my feelings are coming from, I was getting to be a pretty good bitch to be around and was blaming J for it. I’ve figured out that I’m not upset with him at all and my feelings aren’t coming from how he feels or treats me, but rather stem from the apparent fact that my own parents are way more into him and what he does than their own daugther, and I feel ignored or inadequate because of it.
On the upside, my realizing this led J and I to have a wonderful evening together last night, and I felt pretty happy for the first time in a week or two. These feelings have really been grinding me down lately, but hopefully realizing where they’re coming from will help keep them from interfering with J and mine’s relationship.
). I kind of wonder if I’m just getting used to J having a job again, and I feel down because he’s not around here to spend time with me nearly as much.