ghoulwitch

I know I used to think up the most bizarre, see-through, and implausible lies when I was a child. Sometimes it was just because I wasn't sure how to answer a question or because it conflicted with other information I'd been given. So someone I didn't know might ask me, say, "What's your name?" and having been taught all about stranger danger and things like that, I might blurt out something like "I don't have a name" and go into a long explanation of why nobody gave me a name and what they call me instead. I guess it would be adorable from a certain perspective if it hadn't gotten me into trouble so much. I've never found lying easy though (and I tend to think I'm much better at lying than I really am, which is pretty dangerous). I've learned the "technically true" method instead. It's not lying, so I don't have any kind of a mental block about it, and I'm less likely to forget what I said than if I lied outright. If I mention to someone that my cat needed to be taken to the vet and I didn't think I could make the event-- totally true, I have had several cats who were ill over the years and I often feel like I can't deal with large amounts of people-- and they happen to infer that I couldn't turn up because I had to take my cat to the vet [recently], well, that's... not my problem. Sort of.

I've always kept pretty weird hours-- I just feel so much more comfortable at night when everyone is asleep and I'm alone, and the streets and roads are empty. However, since moving back from my flat to my parents' house it's just become a serious nightmare trying to sleep regular hours. No pun intended, naturally. I need a huge amount of alone time or I end up with debilitating social exhaustion. This normally manifests itself as withdrawing from any and all social contact, before bursting out in sudden and uncontrollable rages at other people over really tiny things like being misheard or having to explain something twice. That's not a great thing to have when you're living in a small house with three other people. In fact I need to spend at the very least 75% of my time alone, optimally 95% or more. My sister and mother are very extroverted, talkative people who will bother me just for something to do. In addition, I don't really need to be talking to people to wear myself out, I just have to be near people. The next room or even the other end of the house will do it if there's still any chance that they can come over or they can hear me/I can hear them. This means that the only time I ever get to recuperate and regain my mental energy is late at night while everyone else is asleep. I often find myself staying up until dawn or later just for the chance to have a blessed rest. And, of course, ending up getting out sometime mid-afternoon. We live in the middle of absolutely nowhere or I'd spend my days off doing things on my own. Because the nearest bus stop is several miles away and I can't drive (severe anisometropia-- no depth perception, I'm a danger to everyone on the road) I also can't just find a job working the graveyard shift restocking shelves or something because there's no way I could get there. Plus, in this county there are about 20 people for every one vacancy-- getting a job here is hell. (I know, I know, I could just go into that big lovely nowhere all day, but being out of range of wi-fi and very much in the range of mud, twigs, spiders, and brambles is just not in my list of priorities, especially when my major hobby is extremely fancy clothing. There's just no way I'm taking my pretty dresses and bonnets out into the forest. Besides, god knows who could be stalking around out there. I don't feel too much like being a woman on my own in a secluded area with no phone signal and no houses for miles.) Unfortunately my parents are not really an understanding pair and my mother especially would never be able to comprehend that I don't just like that time alone, I need that time alone. I need it like I need to eat or breathe. The result of this is that my parents are constantly on my back about how late I'm getting up and nagging me about my supposed laziness and immaturity. This causes me a huge amount of stress, and my nice safe night time becomes a time when I'm always worrying about my mother coming down to perform spot-checks and make sure I'm sleeping under pain of taking my laptop away (for the record, I'm 21...). What this novel has been leading up to is, since there's no chance of me waking up to find that the rest of the human race has disappeared, is there anything at all I can do about this short of moving out? Does anyone have any good coping strategies or advice? I'm really at my wits' end and exhausted from the stress.