I'm not sure I'm capable of loving or being loved by other people

[Glides]

Case in point: my parents argue at least once a day. This wasn't always the case, but I've kept track of it, and literally every single day since March 14th, the two of them scream at each other. Sometimes objects are broken. Some days I've been woken up by it. This happens over and over and I'm so used to them switching into nice mode as soon as they talk to anyone else. Sometimes I suspect neither of them are capable of any emotions other than anger.

Whenever one of them isn't there, the other gets bored and their only way to deal with it is to invent reasons to be mad at me. A big one lately is collecting dishes of mine either when I'm not looking or when I'm there and they pressure me into giving it over. The next time I don't immediately agree with either of them wholeheartedly about something, the dishes come up again. Suddenly I'm a slovenly lazy disgusting asshole who can't even take care of themselves. They said as soon as the pandemic started that I shouldn't ever collect the mail or the garbage since I could be infected that way, but now I understand it was just another way to gather ammo.

The argument: I've been refusing to apply to jobs my mother has been sending me. I'm already employed, and granted, making a fraction of what they're making. They have this strange fixation on the idea that every job they send me is six figures with every kind of insurance possible. My current job was assumed to be this and then they got really confused when it's actually barely five figures a year with no benefits.

So of course, me not having a proper salary or benefits must be my fault somehow. Them collecting the dishes and washing them before I take them to the sink must be my fault. Them insisting on doing all the mail and the garbage is my fault. I recognize the pattern. But again, I've never really had loving parents so much as parents who are incapable of human emotion other than anger.

So again, seeing how long this pattern has been, combined with how I didn't begin living with them fulltime until my grandmother died when I was eleven, means I've only really spent part of my life with them. I would still see them during the first decade of my life, and apparently I was only foisted off on grandma when I was around five or six years old, but I don't remember much. The irony is that they actually spent a few years living with my maternal grandparents and barely working at all, and then a little bit with one of my uncles, so their image of being these hardworking people is mostly bullshit. Even now, they're paid decently well for jobs that don't require much practical application and are more tedious than difficult, but they see a couple of strokes of really good luck as reasons as to why they're somehow the Perfect Americans.

I pay rent, I pay for my own food, I more or less do everything for myself while still living with them. The only impediment is the pandemic, which means I can't leave without risking infection, and getting a job that pays enough that I could pay more than the amount I'm currently paying them for rent. Like again, I'm a privileged shit for having that, and I don't think they'd kick me out, but there's still a lot of animosity.

Of course, this extends to my relationships with people, where I can be very detached and closed off. Doesn't matter that I'm working more than I have in years, doesn't matter how hard I'm working at anything, if I am not in their exact financial place tomorrow, I will never be enough, but if I was, they'd find another reason to view me with disgust and derision.

So of course, I don't really know what proper familial love looks like. Their capacity to switch from hysterical rage to insincerely kind is so fast that it's actually kind of frightening. They're both really good at this. As a result of my mother having to work from home and my father still having to go in to work, this has resulted in me and my dad arguing way less. But I don't view him as a father. I don't view my mother as a mother. I view them both as two much older roommates I happen to live with who yell at each other most of the time and yell at me whenever one of them is gone over the most banal pointless shit. Again, today's argument resulted in me asking my mother to stop sending me job applications when I'm already employed somewhere, but apparently I don't need to sleep and apparently the teaching position she found is full-time and tenured (it is neither).

So of course, she began calling me a coward for being too scared, and I was reasoning that literally no one is hiring during a pandemic, that unemployment rates are just about to be worse than Great Depression levels, and that I was under-qualified for the position anyway, AND she should be happy that her kid is consistently working. But of course, because I'm not working 40 hours a week (she's definitely not either since the pandemic started), because so many people have had their hours cut, I must be incredibly lazy and I must never want to leave and I must always be a leech who's taken from my dear innocent victim complex parents since the day I was born.

Their frustration and distaste towards me stems from the fact that I apparently had some pretty severe developmental disabilities as a little kid, so my current therapist suspects (but won't say for certain since she can't diagnose) that I might be on the autistic spectrum, which granted would explain a lot of why I struggle so much with social cues. And the big thing for them is how furious they get at me when I don't listen to them, or barely pay attention at times, or be overwhelmed by how loudly they yell. I've already got twin ADHD/ADD diagnoses on top of everything else that have been confirmed, so that just makes it better and better.

But again, I've only been drawn to toxic people who replicate the unstable nature of my relationship to my parents and I've only recently gotten to the point where my friendships don't resemble my interactions with them. I'm no longer around the sheer amount of manipulative people I chased after because I was so eager for some kind of parental approval I'd never ever received before. These are two people who spent my childhood doing just enough to make sure I wasn't going to starve to death but also made damn well sure to let me know I was their last priority unless I did something impressive enough. Have good grades, play the sports they chose, go to the schools they chose, apply for jobs they chose, either I was their living doll or I was nothing, so eventually I chose nothing after I burnt the fuck out.

My friends have an uncomfortable relationship with them because my parents are much nicer to them than they are to me (a really infamous childhood incident was my best friend from middle school telling his family during a dinner i was invited to that my parents had told them that they had wished he was their child instead of me, with me there when it happened. This had actually happened when I was like twelve or thirteen). And the reason they liked him is because he was clearly an athletic popular kid with no perceived mental illnesses. Said person now definitely has some severe anger issues, so my parents guessed wrong, and he's also definitely not straight, which they also wouldn't like.

Their initial acceptance of my gender stuff eventually revealed that they still wish I wasn't like this but also don't see any way to make it stop, it's just one more nail in the coffin of any approval I'd ever get from them. And so I don't know how to love because of them, and because compared to the rest of my family, they're a couple of saints. I don't know what love looks like or how to receive it or how to give it. I don't know anything other than parents who obsess over minutia and who have alienated themselves and burnt every possible bridge. They're incredibly isolated and miserable and angry people, and all they can do now when they're not at work is spend every waking moment with each other, and scream at each other because they're so bored and lonely and don't know what to do about it. Every time I've asked them to go to therapy after every huge object-smashing fight which I'm almost certain the neighbors are all able to hear, they play as if they will and then refuse, they complain it's too hard and they complain that it's pointless.

They're both nearly 60 but you'd think they were a decade older with how quickly they've aged. They used to joke and say that I was the reason they look so old and worn out, but it's really their own faults for constantly screaming at each other and both of them having such severe anger issues, and I can attribute the source of my own explosive temper right back to them. The tiniest things make them angry or depressed, upon me talking back to my mother about her trying to control the jobs I was applying to, she screamed for several minutes almost incoherently and then sat down and began to pretend as if she was crying. In the past, this would make little-kid me rush over and apologize for whatever had happened even though it was rarely my fault. Me in the present just walked out of the room, knowing she was faking for brownie points, completely unaware of the most basic social cues and probably not caring too much. What she'll do now is mope for a couple hours and then try to make peace, and I let her, and I play as if I've forgiven her. Dad does the same shit but we interact so rarely despite sharing pretty close quarters that this isn't the same thing. if the roles were reversed, it would be Dad exploding with rage over pointless bullshit like seeing a wrapper to an energy bar or pointing out a stain on the floor I'd put there like a decade earlier. The littlest tiniest possible things make them explode at each other.

Funny thing is that in genuine emergencies, they become the parents I should have had all along. When I had gotten into a car crash that had nearly killed me a few years back, Dad dropped everything he was doing, left his work and drove all the way over to me, helped me talk to the police, helped drive me home and was as paternal as I'd ever seen him. When I was pushed down a staircase and fractured my ankle at prom and had to be dragged out by security in front of everyone because I couldn't walk, it was Mom who held me as I cried in unbearable pain. They're clearly capable of being empathetic people but only when I'm actually in danger. With the food wrappers and a stain I made on the floor by accident a decade earlier, instant explosion, sometimes yelling and stomping so loud the alarm goes off.

The irony is that those same rules they make for me don't apply to each other. They'll leave out food containers of spoiled food and it'll smell like ass and yet there's no time limit for them on when they clean it. I have a particular time I like to clean dishes (after they're asleep, one of them sometimes on the living room couch these days), but my system does not coincide with theirs, which is "five seconds after it's done" if it's me and "days or weeks" when it comes to them. The only certainty I have is that they won't try to physically threaten me, though they do often try to hit one another at the same time.

So again, how am I expected to ever be able to get another person to like me when this is all I've really been exposed to? I mean no wonder I've hated myself for so long with the way they've mocked my weight (they're both obsessed with fitness and despise fat people), and only over the past couple years when I lost a pretty significant amount of weight did they lay off. Now I'm always getting complimented by them, suggesting they now see me as barely adequate compared to where I was before. And because so many people can see through the facade, it means just as often one or both of them complain to me about not having any friends and no one else to talk to and being isolated and alone when they've spent the past few decades alienating everyone in their lives and making everyone hate them because of how arrogant and stuck up they are.

And sure, fine, whatever, they're not like this 100% of the times, and sometimes we have civil discussions and it feels like we're connecting, and sometimes they're loving to one another. Their threat lately to me is "what would you do if one or both of us died tomorrow?" and I have no idea how to answer that question. The reason I avoid dating (pretending I have any potential partners at all) now is because they bashed heads with every person I was dating (I mean, granted, my only serious partner was way more abusive than they ever were), but they also have met every person I've ever been involved with. Granted, my most recent partner was a family friend who they had a falling out with a little bit after the two of us stopped seeing each other, but even so.

I mean, if I can't even receive and give love to a person I'd known for almost a decade, then how the hell am I supposed to find someone? I won't be able to properly date till I don't live with them, but I have no idea what job would pay enough to let me move out. The only hope I have are two friends moving here next year who are partially aware of my situation (and like the only people my parents are okay with me living with), but because of the pandemic I'm not sure how that could happen. They hate my closest friend because he clearly dislikes them and has tried to help me figure out ways to move out in the past. But I tried dating living with them and that shit is almost impossible.

And of course, the other problem is whether or not I can live without them dealing with chronic illness/autoimmune disorders. It's all just such a bitch, because I want to be in love, and sure, the majority of my friends are now living with family because of the pandemic, but it still feels like having a healthy adult relationship is essentially out of the cards for me considering how toxic my previous relationships have been and how that's a direct result of my toxic family.

I just feel so broken because the majority of people who were supposed to love me only put in the bare minimum and celebrated themselves for it and refused to get help for themselves and if they're not yelling at me, they're using me as an emotional surrogate, and they all do this for the most part, and so I'm terrified of affection, even more scared of intimacy, and growing up religious didn't help matters much either.

I just feel so broken, so shattered, so incapable of recovery, I feel at my lowest low considering how goddamn long it's been since I've gone anywhere, and knowing how vulnerable I am to this stupid bitch disease all while my parents are having a collective meltdown because they want to go out wherever they want and can't without it literally killing me. I want to be touched and held and reassured and I don't get to have any of that.

Like ironically, my friends' parents have been far more parental towards me than they have, and have friended me on Facebook and would jump into Zoom calls to say hi to me and have offered to make food with my dietary restrictions and I thank them profusely and still feel terrified since I'm the child of people who only compliment me to cushion an insult and do nothing nice for me unless they benefit in some way.