taxing times

[fflo]

(1) Meant to start my taxes this past weekend, but found all kinds of other chores to attend to instead.

(2) Just got new tax assessment on house from city. Not sure when the house payment will jump, but my estimate is that it'll jump about $233.00/mo. (The effect of the previous owner's having been in the house for 20 years.)

(3) Most taxing of all are issues not involving taxes (directly).

Still debating whether to talk more of (3) openly or in "friends-only" entries.

Comments

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

(1) Me too.
(3) Actually, me too also, and similarly debating. Most likely not going to talk about it though, due to the presence on LJ of the person causing the problems and the fact that discussing my problems with said person on LJ feels problematic regardless of whether I filter em out of the tries or include em and regardless of how many other people I filter out. Unfortunately, it also feels problematic to even discuss the problems one on one with the person I'm having them with, since said problems basically add up to, "You're too miserable all the time and your misery is making all my conversations with you miserable!" and the minute I start complaining about it, such complaints become an additional justification for more misery.

Actually, even misery itself would not be that much of a problem; I just need it to have rational explanations. For example, "I'm miserable because my girlfriend murdered my dog" would elicit plenty of sympathy from me. But "I'm miserable because I'm convinced I'm ugly no matter how many beauty contests I win and no matter how much I proclaim beauty standards to be subjective I still feel that I am somehow objectively ugly by all possible beauty standards" and also "I'm miserable because I'm convinced I'm evil even though I can't actually name any evil acts I've committed except accidents but I'm convinced that my body is just inherently evil whether I act upon it or not and its mere existence is an evil" doesn't really go over well with me.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

Wow---that's some unhealthy-sounding stuff. What first occurs to me is that someone is asking you to provide more than the appropriate occasional friendly bolstering to that person's confidence. Then my cynical self doubts the veracity of this depth of self-loathing. Not that it's not possible---I'm sure it is. In this context, though, it's communication that seems to be demanding constant reinforcement from you in a way-outta-line way.

Of course I bristle at that whole objective beauty b.s., too. (Hell, I bristle at the very notion of objectivity, for that matter.) I try to steer clear of shallow looksist types like that, at least in my more intimate friendships---and, yeah, it's shallow and looksist to bemoan, obsessively, one's failure in the face of someone's (or some imagined) assessment of one's beauty.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, having known this person extremely well for several years, I'd have to say that the self-loathing is quite real, in spite of the fact that the justifications given for it are blatantly insane.

I've definitely tried explaining that it's shallow and looksist to insult one's own beauty perpetually just as it would be to insult someone else's, but the answer I get is always "But it doesn't matter whether it's objective or not, it matters that everyone around me thinks I'm ugly whether they're objective about it or not! Stop denying that they think I'm ugly, people have TOLD me they think I'm ugly! I don't care about all the people you mention who've complimented my looks, I think they were only doing it because you told them to, I can tell from the way they said it that they didn't mean it! You insult my intelligence by trying to deny the reality that everyone I know thinks I'm ugly! It has a huge effect on my life and deprives me of all sorts of potential friends because people don't want to be friends with someone who's this ugly . . ."

At this point I always mention that the kinds of people who don't want to be friends with a person because they're "ugly" are the kinds of people whose "friendship" we're all better off without. But this is always met with a fervent cry of, "No they're NOT! They're GOOD people, I KNOW them, I KNOW they're good people, it's not THEIR fault I'm ugly . . ."

Bleh. I am able to decrease the volume of time I spend with this person when eir misery wears me out, but what I am not able to do is to decrease the percentage of whatever volume of time I do spend with this person that gets wasted on irrational whining.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

Utterly exhausting.

I'd tell the person that topic is no longer one I'll discuss. One has that right, even with dear friends---especially when so pushed.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

I've been meaning to thank you for this, because it helped. The encouragement to be assertive helped, I mean - what I did amounted to more than just saying "don't discuss that with me anymore" because if I say "don't discuss that with me anymore" it also means that all sorts of horrifying things could be taking place behind my back that I won't know about because I asked for them not to be discussed, and if I have to accommodate the possibility of all sorts of horrifying things happening then I also have to really manage to care a whole lot less. So I did both: I said "don't discuss that with me anymore" and also "we need to not see each other so much and I need to not care about you very much." But it was helpful to be encouraged to do something, so thank you for it.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

You're certainly welcome, for whatever it's worth. Sorry you're going through a tough time, though. I can relate.

I debated taking you up on the letter writing offer, by the way---mainly cuz I think I'd provide much more the kind of imaginative epistulary weaving you'd been hoping for. But I'm doing all I can to get through ordinary obligations, and I think I'm going to need to take another job soon. Not to mention I still haven't started the taxes! TurboTax online annoyed the hell outta me for refusing to make the price for the basic version AFTER the discount date available, even with a fair amount of clicking and help menu searching. So I think it's going to be the old-fashioned way for me.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Once I actually started my taxes this year, I was very surprised to find I finished them in only about two hours. They didn't deserve half the dread I'd been investing in them - the government actually managed to send me all the correct forms this year, and they granted a much larger portion of people eligibility to use the telefile system ths year, and they also granted a much larger number of people eligibility to use the 1040EZ forms instead of 1040A or 1040, and they didn't make me attach any other supplemental forms like they have in the past. It was the easiest year for doing taxes that I've had since I was in college.

Good luck handling all your obligations!

[fflo.livejournal.com]

This is my first year doing taxes with a mortgage---that's the big catch. It'll pay to itemize, no doubt, but it's a bit more of a chore than I'm accustomed to.