[Aurelius710]

I'm trying to figure out how I am being so completely and utterly taken advantage of by so many people and still, somehow, am the villain of the story. Let me explain.

At my work, I have been in a nearly two year long conflict with a supervisor regarding whether or not doing my job after a certain time is dereliction of duty. To put it simply, they want me to do Task X in Time Y which would be pretty straightforward were it not for the fact that my actual job, Z is a specialized customer service/tech support position where my customer issues could run anywhere from five minutes to an hour or more and I'm one of the few people who can do it. I get enough customer issues, I can't get Task X done and that's the real crime here. Doing my job became the wrong thing.

So, I go the route they want which is to prioritize Task X over everything else and I am chided for neglecting my department. Not doing my job became the wrong thing. I tell them to pick one, because it's obvious that I can't get Task X and Job Z done in Time Y, and they say no. I persist, and they tell me to do less of Job Z because they (seriously) think I am somehow padding my time to avoid doing Task X. Doing my job is now a barrier to me doing my job.

In summary: "Why are you doing Job Z? Task X is the most important thing you can be doing right now!" "Why are you still here? Have you seen Job Z? Go do your job!!" 'I can do one or the other, but not both. I don't have the time.' "LIAR!!!"

It creates an environment of perpetual justification. I have to justify to these supervisors why I am doing the job the company hired me to do, because that is wrong... somehow. The fun bit for me comes from the realization that when one is always justifying themselves, one comes across as less trustworthy and when I do something "wrong", that perception becomes reinforced.

Enter: my landlord. He neglected to keep up the regular bug spraying that my previous landlady did to the tune of almost a year. As a result, my apartment and several others got infested with bedbugs. I told him about the infestation and a couple of days later at 5 in the afternoon, I get a bang on the door and a dressing down from him. He conflates my admitted messiness with uncleanliness and says that's why I have bedbugs (uhhhh... NO. He knows nothing about bed bugs is that's the case.) He then threatens to evict me if I don't get the apartment ready for the guy to spray (which I was doing when he proverbially broke down my door.) The guy he did get to spray the place did such a crappy job that I had bed bugs back in two days.

I can safely say I have never had an interaction with my landlord where I wasn't handing him rent money that didn't end with him either threatening to fine me or evict me.

I'm so tired of dealing with him that I hide in my apartment (He's been doing maintenance [preparing units] in my complex for the past month.) when I see his truck. I've been doing cleaning and maintenance on my own, but I need a good proper once-over by an exterminator. My problem: If I tell him quickly, I get a repeat of the last encounter. If I wait, I get a repeat of the last encounter, and potentially a worse infestation.

I told my therapist about all of this and he brought up RD Laing and the double bind theory. The basic gist is that those with mental illness got that way because they were put in perpetually abusive, untenable, inescapable no-win scenarios. Since they were always going to be wrong anyway, their mind adapted (or broke) to get around it. Now, neither of us think that's why I'm bipolar, but I'd be an idiot if I didn't see the parallels, especially after my therapist showed me his poetry. (Laing was an interesting guy.)

I'm not sure what to think when a book of poetry about schizophrenics written by an anti-psychiatry psychiatrist tripping on psychedelics is an accurate descriptor for my life.

At least it's not dull?