conservative families in the midst of quarantine

[Glides]

so my family are the type of conservatives that have only begun voting democrat because trump has ugly hair, but not because they disagree with the majority of his policies. So I guess they're conservative democrats.

Anyway, they are defined at their cores by the insidious notion of never preventing people from saying or doing anything. Let white supremacists say whatever they want because free speech. Let people break social distancing if they want because freedom (which means a lot of them have been breaking social distancing). You're just as bad as a bigot if you talk back to them or say anything demonizing them. That kind of cowardly shit, it's their bread and butter. And since my family is Jewish, this makes next to no sense because it means they're often defending the exact people who want us dead. It's fucking infuriating, and most of my fights with various family members are about this.

Anyway, my parents are no better, and the only credit I can give them is that they really have been social distancing. They may universally support Brian Kemp's order to re-open Georgia, but they also understand that I'm at such high risk of getting sick, with chronic illnesses and what not, that if I got Miss Rona, I would die, and they like me exactly enough to be willing to do that. That doesn't mean they won't proudly bleat out conservative talking points elsewhere.

Anyway, a month of this has been unbearable, and eventually whichever one I'm fighting with will default to "think about the starving children in Africa" or whatever whenever I reiterate my immense fear of this many people intentionally getting people killed so they can go to the mall. It always devolves from a political debate into the many reasons why they are so hurt by me and how could I not be the child they tried to engineer in a test tube (not literally). Eventually they go for the emotional jugular and express their shame at my existence and how angry they are that they feel obligated to take care of me, just a lot of shit I recognize as manipulative that they've pulled my whole life.

So we're currently in a period that'll last a few days where they'll pointedly refuse to acknowledge my existence and then get confused by me knowing how to support myself and make money for myself even though I live with them and pay them rent. The last words I said to my mother (the beginning of her full-throated support for Kemp despite having voted against him since "we have to support our leaders no matter who they are) was "you've never once told me you've loved me without proceeding to insult me."

Which is true. It's always "I love you, but" instead of "I love you." That's a hurtful thing, and there's nothing my parents despise more than discovering they are in fact not god's gift to the planet. It, of course, explains why I have such a winning personality and why people greet every post I make on this forum with delight. I don't know how to handle this, it's not like I can move out in the middle of this without subjecting myself to a slow and protracted death by Miss Rona.

But I'm not sure what I have to do to tolerate them until I can permanently cut all of them out of my life (my whole family is this toxic for the most part, which is why I rarely talk to them unless I have to). I don't know how to be a functional human being since I was sort of raised to never feel like I was a functional person unless I did exactly what they told me to do. It still rankles them that I'm currently working at jobs they didn't handpick out for me (luckily I am working again more consistently, the only relief throughout all of this), in career paths they didn't decide for me as an infant. They're ridiculously controlling people, and hate that their ways of controlling me decrease by the second.

So it's really like that. I hate them, they hate me, they love the person I was intended to be and sometimes they'll be kind to me when they feel like pretending i'm that person. They wanted a straight neurotypical intelligent man and got a queer neurodivergent enby barely smart enough to tie their own shoes. And what has given me the slightest tiny bits of joy are the very things about me they despise the most.

[Enail]

This sounds awful, even without all the fucked-up stuff you describe in the other thread, I'm sorry you're stuck sheltering at home with them. I get on with my family, and I'd still probably murder them if we were living in the same home for all this, so I don't have any advice myself, but Captain Awkward's got an article with some ideas on waiting it out, maybe there's some strategy or angle there you haven't come up with yourself to get through it.