blurred lines

It's never simple.

I miss my family.

No, I miss the idea of family. Or the family that I thought I had. Or the family that we wanted to pretend we were.

I want my mommy. Well, not the one I have. The one I wish she could be.

My brothers are jerks. Well, sortof jerks. And I wish I were closer to them. Why would anybody want to be closer to people who are jerks? I long for the good old days. I'm not sure there ever were any good old days.

My sister is a miracle. She has empathy. She gets it. She sees it all. And yet she fears commitment. She doesn't want children. She worries she would mess them up because she tends toward anxiety and depression and we had no good models for how to handle that shit or how to be a good mother. She doesn't realize that the fact that she even thinks about that at all is exactly what would save her children.

I wonder who my brothers and sisters would be if not for my mother. And my father.

I miss my dad. I love him but I don't tell him that. I don't love my mom. At least, I don't think I do. I don't speak to either of them, but really, I let my dad off the hook because I consider him a victim, too. Or did until he spat ugliness at me that sounded like a script written by her. I let him off because he's weak. She preyed upon him. He depends upon her love. She privately scorns him. I feel sorry for him. He has self-esteem issues. He has mommy issues.

But I don't have any problem with my grandmother, his mother. Who must have been a monster like my mother in order to produce a son so needy. Right? I never saw her that way, though.

Not like I see my mother. I don't love my mother. I don't like my mother. I wish I didn't look like my mother. I feel revulsion toward her for the way she treats people. But isn't she a victim, too? Isn't she the product of genetics and a narcissistic father and a weak mother and bad luck? Is she any more able to control who she is and what she does than my father is? Both are broken people. Each is dependent upon the other to keep afloat. He needs her. She needs him. Why am I willing to absolve the passive parent but not the actively aggressive one? It took both of them to create a dysfunctional family.

Is the enabling parent less harmful? More harmful? Equally harmful? Is there any way to tell?

I wonder if there is an alternate timeline out there, one in which my dad never meets my mom. One in which he falls in love with a less poisonous woman. Would his wounds still have prevented him from finding a healthy mate? Would some lovely young woman from a functional family have found him? Is there another universe in which he marries a woman who helps him to grow and heal and become emotionally whole?

I will never know. I will never know. This is all I was given. This is all I get.

I miss something I do not want. I want something that will never exist. There is no happy ending, only a stalemate. Pick the life that sucks the least.

It is never simple.

i thee dread

I once heard the phrase "don't borrow trouble." The idea is that if you're worrying about things that haven't happened yet, or might not happen at all, you're borrowing potential trouble from your future and turning it into real trouble in your present. Well, I'm borrowing trouble, big time.

I dread weddings and funerals. Specifically, weddings and funerals which my parents might attend. Even more specifically, funerals of relatives that I love, and the weddings of my unmarried siblings. 

Nobody is dying right now, so that pot is sitting cold on the back burner. But the weddings. Oh, god, are there going to be weddings? Brother #3 has a long-term girlfriend. He's had others. Will this one be "the one"?  Will I have to spend thousands of dollars on traveling and hotels and other wedding-related expenses, for a wedding that I don't really want to attend, but feel obligated to? My sister has been with her boyfriend for several years, and more and more lately, I wonder if an engagement announcement will be forthcoming. I told myself, hey, maybe they're just the cohabiting type. Maybe they'll never get married. Maybe they'll break up (sad, wouldn't wish for it, but could happen). Maybe they'll suddenly elope and spare the rest of us the ordeal of a family wedding. If they do have a ceremony, it'll most likely be closer to home, but still, ohhhhh...I don't want to go. Her college graduation was hard enough, but things between my mom and myself have gotten much worse (well, better for me in most ways, but you know what I mean) in the years since then and I Just. Don't. Want. To. Go.

But I will go. She's my sister, and I love her, and her wedding isn't about me or my mom, and I'll suck it up and go and be supportive and happy for her and not let her *know* that I'm sucking it up. I'll bring my kids, because she's their auntie, and they love her, and they should get to be present for the celebrations of people they love.

But I worry.

I worry about having to be near my mom.

I worry that my mom will try to talk to me.

I worry that my mom will try to touch me, or kiss my cheek like she did at another family gathering.
I worry about looking perfect, and not being too fat or too frowsy or too...something.
I worry about having to stand next to her in a receiving line, or sit near her at a table.
I worry about the interactions with relatives that I don't want to see, many of whom may lecture me about burying the hatchet.

I worry about bringing my children.

I worry that my mom will approach my children.
I worry that she will talk to them.
I worry that she will touch them and kiss and hug them.
I worry about whether or not I should allow her to go near them.

I worry that there's no real way to keep her away from my children if they're at the same event.
I worry about maybe telling my kids to stay away from Nona.
I worry that she'll sneak behind my back, when I'm away from them for a moment.

I worry that I'll feel like I want to protect them, and that I'll do something that leads to her causing a scene.

I worry that in the name of not drawing attention to myself during my sister's wedding, that I'll put on too brave a face and subject myself to too much.
I worry about the more-intimate rehearsal dinner, where all of this will be a thousand times harder.

And as of last week, I know that my sister is looking at rings, and that she'd like to have a simple ceremony but that it will at the very least be a small ceremony, not a private elopement, and that she is counting on me being her maid of honor.

And I know that I will go, and bring my children, and act natural, and that it will be really, really hard.

And I worry, and I worry, and I worry. 

sacrificial cake

An update on the perishable gift (which is not actually cake): I ended up leaving it on a neighbor's doorstep. I'm not close enough to her to feel yucky about my mom's gift in her house, but I like her enough to want her to have it. I was going to knock and tell her that I'd like her to have it, that for personal reasons, I cannot keep it, but she wasn't home. It was cold outside, cold enough not to worry about it spoiling, so I left it. I have no idea what happened to it, but I hope she assumed it was Christmas elves, and that she and her significant other have been enjoying it.

So, consistent with personal values, out of my house, not in a dear one's house. Perfecto!

'round and around and around and around

The fickle finger of fate has been flicking my anxiety disorder all week. It's part Christmas preparations, part home repair projects, part financial concerns, part sick/injured kid, part business development. But the thing that I think is putting it over the edge from just life-stress-that-I-can-handle to stress-that-makes-my-brain-go-whirly is my mother. Or more specifically, the gift she sent.

All I want is to be left alone. But like a kid in the back seat of a car whose sibling has declared a particular line uncrossable, she cannot resist the temptation to put a finger over the line. Just. One. Finger. And just as kids can't stand that kind of willful defiance of a boundary line ("MOM! He's looking at me!), I can't stand that she's continuing to contact me. It interrupts my calm and it pisses me off. 

While I had been decreasing contact with her for years - first without realizing I was doing it, then later more purposefully, No Contact "officially" began last spring, when I wrote this to her and my father in an email message: 

"I am writing to ask you to stop contacting my family, including myself, [my husband, and my children]. Please do not attempt to contact us in any way, whether by phone, in person, via postal mail, or by email or other internet services."

I knew that she probably would not stop, but I felt the need to lay down a specific boundary, so that if she continued to contact us, I would know that it was in direct opposition to what I had requested. While I wish that she would just LEAVE ME ALONE, every time she sends something, it's a reminder that she has never respected my boundaries and still does not respect them. It's a confirmation: nope, you did not imagine this, she really doesn't give a damn what you want. 

Since I sent that email, she has shown up on my doorstep once, sent multiple postcards to my children, sent birthday cards to my children and to me, sent email multiple times to my husband, stalked my personal blog, sent a holiday card, left birthday presents for my children at the door, invited us (via last-minute email to my husband) to Thanksgiving dinner, and sent a bag of gifts for my children with relatives, who sneaked the bag into my car. 

So far, birthday cards and postcards get recycled. Gifts for kids are spirited away before they can see them and the items are donated. One son has some awareness of this, and seems both curious about the gifts and indignant that my mother disrespects my wishes. I hate that he knows about it, but it's hard to keep a pre-teen in the dark when stuff just shows up at your house. I can't intercept everything.

Anyway, I'm used to this, even though I dislike it. As each birthday or holiday approaches, I wonder what form her contact will take. I sigh inwardly and prepare to whisk gifts into the attic and into donation bags. 

I wasn't ready for the gift that came last week, though. 

This time, it came by mail, in a small box. I have been receiving parcels recently in preparation for Christmas, so I assumed it was one of the items I ordered, and picked it up, and recognized the return address as the source of one of my mother's go-to gifts. It's edible, and it's something my entire family really loves. It's also perishable, so I couldn't stuff it in the attic and think about it later. I had to either preserve it or throw it away, right then. 

I put it in the fridge, still in the cardboard box. I needed to figure out what to do. 

This is the first time I've received something from her that I actually want to keep. The thing is, I also don't want to keep it. I don't want to accept a gift from her, on principle. I don't want to eat food that I know came from her. I don't want to be reminded of her while I try to enjoy it. I also don't want my son to know that I kept this item (he asked my husband what the box was, and my husband answered honestly instead of dodging the question) even though I get rid of toys and clothing sent to him. I feel like my sanity requires that I get rid of it. My sense of ethics demands that I not throw it in the garbage. My sense of consistency demands that I treat it like any other item sent by her. Get rid of it. 

My husband is lobbying for taking it to the in-laws, to share with them, so that it's out of my house but he and my son can still enjoy it. This makes me uncomfortable. It can't be easily donated because I would have to find a person who can take it off my hands and put it straight in their refrigerator. I don't want to give it to friends or a neighbor. I want it out of my social circles. (Is that crazy?) I'm frustrated that I can't give it to Good Will. 

I partly want to go downstairs right now, grab it, and take it out to the trash can. But I know what it costs, and that it was made by hand by hard-working people, and I know that it could be enjoyed by somebody, and I can't stand to waste food like that. 

And so I go in circles. I can't decide what to do, and so it haunts me every day, woven in and out of the background chatter of my other daily concerns. It's pretty bad for ye olde anxiety disorder. 

I can imagine that someday I won't care, and will be able to either eat it without a second thought or pitch it / re-home it right away.  That day has not yet come. 

What would you do? 

just NO

Well, following the last post I decided to just click on "no" and leave it at that. Nothing I could write in the RSVP message box would feel right. Nothing would prevent the party organizers from being bitchy about my not coming. Nothing I do or say will change what they think of me. And really, it doesn't matter what they think of me - by which I mean, I know this intellectually, but have a hard, hard time believing it through and through.

There were lots of polite but not quite honest things I could have said on that invitation response.

"we're so sorry we won't be able to join you" (we're not sorry; we are able, we just don't want to)
"we have other plans" (half-lie - my only plan is to not be anywhere near these people)
"give our regards to the birthday girl!" (I don't actually regard her in either a positive or negative light)
"sounds like fun, wish we could be there!" (it doesn't, I don't)

Any of these "regrets" kind of responses would have been a lie, because I don't actually feel regret.  Thing is, nothing genuine could be said, either, because this is how it would look:

"are you fucking kidding me?"
"I don't actually care about you people, so I'm not coming"
"It's ridiculous that you expect me to spend half a day driving, several hours of my life standing around making idle, uncomfortable chitchat with people who think they know me but really don't and whom I don't particularly care about, then get my kids to bed late in a hotel room because I'm not in your good graces enough for you to offer me a room or a couch to sleep on, then have to drive half a day back home again, thereby losing a perfectly good weekend."
"oh, hell no"
"I would rather swallow shards of broken glass"
"Interesting that I'm only considered a part of this messed-up family when you want to throw a big party so you look like a loving, close-knit clan."
"I will not be a part of this charade"

Yeah...none of those should really be entered into a comment box. It's good to type them out here, though. Perhaps, now that I've sent my just-plain-NO response, I can shake this bitter, ugly feeling and move on.

ye olde birthday FOG

I'm stewing in yuckiness. A family member is having a big birthday, one of the ones divisible by 10, which, in a base-10 society, means it's somehow more important than one divisible by 5 or by 4 or by 8. (Tangent: shouldn't prime-number birthdays be more important? Seriously, let's start a trend.)

So, because this person is related to me, and because her new age is large and divisible by 10, there's going to be birthday hoopla. Of course, there has been hoopla about this person's birthdays in the past, including one year when she was non-divisible by 10 and I was pressured to attend her birthday celebration instead of a memorial service for a friend who had died unexpectedly. Under all the "funerals are for the living" and "that person is dead, this one is alive" and "family is important" and "she might not be alive much longer" guilt tripping, I caved, I made a trip that I didn't enjoy to be with people whom I don't like to celebrate the birth of a person to whom I don't feel close, and didn't attend services for this dear friend whom I hadn't seen in years. I didn't get to hug her mom or her sister. I didn't get to mourn with friends. I allowed myself to be controlled by fear of the future, family obligation, and guilt.

To be clear: that was my choice. I didn't have to make it. It was the wrong choice and I still regret it, years later. I know I made the choice because I was, without being aware of it, playing into and along with the family dynamic of Fear, Obligation, and Guilt (FOG).

Today, after several years of becoming aware of and struggling against the family FOG, I'm staring at the invitation to the latest celebration of her agedness. The invitation that comes from a relative who is not my friend, who has exerted pressure on me in the past to "bury the hatchet" with my mother, instead of saying "hey, I'm related to your mom, and I totally understand what a bitch she is, I'm sorry she treats you like shit."  The invitation heralding the honoring of a person who, honestly, isn't very important to me and doesn't play an active, meaningful role in my life. The invitation to a party several states away, that will require travel time and hotel accommodations on my dime. The time spent in the car would outweigh the time spent at the party by approximately 4:1. I'm not sure I would want to drive an hour for this party, much less half a day, especially considering that the party itself will not be fun for me and probably won't be much fun for my kids, either.

For an invitation, it sure doesn't feel inviting. It feels more like a summons.

On a petty note: the person sending the invitation, who is related to me, who is FAMILY, which is supposedly so important, did not acknowledge my birthday and hasn't in years. Just sayin'.

The obvious answer is not to go, and I know we won't go, yet I still haven't given my response. It feels rude to turn it down. Everybody else who has been summoned is going, like the good little conditioned, devoted-to-family children they are. Of course, they may actually enjoy themselves, because the extended family involved has invested time in making these people feel wanted. Me, notsomuch. And of course that just plays into my sense of shame  - if I were a better person, these people would like me, right? Ugh. But rather than saying "nope, not coming" to these people, I angst over my response. I can't just click no (yes, I can, but I feel badly about doing it). I have to have a reason (no, I don't, but it feels socially inappropriate to say no without a "proper" excuse). I have to be polite and pretty when I decline the invitation. I have to "send my regrets" even though I don't actually have regrets.

Why is it so hard for me to just say NO to people I don't like, without feeling like I owe these people some sort of conciliatory message? Is it a sign of being a good person to want to be polite to people who aren't polite to you, or is it a character flaw?

And why, when I recognize the FOG and have chosen not to participate in it, does it still control me on some level?