Will I Ever By Satisfied?

In my last post I talked about how let down I felt by my husband.  To sum up the situation, I had therapy which is always difficult and trying for me.  I needed him to get the kids home from the bus after school and just be there to help me through the chaos after I got home.  Instead, he chose to go chase cows around a fenced in pasture.  To be fair, he did make arrangements for the kids to be picked up, even if I believe that they were, to be nice, less than ideal.  Okay, forget nice, the arrangements he made sucked.  First, he asked my elderly neighbor to go to the bus stop.  Not a good solution when you consider that her balance is so bad that when she walks it looks like she’s limping and it was snowing/raining all day.  The second solution involved my cousin picking them up (I babysit her children so they were on the bus with mine).  Now she did manage to get to the bus stop, but it was within seconds of the bus pulling up and she had to rush and break speed limits in bad weather to do so.  It worked out, I was stressed after therapy anyway, and then almost pushed over the edge by these arrangements.  Not to mention the fact that I had to deal with the after school chaos and dance class preparation on my own.

Have we been in this situation before?  Yes.  I have therapy every two weeks.  Most times, I can get an appointment that puts me home before the kids, but I still need him around to help me with the after school stuff.  Has there been circumstances where I have needed him and he totally blew it off?  Yes.  Many times.  Although, to be fair, he has been much more supportive since this latest round of therapy has begun.

So what is really my problem?  Yes, I told him what I needed and expected him to follow through with what he agreed to do.  He did try, sort of, in his man way to follow through while actually giving someone else the responsiblity.  Yes, it sucks.  But it’s not completely unexpected.  He tends to not think things through or look at them from my perspective.  And even if he did, could he really begin to contemplate how I see things?  I don’t think he realizes how difficult it is for me to tell him what I need or how important it is to follow through exactly as we have outlined.  Sudden changes send my control issues rocketing toward meltdown, especially sudden changes that I find to be inadequate.  But he does try.  Can a person ask for more than that?

My therapist made the comment to me on Friday that she is surprised that I can care for anyone.  I have shut down to escape what happened to me.  I’m, apparently, great at talking about anything and everything but myself.  (That comment bothered me.)  But, I can and do care for a lot of people.  My fears are based in the fact that I feel no one cares about me unless I’m doing something for them.  The big question is why am I so hurt and let down by people that I think only care about me for what I can do for them?

How did my husband even get close enough to cause me this kind of hurt?  Not everyone can.  My mother can.  My grandmother can about 1/2 of the time.  My children, whom I love with ever fiber of my being, do not hold the power to cause that kind of hurt.  I think this is, in part, due to the fact that I have felt their unconditional love and in part that I have no expectation of them taking care of me.  I am the mother, it is my job to take care of them.  But there is no one I love more or hold closer to my heart and soul than my children.  I think the only way they could hurt me would be complete rejection and isolation from them.  And that’s just not happening.  Hell, I almost expect my daughter to start hating my guts any day now.  And I think I’m okay with that.  She’s supposed to, growing pains and all that.  She’ll love me again when she’s done, but even that hasn’t begun yet.  Okay tangent on my children finished.

As I was saying, my mother and sometimes my grandmother have the power to cause me hurt and disappointment.  And my husband.  Where did he get this power?  Did I give it to him?  Can I take it back?  I hate the fact that I’m vulnerable to another person, to their emotions and moods.  And yet, isn’t that a normal thing?  To love and be loved in return.  Doesn’t that mean you have to open up to hurt?  Do I want to live without feeling the love that I have for him or the love he has for me?  Can I ever just be satisfied in the moment of happiness I get from being with him?  More to the point, can I focus on the good and supportive things he does for me all the time and let go of the times he screws up?

He’s not superman and I shouldn’t expect him to be.  So, why then does it feel like every time he messes up it erases 100 good things he’s done?  Why can’t I think of the good things?  Do they mean so little to me when I crave them so much?  Or am I just so used to being pushed a side and not given consideration and care that those are the only things I can see?  I just don’t know about me sometimes.  I give myself a headache.

I think this is definitely conflict at it’s finest.

Reading Material To Avoid

I just finished a book called Identical by Ellen Hopkins.  Good book.  Powerful.  I’m completely stunned, in fact.  Stunned by the fact that it didn’t trigger me.  I had no idea what I would be reading when I started this book.  Okay, no idea isn’t exactly true.  But I don’t think anything could have prepared me for the roller coaster I was just on.

A story about identical twins, both totally messed up.  One is being used by her father as a substitute for her mother (at least that is the impression given up until the end of the book) and the other is all about getting high and screwing.  Eating disorders, drug abuse, alcoholism, date rape, incest, emotional abuse, physical abuse…good grief if you’ve ever suffered from anything it’s in this book.  I’d like to say it’s over the top, but for what I’ve been through in my own life, it just felt too damn real.

Still not triggered.  Just stunned.

The book was graphic, written journal style, the POV went back and forth between the sisters and their experiences and abuse.  We see one sister very beaten down and afraid.  We experience her abuse from her sister’s perspective as she is too timid and afraid to ever say it out loud.  The other sister doesn’t see herself as a victim, not really.  She knows she’s screwed up with because of her dysfunctional family, but as long as she says yes…to drugs or to sex…she’s in control.

After a suicide attempt by one sister, the other decides to find out why her family is the way it is.  A  visit to an estranged grandfather reveals much of the sickness behind the girls’ father.  Doesn’t excuse it, but explains it.  Immediately following these revelations everything comes to a head and the biggest twist is revealed.

Have you guessed it?  Because I sure as hell didn’t.  You see when the girls were nine, their entire family was in a horrific car accident.  We hear about this accident throughout the book as it seems to be the catalyst for everything falling apart.  Their mother nearly died and turned away from their father, who was driving drunk.  The sexual abuse began (so we are led to believe) after their mother turned from their father.  And everything else just went like a train building a head of steam.

The twist?  What didn’t I see coming?  The stronger sister, the one who was not raped by her father…she died in the car accident.  The remaining sister fractured and held onto part of her sister. 

I wouldn’t say I’ve been triggered by this book.  But I definitely feel weird right now.  My skin is crawling just a little bit and I can feel bile rising in the back of my throat.  I’m glad I’m alone right now to process this.  I couldn’t talk about this book with my husband, but I needed to talk about it.  Very powerful.  Very real.  I don’t think I’m going to read any more books by Ellen Hopkins.  Even with the description, I definitely didn’t expect what I got from this book.

Yep, Family Sucks

My  mother had a question to ask me two days ago.  She wasn’t accusatory or angry and she said she didn’t believe it anyway, but she had to ask.  Apparently, my Uncle M. told her that when we added our laundry room onto the house I stole and sold some of her silver coins to pay for it.  Now her coins were actually at my house…due to the fact that when my Uncle M’s house was foreclosed on his entire family moved in with her and his son’s girlfriend at the time did steal many of her coins, rings, and other things.  But to say that I sold some of her coins was nothing but a bold-faced lie; and I told her so.

With the dynamic in my family I was not allowed to confront him because it would just cause more trouble and stir things up.  Well damnit, I’ve been called a thief and I’m angry.  I should be allowed to confront my accuser.  Because I couldn’t confront him directly I decided to go another route.  I posted on my facebook page “when someone who is supposed to love you and be family makes up horrific lies about you for no apparent reason and with no apparent motivation or benefits to them from the lies, you have to wonder if having family is worth the effort”.  That has been copied and pasted, no edits.  You’ll notice I didn’t reference any person or situation.  Uncle M saw this and hit the roof.  Guilty conscience?

He proceeded to call my mother and my aunt and scream at both of them.  He told my aunt that he and I were already on thin ice (news to me) because I sneered at him through a wedding reception when I was at a table closer to the front than he was.  He’s got a chip on his shoulder because he has a different father than my mother and my aunt and my other uncle.  He’s the only one who has ever made a big deal out of this as his father was the only father any of the other remember, their father having died with the oldest was just 4.  And still I’m not allowed to call and give him a piece of my mind!

I have decided that the best thing for me at this point it’s better for me to just cut ties with him and by association, his family.  It saddens me to lose his children, I love them like they are my own.  But I don’t deserve to be called a thief and have rumors spread about my through my family.  I don’t understand his motivation for this except that he’s jealous because of what my husband and I have worked for and attained in our lives.  Uncle M has always expected things to be handed to him, to have someone pay his bills when he blew his money on alcohol or drugs, or to have people buy Christmas gifts for his kids because he just didn’t have the money for it.  And for years, we all did this.  My grandmother and my mother both helped him with his mortgage payments until the debt was so deep they couldn’t pull him out and he lost his house.  I personally supplied Christmas to his children on more than one occasion until I had kids of my own.

As much as it hurts me, I have to be done with him.  I have deleted him and his entire family from my facebook friends and did the same with my daughter’s facebook account.  I then had to explain to her why we weren’t going to call Uncle M or Aunt K or our cousins anymore.  For an eight year old, she understood that what he did was wrong and my need to cut things off with them.  We don’t participate in many family holidays so that shouldn’t be a problem.  And if he ever grows the balls to call me, well I welcome the chance to tell him off for good.  For years he has caused strife throughout my entire family with his jealousy, but he’s crossed a line by telling a bold-faced lie about me.  I’m through with him.

It just really sucks that it hurts so much.