I don’t know who needs to hear it but
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As I’ve been talking more to my step-father (the father that has stepped up, more like) this rings more true by the day. I have this internal debate on how much to share here, but I am caring less and less who finds this because why should I care about who might get hurt? These people spent a lifetime going out of their way to hurt me.
So, let’s talk about my mother and grandmother today. I’ve had nightmares about both of them this week, nightmares that I then spend the next day thinking about.
In 2006 my husband and I bought our first actual house. We’d had a couple of townhomes but we were so excited to have a house with a yard and a driveway. I wanted so badly for my mother and grandmother to come see our house and our yard, but my mother and I were barely on speaking terms and my grandmother didn’t want to drive, which was understandable. Nothing had happened between me and my mother, that I can recall, we just didn’t talk much. Anyway, I offered repeatedly to go get my grandmother and bring her to our house. If it was raining or even looked like it might rain, she didn’t want to go out in the rain. If it was sunny, she wanted to stay home and putter around the house. If those two excuses failed, she needed to stay home because she couldn’t leave her husband home for that long (he was fine, and as far as I knew, he slept most of the day and spent his time watching tv and eating). Finally, she couldn’t see our house because she had to stay home to let the neighbor’s dog out. I eventually stopped asking, especially after her reaction to our very much planned pregnancy.
She was not happy with me and looking back, I should have known to expect that reaction. I found one of my journals from 2005 where I worried that my mother and grandmother would disown me if I had a baby. 2005 me was absolutely correct. My grandmother, I think, planned on me taking care of her as she aged. Truthfully, that was my plan as well. I figured I’d be the one taking her to doctors appointments and the grocery store. I was already taking her to doctor’s appointments, the mall, out to eat, and to some stores she wouldn’t go to on her own. Honestly, I figured I’d have a baby and bring the baby along while I took care of her.
After her reaction to my pregnancy, I backed off. I had been calling her every day, sometimes multiple times a day after she retired. I stopped asking her to see our house. I stopped taking her places. I didn’t see her for most of my pregnancy. Now I know this is called “low contact”.
In March 2007 when I was about 5 months pregnant mother sent me a birthday card with a note. She wanted to mend fences and be involved as a grandmother. I know my grandmother and I were talking fairly often then because she told me my mother was seeing a therapist and that I should give her a chance.
I called my mother because in the card she had mentioned getting together. I called and left voicemails. I emailed her. Nothing. Weeks later we finally got together for lunch and my mother acted like nothing had happened. She didn’t want to talk about things, despite that being a precondition of mine. But I really actually thought my mother saw her opportunity to redeem herself and be a good grandmother.
On March 18th, 2007, I wrote to my mother:
“Thank you for the birthday card and the note. I would greatly like to begin a new relationship with you, but there are a few things that need to be said before that can truly happen. I realize that the past is exactly that and we can do nothing to change what has happened, though I’m sure the things that have happened have had a lasting impact on us both. At some point we can discuss some of these things in an effort to move forward. But for now, I’m going to be very forthcoming in my feelings about this.
I am honestly a little wary of your desire to re-establish a relationship with me due to the pattern of “yo-yoing” between your boyfriends and me. It seems like when you didn’t have a boyfriend, we could have a relationship and do things together but as soon as you met someone, I was immediately placed on the backburner, usually wondering what I had done wrong. After enough times of going through that, it got old. That, and feeling like I was imposing on your life, eventually led to my giving up. Now I am about to have a child of my own and the last thing I need is to have my emotions toyed with like that. I’m in no way saying that you have to be single to have a relationship with me, but family should come before a boyfriend, so you should find a balance rather than it being all or nothing.
I have heard from Granny that you are going to therapy. I hope it’s helping and that she’s not bothering you too much about it. She also tells me that you are in very ill health. I have no idea how much of what she says is true, given her penchant for the overly dramatic. I am sorry for any ill health you are experiencing, but I also hope that getting help will alleviate some of the physical ailments. In my experience, stress and anxiety can have profound physical manifestations. For instance, when I am anxious about something it causes quite severe chest pain and tightness. After a visit to the doctor (thinking I was having some kind of heart issue) I was told to take a Tylenol and find some way to calm down. Like I said, hopefully counseling will help with your physical as well as mental health.
Also, while I realize that Granny is your mother and the woman that raised me, there are some issues with her that may be affecting our relationship. I wonder how much of what she’s done and said has driven a wedge between us. I know she likes to be involved, which is nice, but it can be harmful. For instance, she’s told me how she goes to some of your doctor’s visits with you and your boyfriend, even though I’m sure you two would have liked to have had some time alone. I’ve also noticed the last few times I’ve seen you that you haven’t quite been yourself. I don’t know how much of that had to do with your feeling bad and how much was weariness of dealing with Granny.
I’m also sure you’ve heard that I don’t call or come around as much as I used to. It’s not because I’m holding a grudge, but because I cannot concomitantly maintain my own sanity and deal with her. I find that she’s very negative, at least toward me, and I find it unnecessarily stressful. I used to invite her out, or to come see our house but was rejected so many times for so many reasons that I realized I must be imposing on her and she didn’t know how to say no. To be frank, do you think her behavior and words have an impact on your health? But more to my original point, she has been in the middle of things (e.g., our relationship) since the beginning. She always told me that you gave me to her when I was little and would come back for me when you got your life straightened out, but I often wonder if you ever tried to get me back and how she might have not let that happen easily.
In short, I know she has had an effect on our relationship, but I am uncertain about the extent of that. For that reason, I think if you and I are to re-establish a relationship, I believe it needs to be done without her influence. It seems you and I can get along great and have a good time if it’s just us… the wedding planning comes to mind most immediately.
Where we go from here is up to you. Despite Granny’s insistence (and persistence), I have felt it is up to you, rather than my imposing on your life. I don’t know your current schedule, but if you’d like, give me a call when you have some time. (my phone numbers removed here) Hopefully sometime soon we can get together and have lunch or something.
~ my name removed”
Since my mother was still working odd hours, I emailed her to see when we might be able to get together. She responded a week later asking me to call her. So I called her several times on the day I knew she wasn’t working and left several voicemails. More days passed and she didn’t respond. She finally responded by email to tell me we could get together “later”. I knew that she was often on my side of town for doctor’s appointments on her days off, so to me, it seemed like this shouldn’t be difficult. Finally, we decided we could meet on a Wednesday, and the day before we finalized our plans for lunch. I felt like my mother wasn’t taking this “new relationship” with me very seriously and that I didn’t have high hopes.
After our lunch on April 4th, I felt let down. My mother and I just talked about surface-level stuff and it was like nothing had changed. I felt like she was a million miles away and I wasn’t allowed to be angry or upset or distrusting of her motives. In the first email I wrote to her in response to the birthday card, I had pretty clearly laid out my feelings. I told her that, as I saw it, I didn’t trust her because she had been in and out of my life, whenever it suited her. I wanted to discuss things before moving forward. I wanted to talk about my distrust, how I felt like an imposition on her life, and how I felt like my grandmother was meddling in our relationship.
My mother clearly didn’t want to discuss any of that and I realized that she shared the letter and my concerns with my grandmother. The day after I emailed my mother, while she wasn’t responding, my grandmother chewed me out on the phone. Looking back now, I think my grandmother was pulling the strings. My mother had no real desire to start a new relationship with me and was probably not seeing a therapist. My grandmother knew if she told me my mother was getting help, I would be willing to try again. She was guilt-tripping my mother, who ran and told her everything I said. Then she was guilt-tripping me and the whole thing was a mess.
I stopped calling my grandmother at the end of March, after the call where she spent two hours yelling at me about my letter to my mother. I was tired of being the one that always called, she never called me and I was feeling unwanted. Once my all day sickness had subsided, I began asking to bring her to see our house and every time she gave me an excuse. One excuse was that she couldn’t leave her husband alone that long, but I knew she was able to spend hours adding to her hoard or going out with my mother. When I mentioned this, she accused me of being jealous of my mother. This was when I finally saw that my grandmother was trying to get me and my mother to compete for her attention. She had mentioned, just casually, that winter that she wanted a coat for her inside dog. My knitting had gotten a bit better, so I found a pattern, bought the yarn and began knitting a coat for her dog. My mother went out and bought not one, but two coats for the dog. I stopped knitting and let my mother have her “win”.
I was also tired of hearing my grandmother’s reasons for why and how I was going to be a bad mother. She had also started going to church, along with my mother, and the religious lectures were too much. She demanded that after I had my baby, I raise it according to her religious beliefs. I saw how illogical and manipulative my grandmother was and I was tired of it.
On May 22, 2007, six weeks after lunch with my mother, my mother-in-law was planning a baby shower. Because things were so strained with my mother and grandmother, I didn’t want to have any family gatherings. But it was happening and my mother was being vague about whether they were going to come and she wanted me to call her. I was annoyed that it seemed like my phone was the only one able to make outgoing calls and knowing my mother’s weird schedule, I just responded to her by email, telling her it was fine if she called me. My mother wanted us to get together — me, her, and my grandmother. I wasn’t touching that with a ten foot pole. If my mother wanted to plan something, that was fine, but I wasn’t putting myself through weeks of trying to coordinate another lunch. Either way, if they came to the baby shower that was in two weeks, we could just see each other then.
I remember now that the drama with my mother and the baby shower was the same drama on my wedding day. She just didn’t know if she was going to be able to get that day off from the post office. Weird how she was able to take a week off for a vacation, to help my cousin move, to go take groceries when he was living in Boston, or to go to Florida when my cousin and his family were going. But a day, or even an afternoon off, for anything related to me was always fraught with whether or not she could get the time.
I didn’t write in my journal about the baby shower until June 21, 2007 because it went about as I expected. My mother was able to get the time off and brought my grandmother to the baby shower my mother-in-law held at her house. I felt like my mother and grandmother came in order to keep up the appearance that everything was fine and they were interested in the baby. I hadn’t spoken to my grandmother, I guess since the end of March, after she yelled at me about the letter to my mother. I hadn’t seen my mother since our lunch in April. I don’t think my mother spoke to me during the baby shower and my grandmother was cordial to everyone, but not thrilled to be there. My mother acted like she would have rather been anywhere else, and later on, my father-in-law said he finally saw how distant she was. My grandmother made a big fuss talking about how my mother had been to physical therapy several days before the baby shower and how “they had nearly killed her” and my mother hadn’t been back to work since. My mother-in-law was a physical therapist at the time and I felt like my grandmother was trying to bait her into a fight.
My mother and grandmother were in a hurry to leave and hugged my husband once they were outside. My grandmother realized she hadn’t spoken to me and came back inside to give me a hug before they left. That was the last time my mother and I spent time together.
Well, this is getting long and I need to wrap up this entry. In my next entry, I will share how everything got twisted to make me the bad person. In their minds, they believe it couldn’t have been the abandonment, lies, and abuse that made me cut contact. To my mother it was because I got “too big for my britches”. In my next entry, I’ll share email exchanges and my thoughts about them now.
