Picking My Brain

So I’m finally setting aside a few minutes to catch up my blog. I’ve started like three entries to get caught up, but with working overnight almost every night (for two weeks in a row I worked six days…Wawa is trying to kill me!), plus class Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings and just general depression, not much is getting done. Just enough to get by…and sometimes not even that much.

So I guess I’ll start with some good. Jenn, my friend and co-worker at Wawa, was home from college for the week. We got together and I actually got to go out! Of course, going out on a Tuesday night is not as exciting as going out on a Saturday night, but Jenn and I had lots of fun at Dave and Buster’s. We spent some time just hanging out and being generally silly.

I also hosted my first Thanksgiving this past week. It was a little rough since I had to work overnight going into Thanksgiving and overnight coming out of Thanksgiving. So I worked, cooked, slept, cooked, ate, slept, ate, slept, worked. I was pretty tired on Friday. Dinner was amazing though. I managed to pull off stuffing that tasted exactly like my mom’s ( my favorite!), and the turkey recipe I tried from the show Good Eats was delicious. Ben was wonderful and actually helped out a lot. He made the green bean casserole, helped with the turkey and organized a potato peeling party with his mom and sister. Sue and Meg brought great dishes too, plus desserts, so we were all stuffed little piggies by the end of the night.

Thanksgiving of course leads into the not-so-great news… and probably the cause of some of my depression (Wawa being the other of course). Ben and I were trying to figure out how to see both famililes for the holiday. My family, or more specifically my mom, is still acting like selfish, spoiled brats and still refusing to have anything to do with Ben’s family or the wedding. I figured they wouldn’t come, but I decided that I wanted to host a holiday in my own place, and that Thanksgiving would work because then we could see both famililes the same day, so I invited both families to dinner.

When I called my mom to invite them, she of course pitched a fit. How dare I add more stress to her life (she had minor shoulder surgery at the beginning of the month and had just started physical therapy) by asking her to meet Ben’s family, plus how could I be so devious as to use a holiday to try and get the families to meet. Yes, I knew she would act this way, but all I honestly wanted was a nice holiday where I got to see everyone and host my first “formal” dinner - despite what my mother would have you believe.

So mom of course declined, and came up with the “brilliant” plan that I “should set a precedent, have Thanksgiving with Ben’s family and Christmas Day with mine.” This wasn’t much of a precedent, because we already have Christmas taken care of: Ben’s mom does Christmas Eve dinner, so we go to her place on Christmas Eve, spend the night, then go to my family’s place in the afternoon and spent the evening there. We thought it worked out perfectly.

Bascially I told my mom that if they changed their minds, there would still be room for them at my place for dinner and to just call and let me know. You know the phone never rang. Jeremy messaged me on TG to complain about my mom’s bithcing that she wasn’t going to get to see me for the holiday. But I put my foot down and stuck to it this time. Jeremy called on Friday to ask me a question, and since his birthday is coming up, I asked him what his plans are. He in turn asked my mom if she had any plans in mind already, which alerted her to the fact that I was on the phone.

I wasn’t going to talk to her because I knew from Jeremy she was mad and I don’t think she has any right to be. I tried to have my whole family together, which includes Ben’s family now, and she was the one who suggested we have it apart. She has nothing to be mad at me for. But I decided to be the good daughter and told Jer to put her on the phone.

I asked how her TG was. “Good. Quiet.”

How are you feeling? “Alright.”

How’s therapy going? “Okay. Still hurts.”

Then she asked if the noise on the phone was my phone or hers. I didn’t hear anything, so said it must be hers. She was on Jer’s cell, so she told me to hang on and she called for him. I waited for about five minutes trying to decide if she was still there or I had been disconnected. I finally decided it was the latter, so I called her back on her house phone. My dad answered, so I chatted with him for a bit, then asked to talk to Mom again. He said that he thought she was done talking to me. I was kinda surprised since she hadn’t said good-bye or barely talked to me for that matter. When I questioned him, he said that when the phone rang, my mom said to him, “oh, I guess it’s your turn to talk to her.” So she obviously didn’t even want to talk to me.

I fumed the whole weekend, which of course made me mad and depressed. So I finally decided that I’ve had enough of this. She can’t treat me like this just because she didn’t get what she wanted. She’s gotten what she wanted in regards to the whole wedding thing for the past year. But Ben and I are not breaking up, so it’s not going away. It’s important to me, so I’m going to continue nagging her about meeting his family.

I got angry enough, that last night I sent her an email that simply said “Nice talking to you Friday night. So glad I called.” Hopefully she’ll get the message, but I’m sure she won’t. We’ll both sit and fume, then when it finally comes to a head and I try to call her out on her behavior getting worse and worse it’ll end up the same as always. She’ll dominate the conversation, blame all our problems on me, belittle me and make me feel like shit, then she’ll just ignore it all until the next time I bring it up, while I fume and get even more depressed inbetween. It’s just this vicious cycle that will never end.

I know Ben is getting fed up with her, and I wouldn’t blame Sue if her feelings were starting to be hurt. She hasn’t done anything wrong and she can’t even be happy or celebrate her own son’s engagement and upcoming wedding. My family right now looks like a bunch of popmpus, stuck-up asses - but you can’t make them see that. They think this is all the right thing to do.

Besides, it’s all revenge for the whole not-graduating-college-thing. No matter how much they hurt me, they don’t beleive that I will ever be as hurt as, or even understand how much I hurt them when I let them go to the graduation ceremony knowing that I wasn’t graduating. As I think many of my previous posts show, I have more than learned my lesson and am determined to finish school. They just continue to hurt and hurt. I don’t want to walk away becuase they are the only family I have, but I don’t know how to make this stop. Even though I do everything right and the way they want me too, I still owe them something. It’s still not enough. I still have to pay penance. I don’t know what else to do to make it right. It doesn’t make sense to me at all.

I’m thinking about seeing a physcologist to try and talk this stuff though. I guess nobody can really give me the answers I’m looking for, but I’m assuming I’ll get as close as I ever will talking to a therapist. I think my mom needs to go too.

Well, that’s all for now. I’m off for a quick nap before heading off to Liesle’s tonight. It’s a wonder she hasn’t disowned me by now. I hardly ever get to talk to her, much less see her anymore. So Ben and I are going over to her apartment to hang out and watch movies or something. It’ll be nice just to see her for awhile.

Good night!