Sunday, Apr. 01, 2018 - 7:03 a.m.

Ok. This may take a few entries to unpack.
Q and U were fighting over egg dyeing. U broke Q’s egg and then tried to deny it and say she made him do it or even blamed E who was nowhere near it. Q was crying loudly, she was very sad. Mom sat there through it all as I tried to comfort Q and stop U from digging his hole any deeper. He was also trying to hit people with a spoon, which I took away. Then she couldn’t help herself, and told Q she had cried enough, it was just an egg. I told her to stop it, it was obviously important to Q. She said something sarcastic about being glad she came over for such a WONDERFUL holiday tradition. I said thank you for pointing out that we were having a hard time, no one would have noticed without her rubbing our noses in it. Somehow ended up with her telling us all to be quiet, I said no. I never have and I will not now at 45 years old. She said something about needing to respect my elders. I LOL’d.

She got up in a huff and said something something leaving and fine I’LL get upset and cry about an egg too, and took the last undyed egg and threw it on the ground. I told her great job at acting like an adult.

She went to leave.

Q started panicking because now conflict makes her panic. She didn’t want Grandma to leave. I said fine, you can ask her to stay if you want. So she went and begged Grandma to stay. Mom came back out and announced that she was staying but only because my daughter had come crying asking her to. I helped the kids finish the eggs and started to clean up. Q went to her room, U was outside with her and I heard her talking shit to him about me. “Your mother always attacks me” etc.

I came out all Jerry Springer and told her it wasn’t appropriate to talk to him about me, if she had something to say she could say it to me. “Well I have something to say in front of your 5 year old. Every time I come over here you attack me!” Blah blah. Made reference to the other day when I had to stop her from trying to forcibly brush my childrens’ hair. At the time I had tried to explain why it was important to me and she scoffed and ridiculed and dismissed me. Now here she was bringing it up as an example of my unprovoked attacks on her.

I told her that the only time I ever “attack” her is when she is saying or doing something that is harmful to my children, and that when I try to explain the issues, she ridicules me or tells me to stop talking or dismisses my concerns, just like she always has. You have always done this, I told her. She denied it. YIU ARE DOING IT RIGHT NOW I told her. She dismissed it and tried to flip it back at me.

And that’s when it turned into major gaslight session where she accused me of always yelling and going crazy with her. Then Q came out and started crying and begging us to stop being scary. So we comforted her and mom made a big announcement about how she was going and wouldn’t be back over for Easter. Then she left.

Leaving me in the most acute emotional pain have have felt for many, many years. Feeling these things: maybe she’s right and it is me, I scare Q and I can’t help yelling and maybe I am just a horrible, broken person who can’t fix herself.

Then I realized that that is the voice of a child who was not accepted for herself. Who was told “I love you” on one hand and shamed and silenced and blamed on the other.

Do I yell too much? Yes. Do I do my best to express myself calmly before yelling? Yes. I don’t want to play the “self diagnosed autistic” card but I do feel like people tell me I’m yelling when I am not aware that I am yelling. Is it that I am angry, and they interpret that as yelling? Am I actually being too loud and can’t tell? I don’t know.

How about when you see someone is struggling, and you have said to them, “I am worried about you, you need rest and help”, but then when they are having a hard time you bear down on them and try to make them feel shitty about themselves and most importantly don’t cut them any fucking slack because when a mother is underslept and stressed and in the middle of managing a minor crisis with her children, that is totally the time to actively try to make her feel like shit. Then by all means, act all hurt and victimized.

The worst part of this is that she’s going to try to want to talk talk talk about this, to anyone and everyone and I just don’t even give a shit. I don’t give a shit about our relationship. If she dies today, I won’t be all “oh I feel so bad we parted on bad terms”. Just keep her AWAY from me. Cleaning my cat box and doing my dishes while making cracks about how much stuff I have doesn’t make up for her chronic lack of respect and acceptance of me as a person.

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