Family Stuff

I’m still iffy about the idea of using this as a platform for broadcasting my life.  It felt fine and good when I was 15 but at twice that I feel a bigger need for privacy, and yet, there’s still stuff I need to talk about. Also, none of this is actually a big deal and is mostly dealable with, but I need to talk about it.

Also, this post as originally written was a mess.  I’ve cleaned it up by moving all of the context to the opening and listing the cast of characters.

My Mom:  Our relationship has always been rocky and moving away from her 8 years ago was the best decision I’ve made.  Over the last years I’ve realized that while I’m alive and not too much of a mess, that she was pretty unfit to be a parent and made an unreasonable amount of mistakes that have left me with a lot of bitterness towards both of my parents.

My Brother: Eight years older.  We get along, and have gotten along a lot better since we moved to Seattle together but are still overcoming a childhood of not bonding or learning how to get along or talk about feelings or emotions.  We’re similar in a lot of ways because of our upbringing.  I’m still a little bitter over the fact that when things got really bad in our household that he peaced out and left me alone to deal with it at eight years old.  I know he wasn’t much better prepared for it at sixteen, but he was certainly more prepared than I was.  I also took most of the burden of helping my mother care for my grandmother when she was sick and dying.

Ok, now that you’re all caught up, we can move on.

In November my mom turned 70.  Last Monday she had hip replacement surgery.  I felt selfish about it and really didn’t want to go to New York to take care of her so my brother went instead.  I kind of felt like he owed me for leaving all those years ago and for spending my childhood helping take care of my grandmother while he got to actually be a teen/young adult.  But this trip ended up being sandwiched between three work trips for him and caring for our mother (who is almost certainly the genetic source of my ADHD and is a handful to deal with even in good health) really took it out of him.  For his sake I feel bad that I bailed on this and didn’t take up the slack.  I did promise that when she inevitably needs the other hip replaced, taking care of her would be my responsibility.  On the other side, I think he actually did a much better job of taking care of her than I would have been able to.  He said he spent close to a $1000 on her during the week he was there, including getting a hotel near the hospital so they didn’t have to travel far right before the surgery.  He did stuff that I just wouldn’t have thought of, including meal prepping for her so she’d have a large source of ready made food to eat the week after he left.

On Sunday he texted me on the way back from New York asking if we could meet up ASAP and said it was family business.  It sounded serious and like something he didn’t want to talk about on the phone.  So, obviously I started worrying.  I spent two days worrying that I was going to leave work on Monday, meet with him and find out that she was super sick, or dying, or starting into dementia or something.  It ended up just being him needing to talk about his week and convey some information to me in person.  It was serious but it definitely wasn’t the dire news that I was expecting.

I came home from that meeting and basically collapsed.  I was so mentally and emotionally exhausted from worrying and also empathizing and worrying about him I could barely speak.  I told my girlfriend, who had been super supportive up to that point everything that had come up during the talk because she was worried and because we talk about everything.

Believe it or not, this entire post is actually leading up to the part below.

Then I mentioned that my brother told me he had been on a date, which is exciting.  She asked how it went and I said that he’d found her kind of boring and also wasn’t super attracted to her.  I mentioned that he’s super picky about who he’s into and his date didn’t fit the very specific type that he’s into.  And she got upset.  She told me that I should be careful saying that my brother is more picky about women than I am.  I was super frustrated and exhausted and so I tried to smooth things out and she said that I was only making things worse.  Which only made me more frustrated.  SHE KNOWS that he only dates women fit into a very specific physical mold.  It’s not like I said that he only dates women who are physically perfect or something.  He’s got a type and he sticks to it.  I am also very open with how I feel about her mentally, physically and emotionally.  She said she understood what I meant after I explained it, but I shouldn’t have had to explain it to begin with.  It wasn’t new information and I certainly wasn’t praising him for it or saying that he made better choices than I do.

It made me angry that I had to deal with that when I was exhausted.  That she couldn’t have just asked for clarification instead of getting annoyed.  That she couldn’t have just paused for a second and considered what I meant and recalled the information that she already knew about my brother.  That she couldn’t give me the benefit of the doubt and realize that I would never say whatever she thought I was implying.

I’m still fucking annoyed about it.  We didn’t talk about it and we pretended it didn’t happen basically.  She didn’t want to talk about it and I didn’t have the energy or mental wherewithal to do anything about it.

Am I wrong?  I know I was exhausted probably wouldn’t be this upset about it if it had been a normal day and I’m trying to see her side of it, but shit I’m still annoyed that she got annoyed about that.  I’m sure she was also stressed from worrying about me and her own stuff.  If I’m in the wrong here I’ll accept it, but I don’t think I did anything wrong.