I don't like going to see my Mom anymore. This actually isn't a new sentiment...I've felt it for several years now. I don't hate my Mom nor my stepfather nor my brother and his fiancée. I just don't feel like I belong with them anymore.
It probably doesn't help that Mom has been living for like the past seven years now in a house I've never lived in so going home isn't going home at all. There are trinkets from our time together in places I would have called home, but it's not the same. I can't get comfortable in that house ever. I feel like I'm visiting some relative's house where you're not allowed to touch anything or the food available is stuff you never eat (in the bad way). I'm also so out of the loop in this household that I'm clearly the square peg being stuck into a round hole. I'm not like them at all. It's so much more stifling. The stuff they find funny doesn't really do it for me anymore. It's not that it isn't amusing, but it's like the difference between Louis CK (who is brutal and swears a lot) and Brian Regan (who is family friendly). They're both very good comics, but if you're of the Louis CK type, it's gonna be an uncomfortable experience and believe me, every time I do pipe in...if there is a wrong thing for me to say, I said it. Or to put it another way, imagine being the one Democrat in a house full of Republicans (or vice-versa). What's the point of offering an opinion if it is either going to be ignored or "wrong"? And then you get shit for not talking...no way to win.
Even my cats are mostly gone. Only one remains of the three we got when I was in high school. There are two new ones now...more unfamiliarity, but they're not my cats, they're Mom and stepfather's cats. Sometime's I feel like the only reason I go to see my Mom at all is to see that cat and she's already seventeen so how much longer will that anchor remain?
Mom already wants a Christmas list and I really don't want to provide one. I just don't want to bother anymore. I'm tired of it all. I'm tired of the chore it is to go visit. I want to just drift away from that side of the family. I'm better with my Dad's side or at least I feel more welcomed so it's not like I want to shun everyone. Mom's side is like walking on eggshells and Dad's side, if I say something stupid, I will be called out on it then and there rather than "taken aside" hours later and quietly scolded. On Mom's side, I feel like I am allowed to have my opinions provided they are the right ones. I feel like I should not speak at all when around them because offense is internalized on that side and held like a grudge. If I avoid a subject at a gathering on my Dad's side, it is out of respect because I know where everyone stands on issues and we all want to have a good time. On Mom's side, offenses are strewn about like landmines so I avoid subjects out of fear. Visiting my Mom is stressful. If I could leave her home in the same mood in which I had arrived, it would be a miracle.
It's stuff like this that makes me wonder if I am cowardly by nature or if my upbringing is more to blame. It's probably no coincidence that my discomfort with my Mom began not too many years after moving in with my Dad. I do not hold myself blameless in these confrontations but I refuse to accept that I am totally the asshole. I do not feel comfortable around my Mom, my stepfather, and my brother and haven't for a long time. Nowhere else do I feel this. My Best Friend's grandparents made me feel more at home and theirs truly was the house where you couldn't touch anything. I am just out-of-place with them. I don't want to deal with it anymore...
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