Toxicity

I hardly know where to begin. My last post gave me a lot of anxiety to re-read just now, yet here I am on the same subject of my mother, once again. I have to say, I really feel ready to just cut the world off and disappear. Not in a bad sense, just cut out the toxic people and hit the road already. We are going to do that, but we don't leave until the 15th, about a month from now. It's going to go by so, so slowly.

My grandma came into town yesterday to swap some kind of sewing programs with my mom at my mom's house. The previous day my mom told me she wanted me to come, too, because she didn't want to be left alone with her mother. They don't get along and they don't like each other, yet when they're together, they pretend to be all good. Honestly it's weird, yet I find myself doing the same thing with my mom daily. There are so damned many things wrong with our relationship and open wounds that are just not talked about, at all. Ever.

I took my one year old into the other room for a nap, and accidentally fell asleep. When I woke up, I heard my mom and grandma whispering, though I couldn't tell about what. I had an idea that it might be about me, why else would they need to whisper? No one else was there. But I didn't really care. They're both toxic people who only ever talk bad about every single other person they know or know of.

But once it was time to leave, my grandma came with me to come and check out our current RV park. We moved closer to our daughter's school this past Mother's Day and the park is beautiful. Anyway, she looked at me and said, "Your mother just loves drama." First, even starting a conversation that way is drama in itself. You see? They're toxic. But, it is true that my mom loves drama. In fact, she only ever watches those messed up shows about people's problems: Maury, Steve Wilkos, Jerry Springer, etc. She'll get lividly angry if you try to have a conversation with her while she's watching the drama unfold, or just plain ignore you. She's also always just scrolling Facebook, talking about this person and that person and this situation, nothing ever positive or productive.

My grandmother proceeded to tell me that my mother knows that once we get out on the road that we're in for a rude awakening because we're going to find out real quick that traveling isn't all it cracked up to be. Now first, whether or not that was said, and there's no telling because they're both liars and shit talkers, it's ridiculous. How can any one person say that someone else's path isn't a good path for them? It's not your damn choice or your life. They like to sit around and not go outside, we like to travel and live outdoors. So yeah, a life on the road wouldn't be good for them. I am not them. I am me. And I love traveling and experiencing life. Even the downs. All of it. Thankyouverymuch.

Recently my husband threw our daughter's tennis shoes into the dryer and forgot about them. Our new dryer gets crazy hot and runs for way too long. The soles of the shoes actually shrank to almost half of their original size. They were wrecked beyond repair and trash. My mom said she was going to go buy new shoes for her. I said not to worry about it that she didn't need them, and that she could sit out for PE today until we got back home and dug out her other wearable shoes. So even though I said no, she took it upon herself to go anyway and buy shoes. For that I was thankful when it turned out the original shoes were trash, but was not something I asked for and something I even declined. She apparently told my grandma that she was "suckered" into buying the shoes, and that if she had known how much money my husband makes, she wouldn't have done that.

Here's what I find to be sick about that. She knew how much money my husband makes, long before she took it upon herself to buy those shoes. She bought something I told her not to. And, who cares how much money a child's parents have when you're a grandparent? Don't you do things for your grandchildren just purely because you love them??????

Then comes another kicker. Someone, and I obviously at this point don't even know who said what because they're both saying the other person said it (the toxicity is killing me), said that there must be something going on between my husband and his boss, who is a female, and in her late fifties. We aren't even thirty yet. I'm almost positive that it was likely my mother who said that one. She hates my husband's boss, for no reason at all, whatsoever. But she hates everyone. She once told me that something about the woman rubbed her wrong. But there's no sustenance to that at all. I really believe she just may be jealous. His boss has her own successful business, and loves us like her own kids. She's talked about selling my husband her business, and my mom feels inadequate because of that in a lot of ways. Plus, she's not going to like anyone who likes my husband because, you guessed it, she hates him, too.

For the first time, yesterday as I felt physically sick over the things that had been said by either one of or both of the women who are supposed to care most about me and my family, the word 'toxic' kept coming to mind. I just felt so sick, like really sick for the first time, and so done. When I was finally alone yesterday I Googled things like, "signs of a toxic relationship/parent", "symptoms of a toxic personality", etc. I wasn't sure what I'd find, but was even more sickened and somehow shocked that both my mother and grandmother fit the bill, to a T. I'd always known they both had their issues, but this was, in writing, no denying a sick truth about my own blood that I'd almost somehow ignored and brushed off because well, "it's my family".

There have been a lot of fucked up things throughout my life that I've downplayed because I didn't want to appear as dramatic as my mom and grandmother constantly do about everything, literally everything. I guess over time, I really believed that those things were no big deal, and that living in a first world country with food to eat, no physical abuse (nothing consistent anyway, I believe my mother hit me twice in my whole life) and money at my disposal, that I had no right to feel like my life wasn't perfect. Not to mention, my own mother so constantly reminding me how good I had it and how much she does for me all the time. Always reminding and never letting anyone forget just how much she'd done and sacrificed. Everything was always held over my head. I was never given anything without being reminded that it had been done with great sacrifice of one kind or another. I never ever once in my entire life (yes still to this day) felt like my mother gave me anything out of love. In fact, there were times that she was so awful to me, that the next day she'd take me out on a shopping spree. It always felt like a guilt thing to me, and now I'm realizing that I was right, and also why it still never felt good.

Sometimes I still can't believe that my mom said that if she'd known I'd be such a fuck up, she'd have had another kid. I only thank God that she didn't do any of this to another human being. She's incapable of showing love, and no child deserves to grow up wondering if his/her mother loves him. This is another reason why I don't believe her when she says she didn't say any of that stuff yesterday. I fully believe they were both saying unfounded and mean things, because that's just who they are. Also because her own husband has confided in me some of the things she's said about me and about my marriage. She doesn't know that though.

I think now that I'm finally realizing things, my first step having been when my therapist cried after our first session, and my second one now being the realization of just how toxic the women in my family are... I can really being to move forward in my life. I can begin the process of healing, breaking this horrible cycle that goes back for at least four, yes four generations alone that I know of, and become a whole, healthy human being for my sweet and amazing kids. Who by the way, one of them said I was raising horribly. This coming from two women who never raised a single child...

Today has been a lot of trying to let go of the anger and hurt of their words. I know that it's only going to drag me down into their bitterness and their negativity, and I don't want that for me or for my family. Today begins healing y'all.