List of Grievances - Part 2

• When I had ds, I had to have an emergency c-section. NM made the comment that I should be thankful I didn’t have to have an episiotomy because THAT was more painful! Yeah NM, as if having that little piece of tissue cut down there is comparable to having my entire abdomen and uterus cut into! Then, when dh asked her to stay with me to help me out while I recuperated (once it came time for dh to go back to work), NM did NOTHING the entire time she was here. I’d ask her to mix up a bottle for ds and her comment was always “You’re going to have to learn to do it for yourself sometime. Might as well be now.” I wound up sending her away early the second day and telling her not to bother coming back. She quite happily obliged.

• NM continued to insist that some yogurt or cheese wouldn’t hurt ds despite the fact that I’d told her numerous times that ds was LACTOSE INTOLERANT as an infant/toddler. Of course, this applies to many different things. She ALWAYS knows better than I since SHE has already raised two children and done such a FINE job of it so, naturally, I should defer to her wisdom. SOOOOOO NOT happening! LOL

• Anytime I’ve ever insisted on something regarding ds, like the fact that they now suggest waiting until age 3 before giving any peanut butter, NM will insist that SHE gave us xyz or did xyz and NHS and I turned out just fine. She’ll often then go on to ridicule “all these new restrictions” that the doctors give us for ourselves and our children, again citing how SHE never had all those restrictions and did just fine. I always love to point out to her at these moments how as little as a hundred years or so ago, they also thought the cure for a common headache was to drill a hole in a person’s skull to let some blood out. Then I ask her if she’d prefer that treatment the next time she’s suffering from a headache or would she like to try the NEW treatment that involved taking an aspirin? Usually gets me HUGE CBF’s! LOL

• NM continues to assert that ds “hardly knows her” and that she “never gets to see him” despite the fact that I’ve told her numerous times that she can see him whenever she wants provided she calls first. But that isn’t good enough for NM. She wants to be able to take him out by herself which I’ve told her won’t happen unless and until she can prove that she’s willing to abide by the guidelines that dh and I have chosen for OUR son. I refuse to accept the blame for NM not knowing her gs because she’d rather have things HER way and/or because her various hair/nail appointments and shopping excursions take precedence over visitation with her gs. Yet I’m labeled “unfair” because I “won’t let her” take her gs out by herself without me there.

• Once when NSJ called here and upset me with another one of his “jokes” (you know, the kind that are at your expense and are a form of abuse yet, when confronted with it, he plays them off as if he was “just kidding” and I’m being overly sensitive, etc.?) and I had the gall to be upset by what he’d said, all NM could think to say was that I was “being stupid” since NSJ was clearly “just joking around”. After I no longer wanted to speak to her, she had the gall to ask dh “Why is DA being this way?” and “Why is she doing this to me?” Thankfully dh told her off and hung up on her sorry ass. (She still will bring this up about how dh was so “disrespectful” to her!)

• After I finally gathered up enough courage to cut NSJ out of my life, NM took it upon herself to fix things. She was constantly on my back to make nice and go over to her house. Then, one day, she actually called me up and announced that she and NHS had “made it their mission to get the faaaaamily back together for Xmas” that year. I flat out told them both to butt out and stop it and that I wasn’t interested. Guess I was firm enough or whatever because NM actually said she was wrong for that one and backed off.

• After one temporary cutoff when I had begun to resume contact with NM, she had the gall to say to me, “I’m so glad you decided act nice again and stopped going on about all that stupid shit”. It seriously took all the willpower I had not to tell her off and cut her off permanently.

• When I wanted my driver’s license, I was told we “didn’t have the money” and that I had to wait. But when my NHS turned 16, NM took both of us out so that NHS could get her license right away. Likewise, when I wanted a car, I was told that I had to get a job and save up the money. Okay. I could respect that…………had NM not gone out of her way to help NHS get a car right after she got NHS her license.

• Every time I was given a gift by my dad’s side of the family, NM had to run out and buy NHS one just like it because “it wasn’t fair that I got TWICE as many gifts since I had TWO families”. Yeah NM. I was so “lucky” that my parents were divorced and my family was fractured.

• When she found out that I was once again in therapy, NM criticized me and said “What’re you going to be in therapy until you’re 60 years old?” When I said, “Yes. If that’s what it takes to finally resolve my issues and live a happy, content life”, NM told me I was being “ridiculous” and just needed to “get over it” already.

• A few times when I’ve brought up that I had some unresolved stuff regarding the abuse, NM said “Now wait just a minute. NSJ did NOT abuse you. I wish you’d stop saying that.” Then she added that I just “need to let the past go already and move on”.

• I would often come home from school to find that NM had cleaned my room. This always involved coming home to find that NM had bagged up several trash bags of stuff as garbage which meant stuff that she didn’t think we needed. A few times I was lucky enough to have time to go through the bags and get all my stuff out. The woman actually threw out a pair of very expensive Birkenstocks that I’d traded for simply because she thought they were “ugly” and I “didn’t need them anyhow”.

• When I was still at home, I bought a pet rabbit. When I moved out a couple years later, I wasn’t able to take the rabbit with me and offered to either pay to have him put to sleep OR to locate an animal shelter that would take him and re-home him. NM and NSJ refused, saying THEY would keep him and he would now be their pet. I told them that was fine by me. Several years went by. One day, I get a call from NM. She was at work and said she’d noticed that the rabbit “sounded funny” as she was leaving. She said she thought he was sick and asked if I could go over there and take him to the vet to be put to sleep and the vet could call her and she’d pay over the phone. I said fine. Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw when I got there. This poor animal was literally skin and bones. His toenails were horribly overgrown. But the worst part was the sound this poor thing made when it breathed. It clearly had a bad respiratory infection and made this horrible gurgling sound whenever he breathed. My once beautiful, sweet baby bunny was so weak he couldn’t even stand and was barely alive. I immediately burst into tears and cried the entire way to the vet’s office, while I was there and the entire way home. When I spoke to my NM later that day, I told her that I didn’t want to talk to her for awhile. When she asked why, I told her what I’d seen and that there was NO WAY IN H@LL that this had happened “all of a sudden”. Clearly they hadn’t taken care of that poor animal in a long time. NM became extremely angry and told me “Listen here, little girl. YOU were the one who left him with us because YOU didn’t want to take care of him anymore!” I told her that was a lie and hung up. Later that day, I had a message on my answering machine. It was a long, nasty message from NM saying that she’d called the vet and they’d supposedly told her that these kinds of infections can show up that way overnight. Then she went on to say that I’d better not ever say that they were anything less than kind and caring to that animal, yadda yadda. Talk about denial.

• When I was in high school, our English teacher made us keep a daily journal that year. One day, we were asked who we would be if we could be anyone, dead or alive. I wrote that I’d be my grandfather because he was dead and didn’t have to suffer anymore. It was around that time that I’d also begun cutting myself. My teacher had apparently noticed the cutting and when she read that journal entry, she thought it time to call up my parents. My NM went in for a conference and, much like she did with my therapist years later, spent the entire meeting badmouthing me, saying I’ve always been a liar and exaggerated things for attention, etc. The whole way home and for hours after we got home, all NM kept saying was “Do you have any idea how EMBARRASSING that was for me???!!”

• Throughout my teenage years, I was extremely depressed. NM’s advice was always to tell me to just “be happy”, start dressing in more colors instead of blacks and grays all the time and listen to happier music and I’d be just fine. Even when she found out I was cutting myself, she wasn’t convinced I needed help. It wasn’t until years later that she FINALLY got me into some therapy.

• At one point during my worst depression, I began hearing things. Not voices really, just these sort of sounds, as if someone had left the phone off the receiver and you could hear people talking but not make out anything being said. It was extremely hard for me to tell her about it and I made her swear she wouldn’t tell NSJ in particular. By the next day, NSJ was teasing me about “hearing stuff” and saying I was crazy – obviously NM had told him everything.

• After NSJ beat me one morning, I came home later that day and told NM what had happened and showed her the bruises. She looked me dead in the eye and as calm as could be told me “I don’t know where you got those bruises but I know NSJ did NOT give them to you.” She and NHS denied it so strongly that I began to think I HAD imagined it all. It wasn't until years later when I reconnected with an old high school friend who eventually mentioned the bruises that I realized I WASN'T crazy and HADN'T imagined the whole thing! I cried upon my friend saying that it had really happened.

• Denies that NHS and I were raised in a home where bad language was spoken despite the fact that it was a daily occurrence and that my friends (including my dh) remember hearing it all the time.

• When I first told her that dh and I wanted to try to have a baby, she told me that she didn’t care if we ever had kids because SHE “wasn't ready to be a grandma again yet”.