Boundaries

It’s been a while. I think I will start utilizing this outlet more. I have been pretty FB obsessed for a while, therein the drama, or at least some of it, lies.

I started school (AGAIN) in January and really determined to change careers. Working full-time, school full-time and raise Jake. I can do this.

In January, I got into an argument with my mom. We were on the phone and I asked her a question, a reasonable question, she screams at me and hangs up. The issue was that she had wronged Jake and he deserved an apology. She does not apologized. EVER.  And it is a trait that my youngest sister inherited from her. Anyway, I don’t talk to my mom for 2 weeks. This is a big deal; I usually talk to my mom and each of my sisters about every other day. Then she calls, says she is making lunch and asks Jake and I to come over. Like nothing ever happened. So we go over and walk in the door. I tell my mom that she has something to say to Jake. She throws a fit about it, but she does apologize to him.

Now on to my younges sister. I don’t even know how it started. Somewhere in the argument she starts ranting about me being friends with her friends on FB and getting mad about me commenting to her friends. Well, “her friends” are kids that I have known for over 15 years. Yes, they are originally her friends, but I have got to know them, their spouses and their kids over the years. Insane and immature was the disagreement. Every time we would try to resolve the issue, I would affirm her complaints. She continually attacked my character when I thought we were attempting to resolve the issue. It was a downward spiral. She would attack my character and I would confront her about it and she would say, “I’m sorry, but…” and what came after negated the apology and was usually another insult or attack to my character. It helped me realize how she really thought of me. Which, upon further analysis, I realized that she was just projecting on to me how she felt about herself.

So both situations are resolved. And I am left thinking, “What, in the past two months, has changed?” My mom and my sisters are all in dissatisfying marriages. The marriage I had (if you want to call it that) was bad. Yet, in some ways, was the best of the four. I got out. I knew I deserved better. Well, I don’t know if I really knew that. I just needed out. And that drove a wedge between my mom and my sisters and me. But in a lot of ways, I was still miserable. Leaving and the divorce were hard on me in the fact that I knew how hard it was on Jake. Someone can hurt me all they want, I am used to it. Mess with my boy?? It is on like Donkey Kong. Now that I am doing well, bettering myself, I think it, well I don’t really know what it does to them. All I know is how they treat me and Jake. Jake is very happy and well adjusted. His dad and I get along-I determined to do that for Jake’s sake-very well, actually. I am moving forward. And for whatever reason, it disrupts my family. The insight I get is from materials that I read at work for the groups I do with the patients. It was divine intervention because this division between me and my family has really bothered me. I want to know what I could do or could have done differently. I analyze it, too much, probably, and I know, looking back, I could have made better choices about certain things. However, the underlying issue is always the same. Any change in the dysfunction sends them haywire. I understand their limitations, as I do my own, and I realized that they are doing the best they can and the best they know how to do. I just wish they could be happy for me.