I want to say thank you so much for saying this. Other people have told me to tell them to fuck off, and I just haven't been able to do it.
I'm about to write something that I haven't ever really written down, and I think it's going to be all for my own benefit, but I'm using your comments to help drive it out of me, so I hope that's ok. :) I need to kind of get this out of my system, and let the internet take it away.
My mom has been the hardest. My mom hasn't ever been "normal" and my relationship with her has never been "normal." I don't just mean in the "narcissistic parents" kind of way, though there is a bit of that. My mom (when I'm being nice about it), I tell people she is probably on the Autistic scale somewhere...something like Aspergers, because she never has really shown any emotion. Others call it something else. My husband says she's just mean to me. My babyloss therapist chalks it up to pure narcissism.
When I was 12, I was very computer savvy, back in the compuserve and aol days when e-mail was new... I was cleaning out cache like a good web nerd, when I found saved e-mails to my father, and images, pointedly showing he was having an affair. At 12, I had to decide whether to tell my mom, and after two weeks of asking my pastor, teachers, and friends a couched question, "would you tell someone something, if you knew it would hurt them but they should probably know." I finally decided to tell her. In retrospect, people at my school probably thought I had a friend being mean to another friend or something...this was before you asked about abuse or drug or alcohol problems at home.
My relationship with her has never been the same. I think in many ways, she holds me responsible for his infidelity, and subsequent departure from our lives, but I may be projecting. After he left, she shut down. I was responsible for keeping the house in order. I was responsible for making sure food was made, I got to school, she went to work...I even did her taxes for the first time at age 16. She sort of became a vegetable, or at least...she may have always been a vegetable...I never really remember her being happy, unless someone was singing...music is the only thing that gets through to her.
I moved out when I was 17, because I couldn't take it. Worked two jobs at Earthlink and JC Penney Portrait Photography, and started college at a community college, even though I was accepted into UCLA...we couldn't afford it.
Then, when I was 19, she got sick. Her Kidneys were failing. She had type 2 diabetes at least from the time I was 9 or 10, but she never managed it. She ate poorly, never took her medications...instead she bounced from one new agey health fad to the next..."Kombucha Mushroom Tea will cure your diabetes..." "No wait, the Atkins Diet will cure your diabetes." No wait, eating only pineapples will cure your diabetes." In her mind the only thing that would not help her diabetes was taking her glucophage.
She couldn't afford her medical bills, so I moved home and quit school. I started a full time job to help things out. When I was 22, she started getting healthier again for a short stint...she had started once a week dialysis and felt much better, so she decided to sell her (our) house, and move to Oregon, expecting me to continue working full time, and sending her help money, while also making my own living. Luckily, I found a good roommate, and a good job, so I made it work.
In many ways, this was the best thing that ever happened to me, but her medical bills kept mounting, taking more of my income as I gained experience in my career path. When I was making 40k a year, I was sending 5k out of pocket to her. When I was making 78k a year, I was sending 11k out of pocket to her. When I had my best year ever, making 88k a year, she fell on the sidewalk, and broke her right kneecap. I flew up to visit her in the secondary care physical therapy facility, and she refused to do her exercises. I begged and pleaded with her to get up and walk...to try. Her doctor said that if she didn't get up out of the chair, even though it would make her leg feel on fire due to the pin in her knee, her muscles would atrophy and she would probably always be in a chair. I spent a week visiting her every day, begging her to walk...I loved her, I didn't want her to be wheelchair bound...especially since her Doctor thought she had a good shot if she would just put in the work. But she refused. When my week off of work was up, and I had to fly home, she told me I didn't want to be there anyway since I was leaving her. I had spent $2500 on visiting her, and over $18k in bills for the care facility since she met the maximum amount her blue cross would cover. I can't explain how much that sucked for her to say. She's really my only family.
When I got married, she couldn't come. She is homebound due to her dialysis and chair, and needs an aid and a hoyer to get into bed every night. When I got pregnant, I was living in Seattle in the time, and drove with my husband and dog to see her in person and tell her...so as I excitedly said I was pregnant (with Fiona), she deadpan stated, "I thought your hips looked wider". That was it. Nothing more.
When I lost the baby, and I called her from the outside entryway of the hospital, as I was about to be taken up and induced into labor, she told me, "At least she hadn't lived yet." I hung up on her. When I got home from the delivery, she called me again, and said, "You'll just have to suck it up, it's over now." That was the last straw. I haven't spoken to her on the phone since.
Today (which is what prompted this), she sent me a Facebook message saying that, "the photos of you pregnant are off putting...you should remove them". I have spent my life making her life easier, paying for her medical bills (before Obamacare, so thanks Obamacare...you made my life easier, even though all she does is denounce you and watch fox news), I went without little things like Cable or vacations or buying new clothes, so that I could make sure she had cable (because she just sits in her goddamn chair all day at home alone), and good quality nursing aides.
After all that, she pretty much doesn't give a shit about me or my feelings, and it's just time to be done with that. I haven't told her I'm pregnant now, and I may never do it.
In honesty, the only other people who have outright said I should be hiding how I'm feeling are other members of her family. My Aunt, and a few cousins, telling me that hearing about my pregnancy is scary because I didn't bring home a live baby, etc.
I've known for a long time that family is who you choose, not who you are born to, but I think it's finally time to say Fuck 'Em and be done. I'm 34 years old, I have a great job, a great husband, a (somewhat annoying, but lovable) dog. I have friends who came to the hospital when I was in labor and held me...who were willing to come empty the nursery at my request so that I didn't have to face storing it all. I really do have good people in my life. Just not the people who share my blood.
Holy shit that feels good to get out.