Posted by gwendolyn on July 25, 2002 at 06:50 PM

I guess I am really overdue for an update. Well, here it goes...

I found out that I have cysts on both my ovaries and that is what is causing some of the pain that I am having. I am supposed to be having surgery to remove my cervix on August 1. The cysts are just there to irritate me. They will just keep on being there. I guess it is normal to have them during ovulation. I don't even know what to think about that.

My monkey left me Saturday morning. I cried myself to sleep the night before. The next morning when I dropped him off outside at the airport I did okay. I didn't cry. He was running too late for the plane for me to think about crying. Maybe that was meant to happen that way. My mother and sister arrived Friday night, so my kids stayed home with her and were still sleeping when I got back. We went to the beach and got sunburned. We went shopping. We ate. We went to Lion Country Safari. We went to Key Largo for a very seasick ride on the glassbottom boat. We ate more. We shopped more. I basically served as chauffer, tour guide, and hotel accomodations. It is quite apparent that that is the only reason they come here. That and maybe to spend time with the kids when they feel like pretending to really want to be with them. Somehow throwing money at me and insisting on paying for everything while she is here is supposed to somehow make up for that. When will she learn that you can't buy love. Paying for my dinner isn't showing me she loves me.

My sister is a teenager. My mother is completely different with her than she was with me. In fact, she went completely to the other extreme with her. I am not jealous of her. I am disgusted by her. I personally can't believe some of the things she is allowed to get away with. My mother thinks this is all normal behaviour and that she is handling it. Her idea of handling it is giving in to everything she wants and taking a whole lot of smart mouth from her. It isn't working any better than the abuse and threat tactics she used with me. I tried to keep myself from pointing out a lot of these things were just unacceptable because not only was my sister being a pain in the ass but she was being very disrespectful to me, my children, and my house. I did make a few comments that I am sure weren't appreciated. I may have not been a perfect daughter. I wasn't even easy to deal with. I do know, however, that I was raised to be a hell of a lot more courteous and respectful than she is. I would have never been permitted to treat my mother (or anyone else for that matter) the way my sister treats people. It is a shame that my mother couldn't figure out how to do this after all these years. Funnily enough, she does what she does with her because she knows she failed with me and my brother. It is going to be a huge slap in the face when she finally realizes she is failing with my sister too.

I have been very emotional. I don't feel the way I am supposed to about my mother anymore. I don't feel close to her. I don't even feel like we were ever mother and daughter. I feel like I was her whipping post for mental problems she had and still has and tries to validate her attitude and her actions in her own mind as being only natural reactions to hardships and circumstances that were not her fault. Now she claims that what she did was what she was supposed to do. She also claims to be distancing herself from her family in an attempt to not let bad things happen to my sister. What she really needs to do is suck it up and deal with the problems she should have dealt with fifteen years ago like a good mother would have. What she really needs to do is feel an ounce of remorse and sorrow for everything she has done and allowed to happen to us. A lot of bitterness has been running through me during this visit. One very small example of what I mean, last night I had a brief meltdown when they were showing me pictures of my brother. I haven't spent any time with my brother since I left home. I haven't even been in the same room with him for years aside from one small brush with him in passing at the doctors office. I didn't recognize him in the pictures. He grew up. He doesn't look anything like I expected. He isn't the most conventional person. I can live with that. I'm not either. I don't hate him for who he is. I just hope for the best for him. I hope that he does the right things in life and eventually it all evens out for him. In the same breath, I am sad. I am pissed off that my family is so fucked up. I am heartbroken that I mean less than nothing to so many people who are supposed to love me, if for no other reason than the fact that I am their flesh and blood. I love them in spite of themselves, though I can honestly say that with time it is fading. I am realizing that I feel more bitterness than love for any of them. To the point of not being able to stand to be around them. When I voiced my feelings about this to my mother she called it all "circumstancial". Yeah, the circumstances being that my mother completely failed us. My brother called my mother this morning on her cell phone. He isn't even comfortable talking to me on the phone. I have never done anything to him that I am aware of that would make him feel that way about me except maybe knowing more about him and the things he has done wrong than he is comfortable with.

The week was long, sad, irritating, disappointing, sometimes a hint of okay, most of the time not. I got sick Tuesday night and ended up going to see the ENT Wednesday morning only to find out that it wasn't an ear infection that has been recently kicking my ass it is actually a nasty arthritis inflamation in the joints in my jaws. It is causing my face and ear canal to swell and be really painful. They put me on medication that may prevent me from having surgery next Thursday. This is a gigantic problem because my mother in law has nonrefundable plane tickets and is coming here to take care of my children during the surgery.

As if this all wasn't enough, the van overheated while I was dropping off my medication prescriptions at the pharmacy yesterday. I eventually got it home. This morning the air conditioner in the apartment decided to freeze up for the millionth time and then throw in a new trick, leaking water all over the floor under it. The dryer finally decided that it just needs a vacation and refuses to dry clothes unless they are ran through a minimum of three cycles.

My mother left a couple of hours ago and I am sitting here trying to get back to normal. Mr. Monkey will be landing at ten something tonight. I am so glad. We have gotten to talk a lot since he left. I couldn't have made it without our cell phones this week. I have missed him so much and needed him to be here.