I woke up today at quarter to 5, waiting for my alarm to go off at 5.15. These days it seems near impossible to sleep the night through. You know how it is when you've got things on your mind. You toss and turn, thinking, thinking, thinking.
I'm thinking about lots of things and they all run into one another.
Mybrotherandsisterandthekidsschoolandmymum'sreactiontomybrotherandsisterandhownobody
daressayanythingandi'mlikethattooIdon'tsayanythingsowhyshouldIexpectthattheycanandIwishI
couldtalktomumaboutitbutshecan'thandlethiskindofthingbutthenshesaysnoonetellsheranything
butwhenwedoshedoesn'twanttohearitandexhowcomeitseemsthateveryoneelseisabletoseetheir
marriagethrougheventsworsethanmineandex'sbutwecan'tbecausewecan'ttalkanddoesn't
itseemlikeblahblahblah...
You get the picture. Now I'll take a deep breath and try to articulate the shit that's running rampant.
My brother and sister, still fighting, not talking and now parents are making it worse by cancelling Easter and Christmas this year. I'm sure they are doing what they think is right. Maybe they think that by doing this it will make everyone re-think their issues and make a move to make things better. But that won't happen. My brother is a big bully and (according to him) he's always right, even when he's wrong in so many ways. That means the rest of us can't approach him, talk to him or try to reason with him in any way. If he hears something he doesn't like he either shuts down (a bit like mum really) or raises his fists (he doesn't hit, just threaten, but he's big, so it's scary). Both tactics make the people talking to him and therefore the issues, go away.
Like any mother I guess, my mum consistently defends him, which also annoys the hell out of me. The line that irks me most is when she says "but he's a good boy". She doesn't know it but he actually is not a boy anymore and would have grown out of that line in about grade 3 or 4 when he realised his size was the perfect mechanism for getting his way. Since then he has bullied his way through life, friends and family, all the while making sure that his mother doesn't see his behaviour. If mum crosses him, as she did once when she commented on his parenting style, he just stops talking to her and will then resume if and when he feels like it, some months later.
The thing is, mum only know half the story. No-one will tell her the worst parts, lest she shut down, as she did when my poor sister had the guts to tell my mum one day, that no, her childhood wasn't really happy. If mum knew the truth, yes, it would shatter her images of the 'good boy' she knows as her son - after all, doesn't he come round to her place, didn't he cook for dad when she was sick, doesn't he cook for his family - look how good he is! But I think she'd recover, and therefore, should know the truth. I've got it in me to tell her, but it's not something you talk about over the phone, so it'll have to wait. If she's going to go all emotional over it when I tell her, I need to be there.
It's ironic, but although I'm bitching about not being able to say something, I'm also in a situation where I won't say anything, and he won't say anything to me. I keep looking for an opening, the right time to bring the discussion up again, but so far it hasn't felt right. And if I've learned anything about ex in the past 20 years it's that he will have 1000 things he wants to tell me (about myself) but won't because he doesn't want to risk the bad feelings or me melting down.
So I'm currently living in a universe that feels like it will implode at any moment, on the strength of one or two misguided words. If only, we were all brave (or stupid) enough to say what we really needed to and were brave enough hear what was being said to us. Everyone's tip toe-ing around everyone else and the feeling is not good.
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