family drama

After my last posting about M I thought perhaps it was time for a proper update. And no, I unfortunately do not have any updates about M and how that situation is going. I sent him another text but once again it’s gone unanswered.

Where to begin…

My last post was about my aunt dying. They have planned a memorial service for October 1st in a city which is 8 hours away from me. I’ve already made it clear that I am not making the trip for it, so at least that’s out of the way. I had a bit of a scare a couple of weeks ago as my father’s sisters who live in our town wanted to have a memorial service here on September 11th. That ended up getting cancelled thankfully and I’ll update on that story a little later in the post.

To say this death and all of the feelings surrounding it has been complicated would be a bit of an understatement. I guess a part of me is disappointed in the whole thing because I’d always imagined that once she died things would miraculously get better. In case you’re wondering, it hasn’t happened that way at all. I’m not going to say things are way worse per say, but I’ve had better moments. We’ve spent hours going over the things in therapy and no matter how hard I try, things just don’t seem to be any less of a struggle.

T thinks I should just reach out via email or letter or some way to let them my cousins know that I no longer want anything to do with them and would prefer it if they never contacted me again. It’s something I’m considering and I might write them letters that my mother can give to them when she sees them in October. The timing isn’t the best but I don’t really know of another way to get the notes to them. I’d like to keep it short and sweet…just a ‘fuck off’ would be nice….but I feel like it just might need to be a bit longer basically outlining my wishes for them to not contact me and to leave me alone. I still have a couple of weeks so I will be thinking about what I’m going to do over that time.

We survived the summer holidays of two, 2-week breaks. The first one didn’t seem all that bad but the last one was long and we felt really disconnected from everything. T offered for me to reach out to his colleague while he was away but for some reason I didn’t which makes me feel like my own worst enemy sometimes. It probably would’ve been a good idea to talk to someone in light of what happened on Saturday the 3rd.

I already mentioned that my two aunts wanted to hold a memorial service on September 11th, but what I failed to mention is that they planned this whole things without discussing it with my aunt’s three children. And I found this out how? On the 3rd I was making supper and my phone rang. I recognized the area code as the Ottawa region and refused to answer it because I only know two people who would have that area code and neither of them were people I wanted to speak with. A message was left and it was my cousin asking my mother to call him back. She did and then without warning, passed the phone to me and said that he wanted to talk to me. I shook my head no, but she insisted so I took the phone. The call basically starts off like this ‘Don’t you think if there was going to be a service for my mother we should at least be told about it and given the option of attending? I want it cancelled and the church better call me back to do so‘ So I’m totally freaking out because 1. I don’t ever want to be talking to this person and 2. the service had absolutely nothing to do with me. I proceed to tell him I’m not involved and that if he wants to be upset with someone it should be with his mother’s sisters. I tried my best to keep it short and sweet and to the point but I was so frazzled I ended up speaking longer than I wanted to. The reality of the situation is that I wanted to tell him to shove it up his arse and to never contact me again, but I lost my words and couldn’t.

Afterwards I told my mother I didn’t want to talk to him and was wondering why, in light of the situation and who he was, she would ever imagine I would want to. I don’t know why but I get the sneaking suspicion that my mother blames my other cousin much more over what happened. Either way, I was left feeling misunderstood and questioning her decision process once again.

I’ll be glad when October 1st is come and gone and perhaps things will start to settle down again with my father’s family. They never cease to make life feel completely and utterly overwhelming and I’ll be glad when they move on to other things. As for me, well, I’m coming to terms with the fact that I am related to these people like it or not and that just because one of them dies doesn’t mean the situation gets any better. Sometimes it feels like nothing will make things feels better but I don’t know if that’s necessarily true or not. I guess we’ll have to see what time brings. For now, I’ll just keep my head down and put one foot in front of the other.