Summertime & Family Drama in Staying Connected

Summer is happening, and I’m happy about it.

This morning I dropped my daughter off at her grandma and grandpa’s house with her new swim suit and swim shoes. I don’t know if they’re going to use them today or not because the weather isn’t as good as my weather app had predicted, but when they do I sure as shit hope they take pictures! I bought her a “splash pad” that is supposed to arrive today, and I’ll bring it over there tomorrow. They also said they have an old inflatable dog bath that can second as a pool. We’re a resourceful bunch! If they don’t bust out the swimsuit this week, I’m definitely busting it out this weekend. I cannot wait to see her in it.

I think I mentioned it here, but I bought our family plane tickets to fly to Washington for a week next month. So that’s kind of a big deal.

Finally, yesterday I booked our wedding anniversary at a local day spa! I’m really looking forward to it. I booked each of us a fancy massage. Mine is called a “Mineral Mud Massage” and his is called a “ThermaStone Massage.” It’s $90 each for us to just get in to the place where we will have access to a bunch of hot springs, pools, bars, and restaurants, and then an additional $135 each for the massages, which means it’s going to be $430 for the day, plus food and drinks. That should speak to how fancy it will be!!!

The other thing I want to mention briefly is the drama that is happening with my family in Washington. There are a few things that go way back:

My mom is extremely passive aggressive. My dad tends to bottle everything up and then when tensions rise he can become extremely aggressive. My sister is needy and dramatic. My mom enables my sister. My mom and sister both like to gang up on my dad. My brother is guarded. I feel closer to my dad. My sister feels closer to my mom. My brother feels distant from the rest of the family. My brother has seemed to prefer me over the rest of the family since we were kids.

These things have been constant for as far back as I can remember; however, over the past couple of weeks a lot of the dysfunction has come to a head. My sister had a miscarriage when she was about 8 weeks pregnant. She didn’t even know she was pregnant until she got a positive pregnancy test a week after the miscarriage, and she didn’t know she miscarried until her doctor’s appointment a week after that. When she realized her baby didn’t have a heartbeat, she took it hard and decided to name the baby, take it’s remains home, make it a headstone, and have a funeral for it.

When my brother found out through my parents what was going on, he said that it was really weird (I don’t disagree) and that he didn’t want the baby’s headstone and remains at our family cabin, which is where she had planned on putting it. Rather than talk to one another, my sister decided to put the headstone and remains somewhere else and not invite my brother to the funeral.

In addition to that, my sister had a surgery to remove the remains and about five days later, on Father’s Day, she had to go to the ER and have a second emergency surgery. I believe the first surgery wasn’t totally successful and she was developing an infection. For this reason, the Father’s Day get together at my mom’s house had to be canceled. My mom called my brother to tell him the celebrations were off, but she was vague about the reason why. Then, both my brother and my sister claimed they reached out to each other that day, and they also both claim they didn’t get a response from each other.

Long story long, everybody started crying to me about it. My mom is hurt that my brother didn’t care about my sister’s ER visit. My sister is also hurt that my brother didn’t care. And my brother is all upset because he feels like everybody is pushing him away by not talking to him, not telling him what’s going on, and getting upset with him when he shares his genuine reactions to things.

I’ve had to talk to all of them over the past week or so. More recently, I spoke with my mom and my brother and gave them some tough love. I told my brother that my mom and sister think he’s mean and scary and that he doesn’t necessarily need to change but he needs to be mindful of that. I also said that he needs to talk to my sister. They should go out to dinner or something. And he needs to know that she is going to cry, and he might think she’s fragile and breakable, but he can’t let that stop them from talking to each other.

My mom tried to say that my sister is too emotional to talk to my brother and that he is just going to be mean to her, and I told her that even if my brother yells and my sister cries, its better for them to communicate than to just avoid each other. All avoiding does is further compound the messages they are already holding onto—he’s mean and she’s fragile. They NEED to push through that in order to find each other and connect.

I should probably tell my mom that she needs to stop taking sides, too. She has a way of inserting herself into things that in fact have nothing to do with her.

I know I can’t be my family’s therapist and usually I try to lay low and stay out of drama that has nothing to do with me, but it’s exhausting to listen to all of them cry to me about each other, and it seems like things have just been getting worse and worse. So I just gave them my two cents. They seemed to find it helpful. I still need to talk to my sister about talking to my brother.

Oddly enough, my dad’s role has become the placater. I never would have seen that coming. He’s just over there feeling happy and lovey dovey and trying to cover up all of the drama with love. My brother and I both noticed he seems to have undergone a total personality change. When I spoke with my mom this morning, she said it’s because of his cancer treatment. I can’t say I hate the change, but I can say it’s very strange.

Well I better run. I need to get started on my treatment plans. Happy Wednesday!

Until next time <3

Last updated July 02, 2020