While I hear so many great stories about families that truly love each other, as the years have waned I have noticed that family is not all that is cracked up to be. I was told a long time ago “you can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family.” When I was a kid I had a great family, or so I thought. At least it felt that way because your mom always works so hard to keep up appearances and make things feel just right all the time.
After my husband and I wed, I realized that not all families were built that way, as his was literally a bunch of pit vipers, and that is putting it nicely. How he even survived or came out of that dumpster fire I do not know. I spent so many years early on in our marriage putting time, effort and energy into trying to cultivate a good family rapport with his side to no avail. Now I am older, wiser and realize it was never meant to be, and how short sided I was to even attempted to try.
We have recently been going through some much needed separation of the family. After several cycles of some very destructive and disruptive behavior, we decided we had enough of this crazy train, and have refused to take any more phone calls from this side of the family. So what caused this you might wonder?
A few years ago we were able to diagnose that one of my husbands siblings had Dissociative Identity Disorder, which is the new term for “bat shit crazy”, or I guess a more PC version would be multiple personality disorder. This is on top of being a reoccurring drug addict, her choice being cocaine, crushed Adderall stolen from her children’s prescriptions from where they are on the spectrum, and touches of Meth here and there; plus she is a raging alcoholic. Notice I say we were able to diagnose her, as she has refused to get any professional treatment or help for any of these issues, since according to her, she has no issues; depending on which personality you are speaking too.
This particular sibling also has a tendency to keep us at a distance until she needs something; money, a job or a place to run away too from a bad situation, which puts us directly in the line of fire. Then when things started to go good for her she disappears we would not hear from them again for a long time. Until the next time her husband would beat her or the kids, and the cycle would start all over again. For the longest time we thought it was all the husband’s fault since that was picture that was painted for us. Things like: “don’t let him find me or he will kill us and he will hide in the woods and shoot us with the AR-15’s he custom builds, since he is ex military” which is a scary prospect. I mean this was family, I understand that in this crazy world you have to worry about psychopaths out there, but this was watching our backs from our own flesh and blood; you know the inner circle. Then we learned she was making it all up, and lying to us just to score drug money, or was she? According to the husband’s mother it was all true, and all of the kids’ birthday cards and Christmas presents we would send to them, were either returned for cash or kept and used by the parents, especially the gift cards. Our nieces and nephews had no idea that we even existed or how much we even cared for them. Pretty shady right? Then his mother told us that her son was also a tad bit unstable, and she was trying to gain custody of the all of her grandchildren for their own safety. Yeah you known the son with AR-15….
Holy cow, what? So now we have basically two psychos with an arsenal of weapons, both with full military training, drunk and high on God knows what, raising a liter of ADHD children and stealing there medications for their own benefit that have plans to kill us? Yeah I am tapping out now! We have offered to help this family so many times, only to cause us problems and pain in the end. We have been lied too, our money taken and kindness abused. So now when we were no longer available for his sister in another round of “take it up the ass”. She decide to released the hounds, as if we were the ones that were lost and in danger, because her good ol’ safety net was not there to catch her as it had been in the past. We are now the problem, and she is so worried about us since it was causing her to have issues. Call all the family, send out a search party!
It is funny to watch someone that has used and abused you, their entire life spiral out of control when you finally say, “I have had enough, no more” and walk away. When they thought you never would grow a backbone. It says so much about what they thought about you the entire time, how they viewed you, and everything you ever meant to them. It is hard for me to put it into words, how very disheartening it was for us; but also enlightening at the same time and now we are free. Yes we are absolutely free!
However, I do still feel horrible for our nieces and nephews. I know some how that they are learning a lot of life lessons right now that will indeed make them stronger to go out into the world of today. Somehow feel that is why my husband is so successful, he grew up in a similar dumpster fire as I mentioned above, which fueled him to “do better”. However that same dumpster fire created the very woman which gave birth these kids and home they are in now. A cyclical cycle of life, which should be broken and not continued to be repeated. She has become the worst version she ever saw of her own mother, which I am sure was not her plan, as it is never any of our plans, it just happens, because it is what we see and all we know.
His family is really like watching an episode of Shameless, and honestly we know enough people in that industry maybe there were some inputs into those very script ideas passed along over some random Hollywood dinners. Who knows, but what a fun thought; I mean inspiration for writing can come from anywhere right? It is very much like my blog here, just change a few names and dates then you can expose the real stories which are so much more entertaining than the fictional stuff which is all based in things that happened for real. Since the disclaimers are any individuals that might seem like these fictional characters might have similar traits, but and not based on any one particular person. Names and dates have been changed to protect all those involved.
Kindest Regards NOT,
Veronica J.