Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Family Feud

The title is misleading since there is such a taste of bile in my mouth that it's clearly more than a feud. And I wonder why I'm seething so...

She done me wrong; she done my child wrong, but really, why does it eat at me? Some of it must be due to not being able to speak frankly to her about it. She's a relative by marriage, so it falls to my husband. Another part of me knows her well... well enough to know that they'll be zero satisfaction after a conversation. No acknowledgement of a wrong, let alone an apology. I'll only be forced to eat more shit.

And even though I eat shit as a profession, that's not personal shit. I get paid to eat that shit and it's in service of a great good. On this front though, I've eaten sooooo much shit from this person that I just can't (won't?) do it anymore. But it goes against my grain. I like things wrapped up neatly in a package; I like to go to sleep at night not grinding over the same situation repeatedly; I like my life to be "clean". But cleanliness requires shit eating sometimes; that's it's price. But I can not do it with this one.

I'm uncomfortable with this open-ended thing. Now she knows why the silence. He talked to her; he told her; she was shocked (really???!), but now she knows. And now the phone isn't being answered; his calls are being screened and the messages are going to the black voicemail hole. No question, I'm sort of satisfied that she's so bugged that she can't even speak about it. She knows now (as if she couldn't?!) and she gets to think about it like I've spent 5 months thinking about it, but really, she's just thinking about what a bitch I am -- Not about the hurt she perpetrated. Not about how she'd feel in my shoes. Not how ferociously she'd defend her own child.

What will happen next I wonder? Not much probably. But these are things that drive families apart and I hate to be a party to that. I always try to consider the big picture - his parents' pain, future cousin relationships, but I CAN NOT EAT SHIT ON THIS ONE (at least not right now).

*sigh*

2 comments:

  1. My father and his sister did not speak for 30 years over a similar slight. Now that they're both in their 70s, they've repaired their relationship, and are in constant contact -- though they never discussed the subject of the initial rift. Both parties regret the lost time, and wish they had handled it differently. I regret the fact that my father's unwillingness to forgive my aunt resulted in me not having a relationship with my cousins -- which I would really have loved to have had. Now that the elders are speaking again, as the grown up kid, I'm unimpressed. I have vowed never to let anything come between me and my siblings, and to keep all channels open to their children. It has involved eating some shit, but I've also found that the amount of shit has definitely eased over the years as I learned to forgive and forget.

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  2. Strong statement, Jason. I agree in the abstract. Having a hard time implementing it in reality though.

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