It has been one year since our family was ripped apart. One year since Brian began receiving ugly, angry, and extremely disrespectful text messages from his daughter Michelle, all because we chose to take Rachel to Dewberry Farms and did not invite the Smith family - despite the fact that they were in the midst of a planned garage sale. Our outing was not premeditated and not meant to disrespectfully exclude them, rather it was simply something fun to do with Rachel. What it became was, simply put, a nightmare. (All of this is documented in my post "Family Tales.")
Why do I continue to agonize over this situation??? Why do I let it bother me as much as it does??? Why can't I just let it go??? It would be an absolute lie to even suggest that Brian and I have not been deeply affected by this whole mess; we think about it all the time and live with it on a daily basis. While I have had no contact whatsoever with either Michelle or Mark, Brian has remained linked to them through Facebook. He will occasionally "like" a photo as he did on a recent Halloween photo of Rian and Presley. He was surprised to receive a message from Mark stating "You're missing out. Your Grand kids are amazing. I honestly feel bad for you. With that being said, I hope you are well."
Hmmm.
They don't get it. They simply do not get it.
They do not comprehend that we are a team - husband and wife - and we support each other in all things. We are not blind to each other's faults and we do not support each other blindly, but we clearly know the history in this situation and clearly understand from where the ugliness springs.
They do not understand that "we" will not be bullied. We are all adults, and Brian and I expect that all four should act like adults. That means, as Brian told them on numerous occasions, that we all need to sit down together and talk this out. With Michelle refusing to ever allow me in her house again, and refusing to ever have the four of us meet to talk, that puts all the power in her hands. She steadfastly refuses to budge on anything, so we are stuck and nothing will change unless she changes her mind. And yet, because we are stuck and because Brian and I are a team, somehow it has become our fault that Rian and Presley do not see their grandparents. What is truly unfair is to use your children as pawns, and Rian and Presley are those pawns. The real reason they do not get to see their grandparents is because their Grandma Betty has been barred from their home, and Grandpa Brian will not allow their parents to drive a wedge between us. If I am not allowed to visit, then he will not visit either. Continuing to blame us for their actions is bullying us. Continuing to expect that Brian will allow them to dictate how our marriage works is bullying him.
It truly is amazing that what began as a beef against us for taking Rachel to Dewberry Farms morphed into revealing, once again, Michelle's obvious deep-seated hatred of me. So today I went back to my "Meaningful Writings" file where I keep writings important to me, including copies of various emails through the years between Michelle, Mark and me, plus all the messages about the most recent ugliness. I re-read everything I had that involved them, and what I realized was how much she has truly hated me for years. What truly sickened me was how much she managed to hide that through the years. I look back at and remember all the good times we had together as a family and wonder, how could she fake it so well? Why would she want to fake it for so long? And what kind of person thinks that is a normal thing to do?
In Family Tales, Part 1, I wrote about Brian's and my relationship with Michelle during her childhood. Mark once told me that I had never apologized to Michelle for treating her so badly during her childhood. What??? I would definitely like to know what I "did" and what I am accused of doing. The reality is that Michelle has never discussed her childhood or her "problems" with me, ever, and yet she (and Mark, who was not even around then) keep referring to them. The only problem I ever had was with her mother Debbie, who despite being divorced from Brian, continued to treat him like they were married when she would call and bully him on the phone, turning him into an angry, raging and scary version of the man I had married. After I wrote to Debbie, telling her in no uncertain terms and with Brian's blessing to back off and leave him alone - that's when Michelle decided she no longer wanted to visit us in the summer and cut off all communication with me. Until she became an adult, she rarely communicated with "us" unless she needed something (money, braces, a car...) although she did manage to send occasional cards and gifts to Brian and Shannon only. Despite all she did during her teen years to ignore the fact that I was married to her father, I made sure that Brian made efforts to stay in touch - even when he wanted to give up. She has never acknowledged that...I'm guessing because she had years of hearing from her mother how evil I was, and how much better off she would be if I was not in the picture.
We later had some rough spots after Michelle and Mark moved here. One was around Shannon's graduation from high school (her boyfriend at the time, her final choir concert). I have always been better at explaining my position in writing versus in person, but when I attempted to discuss our issues with Michelle - key word, discuss - I found that was something she could not do without becoming very angry and ugly so I resorted to putting my thoughts in writing. The response I got was not from her but from Mark. The next instance was around Shannon's baby shower and Rian's birthday. Again, I tried to explain and discuss my thoughts but everything I wrote was taken negatively and as an attack, certainly not my intent. Then I had a very difficult time being cordial at a family dinner at Saltgrass because of how I had been treated by Michelle; in fact, because I wear my heart on my sleeve, I was so very hurt that I could not even talk at dinner. I should not have even gone to the dinner, and by the time it was over, Mark began yelling at me in the restaurant and I screamed back and left. Because of the bad feelings between us I made the choice to not attend Rian's birthday party and have to this day NEVER lived it down. Apparently, I was expected to squash my anger and hurt feelings and pretend to be happy to be around Michelle and Mark. My thought was to not attend in order to guarantee there would be no hint of unpleasantness and no fakery on my part but now I understand that faking it was what they wanted to see from me. And even in the current situation, everything I did with the best of intentions was taken with the least of intentions and twisted to become something ugly and mean-spirited. They simply had already made up their minds that what I (we) had done was meant to be hurtful and could not allow any thought that they might be wrong, or even try to see things from a different viewpoint. They had already judged me to be guilty - of anything, of everything; no matter what I did or said or wrote was meant to be hurtful in their eyes. I have had a very difficult time with that and it hurts me deeply.
For years, since Michelle and Mark moved to Texas, Brian and I have walked on eggshells. He has felt guilty for not being the father that Michelle wanted him to be, disregarding that that opportunity was ripped from him by Michelle's mother when she made the decision to move them away from Texas (and Brian). We knew that she disliked me because I stood up for him against her mother but I went ahead and welcomed her (and Mark) into our home, our lives, and our hearts. Yet every time we had differences, she would return to her childhood and accuse me of having treated her badly. But - we were never allowed to discuss that; in fact, we were never allowed to discuss anything as she would either get very ugly, shut down completely, or instead have Mark do the talking for her. Never, ever, have we sat down and discussed her childhood or our differences like adults. Because of her past, I do not have any real hopes of her choosing to work things out like an adult now.
Strangely, both she and her mother have said to Brian: "Do you know what your wife is REALLY like??!?" and "She needs professional help." Well. I am the one who has taken many psychology classes in college and have had counseling on different occasions, as well as being open to improving myself. What has Michelle done to make her qualified to state that I need professional help, when she won't even address or even admit that she has issues herself? Has she taken numerous psychology classes (including child development) or has she been through counseling or even read any self-help books? I doubt it. All we can see, from past experience, is that she has been raised with the belief that I am and have always been evil and cannot be trusted, and therefore refuses to allow even the slightest doubt that I might not be nearly as bad as she has been led to believe. That would destroy her carefully constructed world.
I truly feel bad for Michelle - because she has such a closed mind, and for her sweet children (who we do greatly miss seeing) - for having to grow up with a parent who has such a closed mind. I hope they will find a way to rise above that as they get older. And I hope that they will always know that their Grandpa Brian and Grandma Betty do love them to the moon and back.
"Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is to important to protect that core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit with the core belief." -Frantz Fanon
And now I would like to get on with our lives. I really don't hold out much hope for a reconciliation in the future as it is not up to Brian or me or even Mark - only Michelle. I did ask Brian if I were to die, would he seek a reconciliation with her and his response was that she would have to sit down and talk about all of this. So with or without me, the conditions remain the same - either open up and be able to calmly discuss the entire situation (from childhood on) or live with the consequences: knowing that your refusal to address these issues will weigh on you for the rest of your life, and will probably affect your children, just as it affected you. And that is a sad thing to have on your heart.
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