Learning How to Have a Mother-in-Law, a Lesson in Sucking Less at Communication

It is not easy to learn how to combine with another family.  You have your quirks, they have theirs, and sometimes these clash.  And that’s okay.  Really, it’s okay.  Things eventually smooth out with patience, especially if you are willing to open yourself up to the other people and allow them to know you.

This is coming from a situation with my future mother-in-law.  Yes, mother-in-law jokes are a cliché, yes, they are sexist, and yes, they exist for a reason.  Yes, sometimes I don’t get along with her, and I do often keep it to myself when she says things I find hurtful, because I am desperately trying to learn how to connect with her.  Given my past, this is especially difficult for me (recap: my mother is completely INSANE, she tried to murder me in 2003, lots of drama in general, I cut off all contact with her in 2012 (which included deleting my original Facebook and abandoning my original blog), and it’s just easier to live life as though I have no mother at all).  I have been trying very hard for FMIL, because I want her to like me, and I also want her to understand who I am as a person, because the day will come when I finally stop being so careful around her (probably while I am in labor with our first child). 

This is coming from a situation from the last couple years where she will say things that are really hurtful without realizing how hurtful she actually is being, or giving unsolicited advice, and a general feeling of having my toes stepped upon.  Not everything is resolved, and not everything can be resolved right now, but that’s okay. 

I had a little wedding meltdown recently over something arguably stupid (short explanation: I thought one of the cousins didn’t receive an RSVP card in their invitation and PANICKED), and I know I made her feel bad. The meltdown was worse than it may otherwise have been because on top of the thought that it went wrong the one time I actually tried to trust someone else to do something for the wedding without me micromanaging (I swear I’m trying so hard not to be a bridezilla), she had said some things earlier in the week about some life choices Matt and I are discussing that she wasn’t very happy with.  This led to me not being very happy with her, so compounded with the situation with the RSVP card… I freaked out more than necessary due to already being rather upset, and it wasn’t pretty.

To make matters worse, it was also a Friday in September, which means I’d spent an entire week going outside with the ragweed, getting up early, and not sleeping well because of the ragweed.  Usually by Friday during this time of year, I’ve had a whole week of getting up early to work on schoolwork, being exhausted by being surrounded by people all the damn time on top of all the running around on the enormous-ass campus, I feel like shit physically because what little sleep I’m getting is poor quality because I can’t breathe, and so I’m just done by Friday.  So a Friday night is the worst possible time for me to get confused about a situation involving the wedding.  It was ugly.  It was not my best moment.

By the next morning the air was cleared, and I felt like an asshole.  Which I told her when I sucked it up and apologized like an adult.  I used a different adjective, though.  Anyway, this situation led to a long talk while we were driving to a specialty lingerie store to get a different bra for the wedding – the one I bought in July is not supportive enough even with boning in the cups – and I feel like this has led to my FMIL and I understanding one another better.  We spent probably 10 hours together (we did some other wedding things and also visited FMIL’s mother, we did not spend 10 hours at a lingerie store) and got along really well, which was awesome.  We talked about a lot of things, including how when she first met me, she told Matt’s dad (FFIL for this) that I am just like her in behaviors, and she wondered if I was the one.  And from that point on, every time I did or said something in front of them that bugged her, she would look at FFIL and he would nod his head to let her know that that was exactly her.  She even had the exact same problems with her own MIL when she was getting married.  I also talk about as much as FFIL does (he talks so much that we call it “name-ing” people – pretend his name is there), so Matt is basically marrying a condensed version of his parents, which I find hilarious.  But she and I have the same people management skills and mannerisms, the same level of patience with people, we both yell at Matt for the exact same things in the exact same way, we have the same meltdowns when we’re tired… whee!

Unfortunately, because of the similarity between me and FMIL, we are probably going to butt heads rather often, but now at least we both understand each other better and maybe that will mitigate some of the frustration with each other.  After all that talking (I talked so much that my throat was sore by the time I went to bed), I definitely feel a lot more comfortable with her, though I don’t know if I will ever really learn how to act like a daughter.

Motherless Bride

So, since my last post, I got engaged (March 6th)!  Woo hoo!  I'm really excited about it, Matt's my favorite and I haven't killed him, so I think this is a good thing.

Of course, there's always those other issues that I have to contend with that sometimes put a damper on my excitement.  I'm speaking, of course, of my decision to cut my mother out of my life.  That would be one thing, but my birth father is also out of the picture - he was an awful person who I barely knew and he died in 2012 - and my grandparents died in 2005 and 2007.  Not only that, but I have little to no contact with the aunt and uncle I grew up with (they were the legally adopted children of the people I called my grandparents, while my mother was the foster child, so I have no legally recognized relationship with them), and all that I have left that is technically family is my mother's soon-to-be ex-husband's brother, sister-in-law, and niece (who has a husband and two daughters).  I am, essentially, alone.

Normally, I am fine with this.  But there's something about weddings that I guess makes you lose your mind a little (maybe this is just me), because it was really hard to go to David's Bridal and do my dress appointment knowing that my mother wouldn't be there with me like she was supposed to be, and it's really hard to know that Grandpa won't be giving me away at my wedding or dancing with me at the reception because he's gone.  And I never really mourned either of them, either, my mother kept me away from them after I moved in with her and I saw them once before my grandma died, and then I saw Grandpa once about a year before he died, and that was it.  I didn't have a chance to have a connection with them after I left their home, and I had so much awfulness happening around the time of my grandmother's death that I barely had the chance to register it, and I was working 47 hours a week at Arby's when Grandpa died, so I didn't have a chance to think about his death much, either.  The older I've gotten, the more painful it's been, because they were more parents to me than my mother ever was, and they would have been there for the wedding, Grandpa would have given me away, Grandma would have wanted to be in the room with me while I get ready (she would be 102 if she was still alive, so I kind of doubt she would do much to help), Grandpa would have at least tried to dance with me for the father/daughter dance, and I just feel like I've lost something I didn't even know I was going to miss.

I think the hardest part is realizing that there is no one left who remembers my birth, who knows all the stories from before I can remember.  (Even if I was in touch with my mother, she lies about everything constantly, so I can trust nothing she tells me.)  There is no one left, in the traditional sense, who knew me when I was small.  I didn't realize it when I was 20, but I am very much alone.  Yes, I have amazing friends who I am proud to call sisters, and yes, I am gaining a whole new family by marrying Matt, but none of them remember my first birthday.  None of them can tell me what kind of baby I was, or whether my mother had morning sickness with me and how bad it really was.  It's all these small things that I'm supposed to do with my mother, or at the very least a grandmother, and they crop up when I don't expect them and blindside me and then I spend hours crying because it hurts so much to realize that this is the hand I have been dealt.  Most of the time I can reconcile myself with it, but moments where I'm discussing floral arrangements with Matt's mother, or how I want to decorate, or talking about cake or invitations, and I think that it's supposed to be my own mother that I should be talking to about these things, this should be my mother that helps me plan my wedding.  I'm grateful to Matt's mother, she's wonderful, but it's not the same.

I know I am lucky, and I feel ungrateful for feeling the way I do.  Erin's dad is giving me away and (probably) doing the father-daughter dance with me.  Matt's family has welcomed me with open arms.  I've had multiple volunteers for stand-in for mother of the bride, and even grandmother of the bride, and they will be treated as such at the wedding.

I wish there was a guide for this type of situation.  I can find nothing on the internet for brides whose mothers aren't dead but aren't going to be allowed anywhere near the wedding (like seriously, we're showing her photo to the ushers and having them tell her she can't come in, and if she insists, they're to call the police and get me, because I want her nowhere near my wedding).  There's plenty of guides for brides who had good relationships with their mothers who died, but my mother is not dead and I did not have a good relationship with her.  My mother is in Colorado, and there I hope she stays.

I know I am lucky, and I am grateful to everyone who has offered to help (even if I have no idea how to accept help or what to tell them to help me with), I am grateful to everyone who has been so supportive, I really am.  But tonight... tonight I am just sad and lost and feeling very orphaned.

Earth Science and Exhaustion

It has been awhile since I last wrote anything. This would be because between moving insanity, deciding to enroll in the summer semester, choosing a major, and putting in notice at Walmart, I haven’t really had time to devote to writing in my blog. I need to get back into writing more often, however, as I have to write speeches this fall for Public Speaking, and because I will be taking a creative writing class in the spring. I need to get my creative juices flowing so my crazy ass can write and learn all of the science at the same time.

Basically, everything is happening right now. I’m currently taking Intro to Earth Science. This is a 5 credit hour class. (Four hours for the lecture and one for the lab.) The summer version of this class is 5 weeks long. This is incredibly intense. My poor brain. Two days into this class, I decided I would in fact be choosing Earth Science as my major, which I have now done. I’m still deciding if I want to continue having it be a Bachelor of Arts or if I want to switch it to Bachelor of Science – I don’t particularly want to take ten hours of foreign language.

Today, I stayed after to ask my professor some questions about what I need to do to prepare for the Meteorology class I’m taking this fall since we’re going to zip right through the atmospheric science section in the intro class (primarily due to the extremely compressed nature of this class – we’re covering a chapter per day, on average, sometimes two), and she gave me some advice regarding that: scour the chapters in the book I already have, try to get the book for the Meteorology class as early as possible and read through it, that kind of thing. She also talked to me about some of the stuff that I need to worry about for the test I’m taking tomorrow morning (we have a test every Friday for the lecture and a test every Tuesday for the lab), particularly the geologic time scale because I’m a little fuzzy on that and that’s mostly what the test is over. Then she told me that I’m doing fine in the class (I feel like I’m not retaining this information well at all because I’m making more mistakes than I would like to be – I’m not used to making several mistakes on assignments), and that I actually have the highest grade in the class. I’m just floored by that, because I was completely convinced that I am not doing well at all, but apparently I’m doing amazing. She also said that I have definitely picked the right major, and that I’m doing very well in the accelerated version of this class, and that while she wouldn't recommend most majors to take this class in the summer (it’s a prerequisite for everything else), I am handling it very well because I’m so intelligent, and it shouldn't be a problem when I’m taking other classes related to my major.

I leave class giddy every day (or annoyed that I don’t understand topographic maps very well), and I just love all of this stuff. I’d probably love it more if I wasn't so tired, though. I’m working on fixing that, though, as I put in notice at Walmart (it’s just killing me to keep working there, and I feel like I’m doing something totally insane by quitting my job, but I can feel my joints breaking down and it’s killing time I could be spending doing homework or going to bed at a decent hour)… I have three shifts to go – tomorrow, Saturday, and next Wednesday, and then I’m done. I’m not saying more because I don’t really want to burn bridges in case I crash and burn and fail out of college (I’m basically becoming Hermione – my boggart would totally be a professor telling me I've failed everything), because then I’ll need a job.

Many people have asked me how I’m planning on supporting myself – I have financial aid and the best, most supportive boyfriend in the world. This summer is going to be kind of sucky, but I think we’ll be okay. At some point, I need to find the time to redo the budget I made a couple of weeks ago because it ended up not working on a pretty grand scale. It was great in theory, but lacked a gas for the car budget and would work better if we only had one bank account. So it’s a great individual budget and a horrible two person, two account budget. Plus, I’m not very organized.

We've been doing pretty well around the house – I've managed to totally avoid having to use the garbage disposal here because Matt is always the person who runs it. He’s such a good guy. I need to clean really bad because everything is so cluttered right now – we don’t know where to put everything. We lost my umbrella for a month because I forgot Heather put it in the furnace closet. We have a great symbiotic relationship here, though, and I can’t speak for Matt (he’s not even here right now, he’s visiting his parents today), but I’m very happy with being here and living with him. Having him not be here last night was like missing part of myself, everything was just wrong.

I don’t have much to say, sorry this is so boring. Too tired to be hilarious.