Therapy and family.

I've asked my brother and mother to get therapy with me to develop a new foundation for healthy relationships to break the dysfunctional cycles of our family. I was told I have isolated myself from them and my mothers cancer was used to try to make me go against what is the right thing to do which is therapy.  

Parents raise children, children don't raise parents, so when a child develops disorders it directly corilates to the family dynamic. I was tormented by my brothers, my mother and my grandmother over my appearance and if I tried to complain about it my mother would say, I don't want to hear about it. To this day she denies this, probably because she didn't want to hear it. She was very critical of everything, had zero tolerance for emotions and any compliment you were given came with a backhanded criticism. My aunt was very jealous and would say awful things to me and my parents would never defend me, they would just say she is mentally ill. 

My parents felt that if you throw money at problems they go away. My family all talks negatively about each other behind each other's backs then are phony to your face. I developed an eating disorder and body image dysmorphia which lead to me using crystal meth at 14 years old. I just thought that if I could be skinny the criticism and talking about me behind my back would stop. I've been through counceling my whole life trying to change what my family thinks is wrong with me while none of them get actual mental help, they all just get medicated for their mental illnesses and carry on with their abuse behavior. 

I have overcome the affects of my families dysfunction by therapy, doing hard mental work, developing the right tools, knowing my triggers and I have tried to accommodate their mental illness for a very long time until now when it's affecting me again and I can no longer accommodate them because of the physical pain I deal with from an accident.  I have asked for years for us as a family to get help but the only person who has is me. 

So, what happens when you evolve, change, develop healthy communication, talk about your feelings and overcome all odds but the people who caused you to develop disorders in the first place do nothing?  You get to a point where they are all the same as they were 30 years ago telling you, that you are the problem.

You see, I am happy in my life, have wonderful relationships, a passion for living, proud of my accomplishments and am happy with myself as a person despite living in constant pain and struggling to be able to walk from a major trauma. I am even happier without being involved with these people but they want me back in their dysfunction to just sit there and take it without any of them actually doing any mental health work to make me want to be there. 

Life is hard enough as it is and if your family puts you down or isn't nice to you, discredits your intelligence and wants you to be anyone but who you are, they aren't your family, they are your abusers and it's time to end that cycle. They either get help and you work together with a professional in a safe environment to create change or you move on with your life and create a family for yourself that lifts you up, supports your passions and prioritizes your relationship to work together on keeping it healthy. Reality and functionality is a wonderful place to live, I do hope that one day my family would join me here but my bets are on them continuing to think I'm the problem. Problem solved, I've moved on with a glimmer of hope still in my heart. My door is always open but the boundaries are set and they don't bend for dysfunction they are there to keep it out. 

Family. Holidays.

Growing up I dreamed of a closeness to family and had a belief in loyalty to those I was related to. As a child I had a very hard time understanding the dynamics of my family and the way that my family members behaved towards each other. Everyone spoke so horribly about everyone behind their backs and then face to face it was like nothing was said. My aunt would scream at my mom and kick us out of her house. She would say things to me as a young child based on her jealously of my mother. Almost begrudging, me, a little girl of the luxuries she was afforded by being born to the right parents. Her husband didn't work as hard as my dad, I thought as a kid so what's her problem? Work harder then.   

My moms parents had 5 grandchildren and they favored the other 4. To my grandmother I was the fat granddaughter she continually needed to remind.  My aunt turned my grandparents against my mom by saying she flaunted her lifestyle in her face and she needed them more So, they rarely stayed at our house when they would come to LA for the summer . My other grandma was so cheap that she resented my parents wealth and felt entitled. I never had a grandparent come for grandparents day. I always had the negative things being said behind everyone's back in my head. I had a room next to my parents office growing up so I really heard all sides of the stories.  It's hard to bond with people who are so fake to each other. I tried to be a good cousin to all my cousins and brothers but none of them know what loyalty or thoughtfulness means. They do know what gossip is and they all took the first chance they could to bash me to each other and to others.  This is not how family behaves. At 13 I discovered playing sick and would try to be sick  around the time of any family function.  Especially those at my aunts house, where not only the food was gross but so was the environment. This weird fakeness and underlying tone of distain and jealousy was overwhelming. 

It took many years of silence of family secrets and bullshit until one Passover. The Passover that finally set me free. I had just walked in after braving the 101 traffic for 2 hours from work and stopping to pick up stuff for my mom. My hands were over full trying to carry everything in with one trip and before I could put anything down my bitter aunt says in her awful NY judging voice, "you could say hello to us like a mensch?"  (Mensch is a Yiddish word for good person) This coming from a lady who is hiding that she ever had a first marriage and told me to email her daughters as a good older cousin, to no response from either girl. So here she is implying I'm not a good person because I wanted to put my stuff down without saying hi first and take a minute to do so. "I responded with, oh like your daughters who can't answer an email?"  Her response was "well maybe there's a good reason people don't write you back, Amy!"

What!?  That was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. 23 years of this horrible, purposefully jabbing, hateful, jealous person who was always the victim. She knows everything and is perfect. Well, I told her off via email and included how if she was so perfect then why never mention her divorce to anyone and hide it. I let her know what everyone thought but nobody would say to her face and cc'd my entire family. Enough was enough and I have never put myself in a position to be abused by her or anyone in her terrible family again. 

Life is about happiness and the people who bring love to your life. Who build you up and are happy for you no matter what. I didn't find that with my natural blood relatives, including my brothers. It's how my family is at its core that I've struggled to understand since childhood. I love my parents, have a wonderful connection to my uncle and have a few distant cousins I love but that's where it ends for me with my blood family. And it's perfectly ok. 

I spend my holidays not in forced situations with people I have no connection with or love for but with people who are my family. Every occasion has been filled with love and joy since the day I took a stand and said fuck off, I'll be spending my holidays with people who really want to be my family because we treat each other like family should. Choose happiness over unnecessary obligation and be really thankful for your real family!

There's a reason these are my most used words on Facebook.... I've made it this way!