10:52 a.m.||||2004-07-07
OH my God. Did you see House of Sand and Fog (she types, squinting, because her glass literally disintegrated the other day - the nose piece relaxed-ly falling easily into two pieces, like the will to stay in one piece suddenly and subtly subsided...) Well, that movie was great, I thought, and took whatever will to live I had left and set it aflame. I read the book when Oprah's attention to it catapulted it to overnight Best Seller success....about eight years ago - and I remember that it was terrific. But apparently I was so depressed by the end back then that I completely and utterly blocked any recollection right out of my mind. So, when it wraps up, I was surprised and appalled all over again.
But the reason I bring it up it that Jennifer Connelly's low-volume, smoky, totally depressed performance as a lethargic, slowed down by apathy and depression, questionable recovering addict (of some sort - that's never specified) reminds me of the tone of my existence lately. Like a low-grade, but equally intense depression that it so deep it has no words.
Except I do have words....Huh. And I have an urge to write about it. Maybe because I haven't been this desperate and close to wanting to hurt myself in a long time. And yet. You know how depression doesn't always do the same thing each time and yet it is so utterly dependable and predictable all at once.
First let's say - it is almost entirely circumstantial, and not circumstances totally beyond my control. That's always a bitch, innit? Really. Except the one.
Lets' call her mother in law.
You guys remember last summer around this time when this journal might have been called the MIL chronicles, so much of my time was dedicated to her. And many bottles of the leftover champagne from Dave's sister's wedding - that finishing off of the two cases and what might have been the rest of my sanity, started around Xmas and concluded around spring. Anyway. We were already making trouble for ourselves there, in her domain. And since then, a year passed, she kicked us out (although to this day she insists that she didn't....), we stayed with my mom till now, got ourselves relatively together in November, yadda yadda.
Well, we aren't staying with her now - I should say, I'm not, and things aren't going that well and apparently the phrase kick em when they're down has new life in her mouth.
Dave said to me recently, among other things that she " she broke my spirit by the time I was five, now I'm a coward and a pussy and she made me that. How can I ever be a man?"
He said that he can't trust anyone because of her, and that he's not sure she loves him.
Which, ok, boo fucking hoo, you know. But I care. I love Dave, and I watch him struggle to feel anything but contempt and confusion about himself as he …
New day –
So. The MIL thing. I had to pick Dave up this am in order to let him take the car to a new faux-finishing gig, and of course he wasn’t ready when I arrived, so I had to do what I swore never to do again – I had to knock to be let in by her so I could go up and get him. I honestly wanted to never have to speak to her again, but that’s unrealistic, I suppose.
She is convinced we’re up to no good. But that’s beside the point. She’s been poking sharp little daggers at Dave since he came back. All through the five months travails of court-ordered rehab, etc. Every two days asking when he would be finished. Coming up with clients for him she was convinced would be giving him work right away…even though not a single job she drudged up worked out, until this one (and this one has taken five months to take flight) Coming up with no deal clients that, if they worked out, wouldn’t have worked because he had no way to get there at that time….She wasn’t listening. And she doesn’t get that the rehab thing is a life long process.
She just thinks Dave is a failure and that because Josh acts like a normal little kid, that he’s the product of bad parenting.
I don’t know why I’m bothering with all this. Yesterday I was really tortured by it and wanting to write it all down. As a way to not write the letter to her she so badly deserves. It just bothers me to no end that she doesn’t really even know me anymore but still thinks she has some right to pass judgment on every aspect of my life.
Here’s what started it off – I discovered that even though I haven’t spent more than five minutes cumulatively in her house in the past two months, every day if there’s a mess in the kitchen, she blames me. He told her that I haven’t been around much but she didn’t believe him, so when he makes a mess, she blames me. So she took back the second house key and told him that I am not allowed in when she’s not there and I can come with Josh but only if she invites us. Of course Josh is always welcome, just not me. The last time I ate a meal there was several weeks ago, and Dave invited me – we cooked on the grill, and the first thing I did when I got there was did all the dishes which had piled up in the sink, and then I did them again when we were finished. I also haven’t eaten in the living room, which she insists I do when I’m there, which she thinks is every day…but because she’s so nasty and I have no desire to ever see her, I stay away entirely.
Last week she took Josh to a pool party and while there he got in trouble for splashing water in his cousin’s face and for “splashing the adults”, as she put it. He was corrected for that but got mad and through a tantrum, and later she told Dave that it’s our fault he acts that way and that we don’t discipline him. Now, he spends the majority of time with me and my Mom, away from her evil notice, so she has no idea how I parent him, or that I am the queen of discipline and that he minds me very well, as such. She takes an isolated incident and then condemns me.
What the fuck. Seriously.
I mean, I knew that her relationship with Dave is strained but it wasn’t until very recently that I learned that she has been bad mouthing me all along. I really want to have anything to do with her – and that two-faced smiling liar she is to my face – but Josh does love her. What does one do in this position? Nothing I ever do, or that Dave ever does will make her cease judging us. Nothing will ever be enough. She really damaged Dave’s self-esteem throughout his life with the disparaging, humiliating things she says to him, so I wonder about her contact with Josh. Part of me wants to excommunicate ourselves entirely. But of course, that means ending it with our whole family, because everyone sides with her. Yet, keeping on with this whole compulsory family bullshit means eating crow every single time we get together, and pretending that they’re not all gossiping about us, and that we’re welcome there (and it is SOOOO obvious we are not; it’s like, as Dave said, they invite us just to torture us….)
It wouldn’t be fair to Josh to just yank these other people out of his lives who love him. But I am so sick of her attitude, her two-faced-ness, and her inability to be honest about her hatred of us.
What the hell should I do?