I have a headache

The headache is from screaming, and from being heatedly angry for a long period of time.

Heres what happened:


I slogged on over to Mom and Dads today to do laundry and hang out with the family for a while, have a meal or two. Towards the end of the night, after everything had gone quite well, my mother did something that stuck in my craw. She asked me to help Grandma get to the doctors on Tuesday. No big thing in and of itself...but...it was the way she asked. I said sure, I'll do it, no problem. The way she asked was to put it in terms of how she needed the help. And it bugged the hell out of me. Oh I probably read too much into it, but I suspect her motives a lot. Perhaps if I hadnt...

Anyway. So I asked her if I could talk to her in a different room for a moment and she said OK. So we left the living room with Grandma in it and went out to the dining room. It started with a simple enough statement from me, "I don't like it when you put things like that". What I meant was, and let me try to remember clearly, it seemed like she was slapping me in the face. I believed, at the time, that the way she was asking me was...sort of ambush like. Asked me right in front of her, and made it a plea as well. Of course I'll help, but I did NOT like being put in that situation deliberately. She could have asked me like that aside, not in front of Grandma, or she could have just put it bluntly. "This needs to be done and I need you to help with it."

So I, foolishly, picked this as a time to take this particular issue on. I have this notion, which I aknowledge now is false, of my mother as being my Grandma's overzealous defender, to the tune of evicerating anyone she feels is paying the venerable old girl less than her vast due. Am I wrong? Heck, I don't know anymore. I do think the deliberate guilt trips on her part were wrong, and I think the way she put the question to me was...tactless, assuming it was not deliberate, in which case it was just a plain old ambush.

My mother deserves a defense here. She has three sisters, one of whom pays interest in helping Grandma out in her declining years, and she happens to live in northern California. The other two just aren't there. One is an alcoholic who has almost no contact with us anyway, and the other is a hardcore Jehovas Witness who in addition to having religious issues with the fact that we aren't JWs, also doesn't like my mom. So anyway, of the four sisters, my mother is alone in caring for Grandma. This is a big time stress addition. Not the caregiving, the lack of support. So she turns to us. And aparently the help has been there when she did so. Colin and Dad took time off school and work respectively and so did mom. All to get Grandma to her appointments. It has been decided at this point that she shouldn't have to go to any of them alone, in spite of the fact that she can still drive. After thinking about this, I agree. But I didn't before, becuase nobody told me that she was scared. Now I could be slapped for not just assuming this, but the woman never displays any fear. A point which my mother conceeded.

So there I was, not helping out. And then she asked me, and weather or not she did a deliberate ambush, she had a point. I had not helped much in the past. Now, in my defense, I never had more than short warning with one or two exceptions, one of which I confess I forgot about. It was cancled, thankfully, but I did drop the ball. In my further defense, of the people who can help her and go with her to her appointment, I am the only one whos long term future is critically dependant on being in a particular place at a particular time practically every day. Namely the Psycholinguistics lab at the U of A. I MUST earn my letter of reccomendation or I don't make it into graduate school. Period, no alternative. Is this more important than my Grandma? It shouldn't be. Is it in my head? I aknowledge for the first time that it may be. It is wrong for it to be so, but it maybe. Part of my lack of effort on the Grandma front was the fact that she is over at my parents house practically every Sunday, and as often as not so am I. So I see her freequently, but I didn't appreciate the upstep in importance of visiting her. Well, it's been scheduled now so I'll be doing it regularly.

Anyway, back to the ugly story (though the above massive paragraph covered a lot of background so it'll be short), this devolved into an ugly fight between me and my mom. It started with her being concillary and saying it was OK, she'd deal with it, I shouldn't bother with it. It was her 'rising above', and I couldn't stand it. I didn't think at the time, but I aknowledge now, that she may well have been doign just that. I took it to be a slap in the face, as it had in fact been any number of times in the past, when she did something like that. But I coudn't let it go, I sank my talons in and went for blood. I railed at her, falsely, for ripping the guts out of anyone who didn't kiss the ground Grandma walked on, just to exagerate it hugely for the sake of making a point. She fought back ugly, dared me to ask for even one more dollar of help from her. It should be said that Grandma gave me some cash to help cover expenses tonight, and it disgusted my mom that I was taking money from someone I 'refused' to help out.

Well naturally it wasn't any deliberate neglect, or lack of caring on my part. I honestly believed that I was unable to do anything useful because I was stacked to the max busy with all the stuff that Grandma had, in fact, paid for me to be able to do in the first place. Namely college. I do not argue that I had done less than my share.

I think what it boils down to is this. I've always looked upon my mother as someone who uses ugly tactics in an argument including guilt and bald faced false desperation etc... and I felt like ripping off her mask of deception and screaming it in her face that I knew exactly what she was up to. Well, I did. It was the taunting that I couldn't back away from. That gentile, 'no, I don't expect you to contribute. Just go away now and don't expect anything from me in the way of help. You don't help after all..." the deliberately calm tone of voice done for exactly the sake of...again I assume. I wanted to rub it in her face that be ugly and obvious tactics were plain for all to see and that nothing was lost on anyone. Well, I picked the wrong subject matter for the first place. She'll defend her mother like a scorpion defending it's nest, totally and with unremitting violence. And she percieved this as an attack on her mom. Here I was trying to proove that I was willing to help...she just kep telling me that no, I wasn't.

The whole damn thing sucked. I leveled at her an accusation of finantial extortion, do this or else I don't support you anymore, accused her of none too subtley ruling with an iron fist full of cash. Told her that nobody was even allowed to disagree with her without suffering the full unflinching fury of her anger, and that because she held reigns of power she could do just exactly that, that she was flexing muscle for the sake of flexing muscle.

It wasn't going to end. And then an angel of mercy showed up in the form of my dad who wanted to make peace. And he pulled it off, he totally pulled it off. He showed up and talked us down out of our trees, well, he talked me down out of my tree and he got Mom to lighten up. It took a while but we calmed down and made up.

I don't know exactly at what point the argument reached critical mass and took on a life of it's own but we did our share of screaming at each other, mostly in turns.

It is true, that I am neglegent. I forget to do things, and I just don't worry about them as much as I ought to. This makes my mother really angry, and ture enough, if I was good about it she probably wouldn't be. Hell, I don't know.

I look back at it, through the ache in my brain and the time spent relaxing in front of a video game afterwords...it was all just ugly, and I started it. I couldn't stand agreeing to her wishes when it meant swallowing all her insinuations without challenging them...if the insinuations were there in the first place...

I just want to go to sleep.

Forvie me Father for all the ugly things I have wrought this day, break them apart and let them cause no more suffering.

Alexey the Sinner.