And the vermin of the world inhabit it- :”No Place Like London” Sweeney Todd
(TW: Abuse, physical, mental, emotional. Depression & anxiety. Mental health.)
I am spiraling.
Spiraling downward into a depression, and an anger, and a sadness, and a frustration so deep that I feel like I may never claw my way back out of it. More often than not lately, I feel like the world is expecting too much of me.
I am expected to take care of my grandmother with almost no help from anyone else, and what little help I did have, if you even want to call it that is gone now “because of me.” Because I wouldn’t let her stay here and bully me. Bully me like she has always done since I was little. Because that is who and what my aunt is. It is who she always is, and always has been.
She will tell you- and I have a witness to back this up- that if someone is in your house and you don’t want them there, to tell them that they need to leave, they are not welcome, and if they choose not to that you’re supposed to call the police. However, if you use that same logic on her, you are a bully and you “deserve to be alone.” (And yes, I do have the text receipts to back up my claims.) She will yell over you, even when you are not yelling or raising your voice, constantly, until the only way that you can be heard is to yell back just as loudly. Then, she will fly into one of her crazy rampages and scream about how you are bullying her. How you are a bad person. How you are this and that and the other thing.
I am always on the receiving end of this.
I am the bully. I am the bad person.
She doesn’t care who she talks over, or what they have to say, or how you feel. Diana is right, even when she is wrong, even when she is making you miserable. How dare you say anything else.
Everything you do that displeases her or makes her look like an asshole is your fault. The best example of this is this past Monday afternoon when my brother Matthew came over after I called him crying over a prior incident with her that day. My grandmother just had B R A I N S U R G E R Y on the Thursday before. I don’t know whether or not it occurred to her that my brother might want to come check on our grandmother, or see his siblings, or want to run the tractor around the yard and pick up all of the leaves and burn them to help us out. But no, because she does not like my older brother, her first comment after seeing him was and I quote “So, you think there’s safety in numbers, don’t you?”
I didn’t know you meant me harm in my own house but, thanks for clearing that up?
She made a few more nasty comments after that and proceeded to go outside. Okay? Cool. No more shitty comments interrupting my conversation with my grandmother and Matt, right? Wrong. Because Matt picked up a pamphlet we’d gotten in the mail and tried explaining to me one of the new laws that they’re trying to pass- or something like that. I’m not entirely sure because, as I stepped over to look at the thing he was trying to show me, I must have unknowingly stepped in front of the back door. I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention; I was just trying to see the thing my brother wanted to show me.
Diana decided to come through that same door like a linebacker and bash me with it. Matt said that she looked right at me before doing it, and I wouldn’t put it past her. My grandmother, however, likes to use the excuse that she “didn’t see me” despite the fact that there is a plate glass window in that door, and that there was another window on the side of me, and I was wearing this bright red flannel.
(insert obnoxious Snapchat selfie I took that day)
Both of which I can prove were seen through either window.
Even if she hadn’t seen me, that was no excuse for her to A.) act like it was my fault that she had just bashed me with a door and B.) refused to apologize for bashing me with a door, or C.) gaslight me that I ‘knew’ I was in front of the door and did it on purpose. My grandmother may like to claim that this was an accident but, if it really were an accident- which she admitted while in the house in front of Matt saying that I “knew I was in front of the door” what would’ve been the harm in apologizing? Because I know that had I hit her with something, she’d have either called the cops or put her hands on me “accident” or not.
This is the same aunt who I could tell you numerous stories about her getting in my face, making my poor mom cry the year before she died of cancer (with screenshots of her begging me to come drive down to Texas and pick her up because said aunt is a ‘psycho’ mom’s words, not mine) and my favorite story, the time she kicked me in the stomach so hard that it threw me into the hallway closet when my bedroom was still upstairs because she was screaming and pounding on my bedroom door, and I felt unsafe so I refused to let her in. When I refused, she tried to bust down the door- the door is still broken, and the doorknob is still fucked up on that room.
Her claims for throwing me into the closet, and my body knocking the doors off their track- yes, she kicked me that hard, was that younger me was holding a baseball bat (I used to be in softball) because I was scared, and I felt unsafe, and thought that she was going to physically hurt me. I didn’t swing the bat at her. I was holding it sideways in front of myself, trying to protect myself. She grabbed it the same way I had it and tried to wrestle it away from me. When I held onto it, she kicked me in the stomach until I went down.
(I’ll try to find a picture of how I was holding the baseball bat here.)
But that didn’t stop her because she still physically put her hands on me.
She then said that she was going to call the cops for assault. I told her that she couldn’t do that because, I was always told by mom growing up (especially with as much as I was bullied when I was younger) that if someone hurts you or physically puts their hands on you and you hurt them back, its self-defense. Mind you, I still had not hit her, or tried to hurt her in any way. I was trying to defend myself, I didn’t try cracking her with a baseball bat. All I wanted was to be left alone and feel safe- which I clearly wasn’t either way. I was 11-years old, and I very distinctly remember her saying “who do you think they’ll believe, me or you?” All because she used to be in the army. I believed her. I knew that I’d done nothing wrong, I was only trying to protect myself from the person who was physically trying to hurt me but, I was young and naïve and I believed her when she said that the cops would take her side because of the way I dressed, that they’d automatically assume I was a bad kid and take her side.
My memory may not always be the best but, everyone has certain moments of trauma in their life that they will never forget no matter what happens.
Like finding my mom dead.
Or being on the receiving end of a 45+ year old woman’s anger issues my entire life.
Being bullied from as far back as the 1st grade.
The list can go on.
Of course, my grandmother was sitting right there when it happened, and you know what happens? She defends her. Now, I honestly can’t say that I’m surprised because, that’s just what she does. She always defends her. She did it when Diana would be mean to my mom too before she died too. It doesn’t matter that when she’s around I get shoved aside and treated like a spec of dirt. (But my grandmother would tell you that that’s only my perception of things, even though I have other people who see that also.)
That when she’s around, I will leave for work early, even if I’m not going to work and sit in a parking lot somewhere reading a book or listening to music if the shift before me doesn’t want to leave early. It doesn’t matter that I will lock myself in my room and go without eating or having anything to drink because God forbid, I breathe wrong in the house that I live in. I will find any and all excuse to not be at or in the house when she is around.
Another good example of exactly this was that same Monday that she bashed me with a door, I went out in the morning to Walgreens and the store to pick up a couple things. When I came home, my grandmother said something to me from the back room. I couldn’t hear her because the TV was loud, and she had shouted across the house. So I finished taking off my leg brace since I can’t wear it if I’m not wearing a shoe on my other foot- the height difference makes me limp more, and it hurts my back, and then I went to see what she wanted. I said to my grandma that I could not hear her because the TV was too loud. I don’t know how this involved Diana because, she will jump down your throat every which way should you interrupt her conversation, or interrupt her when she talks but, she took that as an opportunity to go off on me about how it was- and I quote “Quiet before I got here” and how I should “Go away” and I should “Just leave.”
I hadn’t said two words to her beforehand.
This made me angry, rightfully so. Who was she to tell me to shut up in my own home? Especially when I didn’t say anything to or about her. So, I told her not to start with me. I think my initial words were “Please don’t start, I have a headache.” I’m prone to headaches, especially when she’s here and moreso when the weather is playing fall ping-pong. Again, I got told to shut up, so I told her not to tell me to shut up in my own house. That’s fair, isn’t it? First of all, I wasn’t talking to her. Secondly, she doesn’t pay our bills, and therefore should get zero say of what’s going on, let alone have any say in a conversation that DID N O T I N C L U D E H E R. Third of all, that’s just fucking rude. She shouted something again, her exact words were “You don’t pay the house note-” and something rude after that. I laughed at her and told her that I help out with the bills, and she does not so she has no place to talk.
This, is where I believe she fucked up big time because she said and again, I quote, “You’re right, I don’t live here.” To which I agreed, and said that if anyone needed to leave, it should be her because, again she was doing nothing but causing unnecessary stress and aggravation. She said that I was a “Bully and a mean girl” and I laughed at her and called her a, and I quote “Fucking psycho.”
But my grandma makes excuses like she’s bipolar, or we’re ‘both’ at fault. We’re ‘both’ causing problems, and I’m sick of it. If I try to make her see my point of view I’m “rehashing the problem” or she’ll say “I don’t need this right now” and my absolute favorite- and I do say that sarcastically, “you’re killing me.” Insert some loud, fake sobbing at the end of that last one, with a mumbled “I just want you two to get along” thrown in.
Now, I get that she just had brain surgery a little over a week ago but, this is in no way a new problem. I’ve had problems with this woman my entire life. My oldest friends- some that I’m no longer even friends with- can tell you that I have had problems with Diana for as long as I can remember.
Now, this is also the same aunt that went apple picking with us this year but, what I’d left out of that initial post was how on the way back home from Royal Oak, Diana who doesn’t know her way around the Illinois/Wisconsin area nearly as good as I do anymore, decided to follow me back to the house. Royal Oak isn’t too far away from the place that I work, which means that I know the area quite well, and so instead of taking major highways back- which I don’t like doing- I took my little country backroads. Less people, less traffic, and less hassle. Right? Wrong. Diana was driving a H U G E pickup truck that she and her husband had just bought, one that she could not, and does not handle well. Apparently, when following me, instead of the backroads, she assumed I’d be taking the highways and main roads, I guess. I don’t know why because I was not asked which way I was taking home, I was just asked if she could follow me back to the house.
On these mostly empty roads, where the speed limit was between 45-60mph depending on which road we were driving down, and I would be going no more than 40mph to make sure that she could catch up. At one point, we did cross a highway, and she had initially had her blinker on so that she could turn off and go that way but, when she saw that I didn’t have mine on, she followed me instead. Nothing was stopping her from A.) Calling my phone and asking where I was going B.) Punching in the house address on either her brand-new smartphone’s GPS or assuming the truck has a GPS, using that one instead. No, she chose option C.) Following me 75% of the way down the backroads, until she spazzed out I guess, and started laying on her horn behind me, until I pulled off to the side of the road and she rolled down her window and started screaming at me about the backroads that I was taking her down.
Last I’d checked I didn’t ask her to follow me. I didn’t want her to follow me. Had I known she wanted to follow me, or that I was expected to go home a certain way, I wouldn’t have allowed it. I did get a half-assed apology a couple of hours later. But mental illness whether its bipolar, or depression, or anxiety, or whatever else does not give you license to be an asshole.
(I myself suffer from depression and anxiety, just throwing that out there)
My grandma defended her then too, saying that she’d expected me to go on the highways and whatnot. That Diana wasn’t used to these kinds of roads, and some other bullshit that I really didn’t care to entertain. She grew up around here, she drives these roads every time she visits. And if she didn’t like the way that I had chosen to drive myself home, then she should’ve pulled off to the side of the road, put the address to the house into her GPS and found her own way.
If that isn’t good enough proof that this woman is my absolute worst nightmare, I still have texts from my mom on my phone that say the same thing. She’s crazy. If she isn’t making you feel bad about yourself, about your station in life, or whatever else then she isn’t happy. I have texts from my mom’s friends saying that she has always had a vendetta against me. Not to let her mess with me. Not to let her hurt my feelings. I have the same thing from my grandma’s friends, that Diana is a control freak, and that I wasn’t wrong to turn her words back on her about not being welcome and calling the cops if I needed to.
Now, maybe I’m wrong about her, and this is just my experiences with her. Maybe she isn’t really such an awful person to those outside of her family. I don’t know. However between what I’ve experienced personally, what I’ve heard about the way she treated my mom, especially when she was 16 and giving my older brother up for adoption (including the letter I found that Diana wrote my mom around that time- and let me just say, no one in such a hard position should be spoken to in that way.) not to mention how her first words to my brother Matt were “You should have been aborted” at my 23rd birthday dinner, less than a week after we’d met him for the first time… I’m going to go out on a limb here and say she’s just an awful human being.
If she feels like she can bully you and push you around, it seems like she will. She wants things her way, and only her way, and every other way of doing that same thing is wrong, even if you still manage to get the same result.
She left on Tuesday morning “because of me.”
I don’t believe that for a second because, she did this constantly when my mother was alive also. She would find a reason to pick a fight with me, she would later pitch a fit, or whine and cry that I was a bully, and then she would go off back to Texas, or whatever corner of the world that she was currently darkening. I think that she does this on purpose, that she can only handle doing so much around here, seeing so much of the sickness; whether it was mom’s cancer and the way it ate away at her, or the gnarly scar on the back of my grandmother’s head. She can only stand to do so much before she needs to use me as a scapegoat.
She’ll bulldoze her way in, uninvited and unannounced, despite the fact that she doesn’t want anything thrust upon her ‘last minute’ but she feels as though dropping in on us the Monday before my grandmother’s surgery despite being told not to come is alright. It’s a backhanded double standard. And now she’s gone.
Because of this and being blamed for this, and everything, apparently I am spiraling.
My grandmother will probably say that ‘no one’ is blaming me but, I disagree. I wholly disagree. Even Matt heard her say, and I quote “Thanks guys, I really needed her here” while crying, even though I was the one slammed with a door. I was the one spoken to like a piece of garbage and yelled at for no reason at all. Again.
I’d be lying if I told you that I hadn’t wanted her gone, at that point. I wanted absolutely nothing more than for her to leave. When she’s here, I fall into a deep pit of anxiety and depression. I don’t think my grandmother notices but, when Diana is here, I either sleep too much or not at all. I always have a headache. My stomach is always upset or in knots, and I’m always either upset or angry. I cry too much, more than I do the other 99% of the year when she isn’t around. I don’t want to cook, I don’t want to eat, I spend as absolute little time as I possibly can upstairs. When I can, I escape from the house entirely, even if I just end up sitting at the park behind my house, a parking lot down the street, or wandering around Walmart aimlessly (which isn’t easy or smart with Covid-19 running amok.)
All I wanted, all I N E E D E D, and all I ever need when she’s here is to just be left alone. I need her to not bulldoze into my conversations and pick away at me until I feel like a trapped animal and I snap. I could have forgone the apology, it would’ve been fake anyways but, I cannot keep doing this. The “hangover” of her leaving hits harder every time she’s here, and it’s getting harder and harder to bounce back to normal. It is mentally, physically, and emotionally draining to the point where I feel like I could sleep for a month and it still won’t fill the wretched, aching void, and heal the very raw wounds of her being here.
It takes some time for me to get back to normal once Diana is gone.
Sometimes days, or even weeks pass before I’m able to sleep again peacefully without waking up every hour or so, if I can fall asleep at all. Even now, today is Halloween, and she’s been gone almost 4-days but, my anxiety is still higher than it should be. I still expect to hear her stomping around or shouting- since she doesn’t seem to know how to speak in a normal tone of voice- with no care for anyone else in the house despite the fact that I work bartender’s hours and am normally at work very late. My stomach is constantly upset and in knots, and today was the first day in over a week that I did not wake up with a headache.
This wasn’t originally meant to be a post to bash my aunt, despite how shitty she’s been to me in the past 25-years but, I just needed to get all of these things off my chest. There is a lot of things going on in my life right now. I have lost an uncomfortable amount of motion in my left foot and ankle since my fall on August 21st, despite following some physical therapy videos for at least 15-minutes a day, every day, keeping it wrapped, icing it at least once a night before bed, and wearing that awful boot every time I leave the house. My grandmother just had brain surgery a little over a week ago, and we still don’t know whether or not the mass was benign but, we should find all of that out on Friday. Pair that with my November writing ‘challenge’ if you can even call it that, and the fact that I have almost no friends and no one to talk to (no offense) and I feel hopeless.
2020 has been hard.
I mean… H A R D.
Maybe I need to go back and make that last word bold, and in a bigger font but, I know that everyone probably feels the same way. 2020 has been a bad year for everyone, I think, and I’m hoping and praying that next year is better for everyone’s mental, physical, and emotional wellbeing.
I won’t tell you to have a good day because, I know that’s something that’s really hard lately. So, I’ll simply tell you to have a day.
Be safe & stay healthy🖤.
🎃Happy Halloween🎃
-Sky
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