Jul 23, 2007 16:02
Wow. Only ONE blog entry for the entire month of June...and that was more than four weeks ago. How I have missed LiveJournal and everyone on it! Being so far away from this community for the past month has been a big, black hole in my life. One I hope to fill. Soon.
Life has really changed for me in the last six weeks...some for the better, some for the worse. I finished up finals in June and flew on June 16 to Michigan to help my fiance finish up his residency, pack up his apartment and prepare for the move west. June 23 we flew home to visit his family near Savannah, where I was subjected to a real, old-fashioned Southern bridal shower, compelte with enough lead crystal gifts to take out Prof. Plum in the library, Mrs. Peacock in the lounge AND Col. Mustard in the drawing room. Photographic proof will follow.
July 1 we were back in Michigan, packed into a U-Haul and ready to drive across the country. And did I mention the truck is STICK!? And that I couldn't drive stick before this, I might add! I received a short-tempered crash course, complete with stalling the truckin intersections and generally aggravating my better half to the point of teeth-grinding. I couldn't help it. And now I freakin' hate stick. Liek everyone else who's normal. :)
In four marathon days we made it across Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and California. We didn't do anything touristy along the way. At all. The Boy was NOT in the mood. Photographic proof will follow. Oddly enough, my favorite place along the drive was Park City, Utah. They had a great Applebee's. :)
The last two weeks we've navigated buying furniture (as neither of us had any), outfitting our kitchen, and generally trying to make our tiny, over-priced apartment livable. And enjoying finally being together. And finally getting down to wedding details that we've both put off.
All that stuff has been the fun part.
The hard part of the last few weeks has been dealing with the transition of going from having a close-knit nuclear family to having a family who blames me for the fact that they don't like The Boy and they think he doesn't like them. I've been pigeonholed in this melodrama as the black cloaked, stove-pipe hatted villian. I've been accused of having given The Boy the wrong impression of who my family is and what they're like; it is my fault the transition has not resulted in the creation of an even bigger happy family. It is my fault that he doesn't want to hang out for hours at a tiem with his in-lawsw. They think I have told him lies upon lies about them, distorting the truth and painting an ugly picture of them, predisposing him to a staunch dislike of them and everything about them.
Needless to say, I've spent a lot of time a. defending myself and b. crying. This hasn't accomplished much; it has only served to make my mother and sister accuse me of being a martyr and my father to ignore the whole situation, as always.
My mother has always been thin-skinned and a tad histrionic, dramatic and incredibly defensive. The Boy has said a few things that were wildly misinterpreted and then evolved and misquoted to the point of my mother believing her own version of events. It's not an endearing quality to have something thrown in your face that you didn't say. But apparently any bad blood that came out of the situation is, ultimately, my fault. Because I screwed things up to start with.
I'm sick of feeling guilty and wondering if it really is as much my fault as I'm being told. The Boy says no, he met them without any kind of pre-conceived notion at all. My family says otherwise. I've also spent a lot of time wondering how I could have handled things differently and how I can fix it. My mother says I need to give her credit for all that she's done for me. And I have. But she doesn't believe me.
It's hard to have reality inverted and not know who to believe or whether you even trust your own memory of events. So life is hard for now. I hope things will improve.
life,
the times they are a-changin'