Venting
I love my mom. She is a beautiful, kind, talented and a generally wonderful person. However, there is one thing about her that drives both my sister and I totally nuts. My mom likes to drink, and one of her favorite past times is to get shit faced on wine and talk trash about my sister and I. Listening to her tell it, we were the world’s worst hellions and it is a miracle she could have turned such crummy kids into decent human beings. Granted, the stories she tells have a basis in reality, but they are embellished to the point where the actual facts are barely recognizable.
The trend of telling tales to make my sister and I look bad annoys the crap out of us, but the stories are generally about when we were high schoolers and can’t really hurt us. Everyone does stupid shit in high school, and ours was not really different from anyone else’s. However, last night the stories changed. We were out to dinner with a giant group of 12 people, most of whom my mom had met that night. It was Me, Katy, Evan, Dad, Mom, Evan’s parents, Evan’s brother Colin, his wife Mary and adorable son Liam, and Mary’s parents ‘The Whites’. My mom was at the opposite end of the table from me and about midway through dinner I become the center of attention as my mom starts regaling these mostly complete strangers with the story of my divorce. She casually turns the most painful thing I have ever experienced, something that I am actually still currently experiencing, into a comical story for complete strangers; and I am expected to sit through the whole thing and smile and laugh along with them. As if listening to my painful story broken out in detail was not enough, she ended with the hilarious fact that my subconscious is struggling with my divorce seeing as I am having regular nightmares about losing Jason/Jason being in danger.
Now it is entirely possible I am over reacting to what occurred, I am not exactly a neutral party when it comes to the topic of my divorce, but to me, using your child’s most painful life experience to win friends seems wrong, and making them wear a shit-eating grin while you do it is just cruel. I now feel sick to my stomach. I am really hurt by the whole thing, but I cannot say anything because she might take offence and I have to keep the peace because Katy is in town and we have family dinner gatherings planned every night for the next 5 days. I will get over this, and in truth I should get used to it because I am sure this is just the newest and greatest tale in her collection of trash talking points, but it would just be easier if I could have a night away from her. At least I will not have to sit through the same kind of experience tonight. Tonight’s dinner is with Uncle Joe & Stacy, so they already know all the details, plus they love me and would not find my pain funny. I am not going to miss a single second of time with Katy, so passing on dinners is not an option, but I really could use a night away. Blah.