Twenty:

Explain something to me... And I'm sorry if none of this makes sense. I hope someday it will.

Well, first, let me explain something to you- Dave hates my parents. Not with an all consuming seething passion- We just spent 10 days with them in Florida... But he hates them with this under-bubbling wrath that makes him lash out internally or at me when they surface those feelings he has towards them. He's tired of my father's advice- "Why should I take your advice when you couldn't stop your wife from abusing your daughter"... And he's strait up tired of my mother's bullshit, emotional roller coaster drama she tries to put me on.

I didn't have it great growing up. I was the oldest of 4, with an undiagnosed bipolar mother, a disconnected father, and I took the brunt of my mother because I was the one who was there- Emotionally and physically. I was kicked out at 18, didn't graduate high school because of it, and that's how my life with Dave began. The entire time that I was dating Dave under her roof, my mother swore that Dave would never make anything of himself, never be able to support a family a family, tried to get him arrested, in trouble with the military and fired from a job. (Yeah. I know.) But, honestly, if you met my mother on the street, or at say one of my kid's birthday parties, you'd like her. She's not socially inappropriate in an obvious way.

So- We're in Florida, a trip that Dave and I didn't want to go on due to all the drama with my family leading up to it. (Call me about 100 bucks I borrowed two years ago while you're in the process of buying a house for one of my brothers? Seriously?) But the kids wouldn't go without us, and they really wanted to go-

And while we're down there, the advice from my father starts, and the didacticness of my mother's personality comes out- And she's constantly swinging from my brother's girlfriend to me with who's her new BFF that day... As my mother doesn't see me as a daughter or a family member anymore, and hasn't for 10 years. She sees me as someone that she has to have in her life because my spawn are her grandkids, and I swear to DEITY that sometimes she forgets WHY my spawn are her grandkids. But I digress.

And the comments about how we're overspending our money begin and how they (She) isn't paying for anything extra for us and we're on our own if we run out of money (Mainly because she felt we were eating out to much because we didn't want to eat out of a cooler in the Universal Studios parking lot with them)... And the financial planning advice starts from my father- Again, the man who just bought one of my brothers a home because he couldn't afford his rent. And then the "We'll meet you at X in Y minutes", and 2 hours later no one has shown up- Or the "You have to be out of the hotel room at 11, sorry, we know you wanted to go swimming with the kids again" but what I'm not going to walk down the hotel room hallway to tell you is that I paid 30 bucks for a late check out for one room that you could have taken a shower in and played with them on the beach for a bit longer.

Dave's seething at various points of the vacation. And, with all my issues with my family and my brother's whore, I felt that I handled most things very well- There wasn't much that was going to interfere with my children's enjoyment of Shamu or their 10th time riding Spiderman... Or their first time on a real beach and S just being S.

But after all the hell that we went through- Most of it I can't remember now that I've run it down with my therapist, all the fighting Dave and I did over my parents, and the agreement that we came to about the next when it comes to my family, after my 84 year old Grandparents leave in July... We decided we're done with my family. We're done with the judgement about how we live our lives. We're done with the assumption that because Dave makes above the 50k mark (Barely) that we should be better off financially than we are. (Have you ever been a gov't contractor, Dad? No? Shut the fuck up, then.) We're tired of the comments that we're to hard on our kids because we expect certain behaviors out of them and don't tolerate others, vacation or not. (At least I don't back hand mine every time one of them says something that I don't like, Mom.) I'm tired of S being thrown into the Olympics against his cousin that is 10 months older than him... Well, assholes, let's put her in the Olympics (If you don't know, then ask another mom. Fuck.) against my kids when they were about to turn 2. I can't help it if you don't remember how smart G and L were at that age- But do not give me shit that she was walking at 10 months and S refuses to crawl at a year.

I'm just tired of, still, after Dave and I being married for 10 years, after getting kicked out of the house and the family 10 years ago and trying to get back in various times over the years, that none of what I've done with my kids or that Dave is good enough for them yet. I'm not good enough for them. The way I choose to live my life... Where we choose to live... None of it is good enough...

So, explain it to me, please- Because that's my next row in my head. How do go go about writing out your family?