Manipulation

I think I should write a book. I think it could be a best seller. The longer I live, the more I realize what a strange creature my childhood was. Nothing about it was even vaguely normal.

Of course, I could write to my heart's content, but I'd better publish it posthumously. Somebody would kill me over that little gem, I can promise. If it weren't the JWs, it would be my mother. ;)

And speaking of whom.. I told Mom I couldn't come visit this past weekend because L wanted me to help him finish painting the house. We still didn't get it all painted, but we got a good bit of it done. We are having people over this weekend, and it has to be done. Besides that, we wouldn't have had time to do any of the backbreaking manual labor my mother wants, nay, expects, us to do when we come visit (which is why no one comes to visit her anymore).

The response I got was "Well if I die in the surgery I won't have ever gotten to hug you again." As if that's fair! It's not as if she isn't coming to stay with us after the surgery. And it's not as if she hasn't had this exact same surgery twice and lived through it fine.

Add to that the fact that she wants me to come to AR and get her after the surgery. In other words, drop $1000 on plane tickets just to fly out, turn around, get on another plane, and fly back. And don't even get me started on driving out there, which is what she really wants me to do.

Still there is a part of me that feels like teetotal shit because I won't do exactly what she wants me to do. I can't say she asks me to do it, because she doesn't ask. She demands, she manipulates, she guilt trips, but I really don't think she even knows that she's doing something inappropriate.

I really think she doesn't understand why people react to it the way they do. After we talked about it on the phone and I told her that we couldn't come this weekend and exactly why, she called again later to make some sort of counteroffer.. It really is sort of like some sort of transaction with her. Everything is.

She said that she could get one piece of the furniture we are going to use of hers into the van, and why didn't we drive to Charlotte and get at least that from her. Um.. hello??? If we could do that, we'd be coming up there this weekend instead of trying to get the rest of this stuff done!!!

And still, I feel bad for feeling the way I do about the guilt trips and manipulation. It's just that she's sort of like the little boy who cried "wolf" at this point. I have been on an emotional rollercoaster with her for the past 20 years. At some point you have to stand back and say, hold on just one cottonpickin second here. Everything cannot be this big of an emotional deal! The world is not ending and nobody is gonna die if Mom doesn't get her way, least of all Mom.

I would like to think that she knows this. Then again, I wouldn't like to think that she knows it and has been trying to manipulate me on purpose.

Anyway, it's a lot to think about sometimes. In other news, we have had an offer on the house. L has turned it down, because he feels it is insulting, and I am inclined to agree with him. More on that later.. right now I have a proposal to review and a meeting to attend...