win or lose at waiting games

My family relationships are strained, at best. I limit my contact with them to limit my frustration. As many of you know, I limit my contact with anyone and everyone down to zero a great deal of the time anyway, so they ought not to be terribly hurt by this. Anyway, I received a message from my father yesterday, upon opening e-mail for the first time in several days. I have a couple comments to my last post to respond to (Alee! Darling!), but this missive from Dad unnerved me a bit.

My father is a hunt-and-peck typist, somewhat stream-of-consciousness in style, with an annoying touch of forced cheer. If anyone who wasn't my father wrote me such e-mails, I'd tend to think they were mildly retarded. The message starts out with a paragraph about how they're painting the walls in the living and dining rooms colors other than white. That they would "risk" using non-white paint is a tiny triumph of influence for me, and might have made me very happy (well, conflictedly so, but that's not important right now) were it not for the second paragraph.

See, my family does these...these things that make me crazy. Like, an innocuous paragraph followed by an ominous one.

The second paragraph informs me that my mother has had surgery to remove giant tumors from her neck and that they are waiting for biopsy results.

Oh, and they hope to hear from me and would like to know how I'm doing.

Gah!

I sat wadded up in a little ball seething with irritation because that felt more...righteous, I suppose, than fear. Why can't they just tell me things like normal people? I waited until Mr. G got home from work, realized I'd become a zombie when I tried to talk to him, and only then (with my support system in place) did I muster the wherewithal to call my parents.

Long story short: my mother had a "little" lump that her endocrinologist (she's hyperthyroid) tried to biopsy with inconclusive results. It was suggested that she have day surgery in the clinic to remove this just to be on the safe side. My father took her in for what was to be a half-hour procedure, and several hours later was surrounded by surgeons asking questions about whether or not she'd complained of pain, or of trouble swallowing. Basically, her entire neck was filled up with tumor that had invaded muscle and involved the circulatory system - over a pound of flesh, apparently. Massive, interesting, unusual tumors that are being evaluated by whole teams of pathologists who have never seen anything like this. For some reason, my father insists on believing that this is a good sign. My mother knows better, but she's keeping her fears to herself so as not to frighten him.

It could be that she's fine. It's possible that these tumors are just something fun and exciting for the pathologists to mince and slice, but ultimately unimportant in terms of my mother's health. It's possible, certainly, but it doesn't seem likely. She has a prior history of weird lumps in her neck (as do I, actually), and a long smoking history, though she apparently quit very recently. I am worried.

I am worried, and sometimes I really hate these people, so I'm also mad at myself for caring so much, and then I'm mad at myself for being childish and petty, and then I worry some more. She's still my mother regardless of my feelings on the matter.

Then, my father tells me that my brother is having trouble in his marriage. This is nothing new. He had known his wife for a mere three weeks at the time they got married. I've often thought that they should have just kept fucking for another couple weeks and been done with it, but instead they married, had a child, and eventually a second. My sister-in-law has always been paranoid, crazy, and hostile toward my brother and his entire family, but apparently now she's a vicious drunk who lashes out at the kids, especially my 12-year-old niece, and punishes them for contacting their grandparents (my parents). My parents were lousy parents, it's true, but they seem to be rather great as grandparents. It's been bad enough that she's never allowed me or Mr. G to be alone with the children due to her nonspecific fears that we'll "do something" to them, but to have turned on my parents, too, is cruel and bizarre. She has a therapist who apparently has told my brother that he needs to accept his role as designated punching bag, and this worries me quite a bit. They fight all the time - name-calling and screaming - and my father says, "You know how your brother is - if she picks a fight, he won't back down," and this is true - yet somehow he's allowed her to set all the rules.

My father said that the kids had told him how weird their mother was acting, but he thought they were just exaggerating. He said, "You know how kids exaggerate." I said that I actually don't know how kids exaggerate; that what I do know is that when kids try to get help when things are going seriously wrong, adults would really prefer to think that they're exaggerating or making things up because if they are telling the truth, then that requires action on the part of the adult. Action, confrontation, difficult choices, etc. Oddly, my father readily agreed with my assessment.

I could just throttle the whole lot of them. Except the kids.

Because I am the designated crazy person in the family, and because my older sister status sometimes represents wisdom to my slightly-younger brother, I am told that he has been desperate for my support and advice regarding these new complications in his trainwreck of a relationship. Since I don't answer the house phone, and because he hasn't left messages anyway, he has apparently been without anyone to talk to for well over a month (I do answer the cell phone, but he hasn't called that number). See, my parents don't think they can be helpful because they don't fight, so they...don't help. Don't listen, don't suggest options, don't do anything.

I'm so mad at all of them. Again, excluding the kids.

I'm waiting for biopsy results, and I'm waiting for my brother to call.

Why am I posting this? I'm not looking for advice, or reassurance, or anything, really. I just needed to tell, so now I've told. I'd hoped I'd feel better, but maybe I need to let the telling sink in a little longer before I'll feel the results.

win or lose at waiting games

My family relationships are strained, at best. I limit my contact with them to limit my frustration. As many of you know, I limit my contact with anyone and everyone down to zero a great deal of the time anyway, so they ought not to be terribly hurt by this. Anyway, I received a message from my father yesterday, upon opening e-mail for the first time in several days. I have a couple comments to my last post to respond to (Alee! Darling!), but this missive from Dad unnerved me a bit.

My father is a hunt-and-peck typist, somewhat stream-of-consciousness in style, with an annoying touch of forced cheer. If anyone who wasn't my father wrote me such e-mails, I'd tend to think they were mildly retarded. The message starts out with a paragraph about how they're painting the walls in the living and dining rooms colors other than white. That they would "risk" using non-white paint is a tiny triumph of influence for me, and might have made me very happy (well, conflictedly so, but that's not important right now) were it not for the second paragraph.

See, my family does these...these things that make me crazy. Like, an innocuous paragraph followed by an ominous one.

The second paragraph informs me that my mother has had surgery to remove giant tumors from her neck and that they are waiting for biopsy results.

Oh, and they hope to hear from me and would like to know how I'm doing.

Gah!

I sat wadded up in a little ball seething with irritation because that felt more...righteous, I suppose, than fear. Why can't they just tell me things like normal people? I waited until Mr. G got home from work, realized I'd become a zombie when I tried to talk to him, and only then (with my support system in place) did I muster the wherewithal to call my parents.

Long story short: my mother had a "little" lump that her endocrinologist (she's hyperthyroid) tried to biopsy with inconclusive results. It was suggested that she have day surgery in the clinic to remove this just to be on the safe side. My father took her in for what was to be a half-hour procedure, and several hours later was surrounded by surgeons asking questions about whether or not she'd complained of pain, or of trouble swallowing. Basically, her entire neck was filled up with tumor that had invaded muscle and involved the circulatory system - over a pound of flesh, apparently. Massive, interesting, unusual tumors that are being evaluated by whole teams of pathologists who have never seen anything like this. For some reason, my father insists on believing that this is a good sign. My mother knows better, but she's keeping her fears to herself so as not to frighten him.

It could be that she's fine. It's possible that these tumors are just something fun and exciting for the pathologists to mince and slice, but ultimately unimportant in terms of my mother's health. It's possible, certainly, but it doesn't seem likely. She has a prior history of weird lumps in her neck (as do I, actually), and a long smoking history, though she apparently quit very recently. I am worried.

I am worried, and sometimes I really hate these people, so I'm also mad at myself for caring so much, and then I'm mad at myself for being childish and petty, and then I worry some more. She's still my mother regardless of my feelings on the matter.

Then, my father tells me that my brother is having trouble in his marriage. This is nothing new. He had known his wife for a mere three weeks at the time they got married. I've often thought that they should have just kept fucking for another couple weeks and been done with it, but instead they married, had a child, and eventually a second. My sister-in-law has always been paranoid, crazy, and hostile toward my brother and his entire family, but apparently now she's a vicious drunk who lashes out at the kids, especially my 12-year-old niece, and punishes them for contacting their grandparents (my parents). My parents were lousy parents, it's true, but they seem to be rather great as grandparents. It's been bad enough that she's never allowed me or Mr. G to be alone with the children due to her nonspecific fears that we'll "do something" to them, but to have turned on my parents, too, is cruel and bizarre. She has a therapist who apparently has told my brother that he needs to accept his role as designated punching bag, and this worries me quite a bit. They fight all the time - name-calling and screaming - and my father says, "You know how your brother is - if she picks a fight, he won't back down," and this is true - yet somehow he's allowed her to set all the rules.

My father said that the kids had told him how weird their mother was acting, but he thought they were just exaggerating. He said, "You know how kids exaggerate." I said that I actually don't know how kids exaggerate; that what I do know is that when kids try to get help when things are going seriously wrong, adults would really prefer to think that they're exaggerating or making things up because if they are telling the truth, then that requires action on the part of the adult. Action, confrontation, difficult choices, etc. Oddly, my father readily agreed with my assessment.

I could just throttle the whole lot of them. Except the kids.

Because I am the designated crazy person in the family, and because my older sister status sometimes represents wisdom to my slightly-younger brother, I am told that he has been desperate for my support and advice regarding these new complications in his trainwreck of a relationship. Since I don't answer the house phone, and because he hasn't left messages anyway, he has apparently been without anyone to talk to for well over a month (I do answer the cell phone, but he hasn't called that number). See, my parents don't think they can be helpful because they don't fight, so they...don't help. Don't listen, don't suggest options, don't do anything.

I'm so mad at all of them. Again, excluding the kids.

I'm waiting for biopsy results, and I'm waiting for my brother to call.

Why am I posting this? I'm not looking for advice, or reassurance, or anything, really. I just needed to tell, so now I've told. I'd hoped I'd feel better, but maybe I need to let the telling sink in a little longer before I'll feel the results.