Complaining update: I am doing it here because there is not really any other good place to vent. Skip this post if you are not up for negativity - I am oozing it today. Hopefully I can get it out of my system right now.
So we have reached critical mass with my folks in town. My parents are a bit difficult, especially when they are tired.
My mom is usually making a running commentary of judgement, all day long, about anything and everything that crosses her path. Sometimes things are deemed good, sometimes bad, but always there is a value applied. And the value is random and unpredictable. On Friday, she "hated" the dry clay dirt of Los Angeles, because it was "too dry" and really, she "preferred the dark, wet dirt of the Northeast." This is on a day when it was just me and my parents hanging out. Yesterday, on a walk in a canyon, with my husband along, she commented on the dirt, "there is that diirt again" and I said "the dry kind you dislike?" and she got very angry at me, saying, "I NEVER said I disliked it, I only noticed it way dry, Nicole." And rolled her eyes, to which my father, who lives in constant fear of her disapproval, jumped in and said, "you are really obnoxious, Nicole."
I know she was embarrassed to be "called out" in front of my husband, who is from this "dry dirt" place, and I was tired and did not think fast enough to keep my mouth shut. I made it worse for myself, and there it is. I can be a real idiot when they are around.
My father, who embodies an immature passive-aggressive teenager on most days, has been in rare form as well. We are at the point where he is calling me a "stupid, noisy woman who he cannot stand to hear talk" because insults are the only way he knows how to get space for himself. He won't ask for anything directly, that would be taking too much responsibility.
It goes like this: I think he does not want to be around people anymore, he just wants to be in a shell. Both my parents are very antisocial, or perhaps aggressively introverted, and travelling gives them no space for that need to be alone if they don't schedule it in. But they don't acknowledge it in themselves or each other, and place the responsibility for it on me, either by being so mean to me that I naturally back away and schedule time without them (in which case, they invariably give me a guilt trip about it later, so they can further deflect ownership of their behavior) or by asking me to decide what they do, and then criticizing each and every option I put forward, and creating a situation that turns into a Nicole pecking-party.
Unfortunately, I am not very adept at making the best choices in the midst of this behavior, because I am so caught up in reacting to the hurt of the barbed comments and hard-to-read behavior that I just react. And that is where my husband starts to get mad at me, which I understand, but it still feels bad on top of already feeling bad.
So here I am. My parents are sulking at there home-way rental. My husband is out, and I am decidedly NOT invited, because I am in a mood and he really needs a break before he has to go back to the job he loathes tomorrow. And I am trying to figure out how to take care of myself without bringing down the wrath of all three of them, which may be impossible.
I don't want to be selfish, but I am feeling like a punching bag and I don't want that either. Arrgh.
by nicoles » Sat Nov 24, 2012 2:06 pm 
I lost all credibility with friends and family. Probably won't get it back either.
Glad it is milder than it used to be, though. I hear that! I hope you feel better very soon.
A less malicious form of Schadenfreude or Told-You-So/So There!-itis? 
)
