2009-09-30

You know it isn't that I don't like them, I just am more and more convinced that I don't like having guests longer than overnight. And there are always issues when you are a grown-up and your parents visit. It probably also doesn't help that I've spent the last few weeks feeling... well kind of hard to describe. I want to say like borderline depression, in that I didn't want to do anything, didn't want to be with people, etc. But also kind of overwhelmed, as in the house is a pit and my parents are coming and there's a metric ton of crap in the guest room and holy cow am I really the only one who ever loads the blasted dishwasher? Plus we had the whole lets get used to the new schedules thing going on.

I'm afraid that the whole thing probably made my mother feel like I'm harboring a lot of anger. Sometimes the whole overwhelmed thing comes off as mad at the world and I just want to sit at home and bitch about everything and everybody. (Particularly my brother when my mom is around for some reason). Plus this is the time of year we start talking Christmas--although that went well with the exception of my stepfather balking at the idea of "all that driving" which always pisses me and my "for years we drove all over the state of Illinois in the snow and now you are objecting to a few hours" husband.

So after they left husband and I had a long talk (I miss those talks when we have people over) about our siblings and just how different we are from them and how weird it seems. When I was a kid I couldn't imagine that I would dread talking to my brother and his wife. Husband's theory is that my world view and my brothers are so fundamentally different that we naturally don't get along. Then I asked him what his deal was with his brother whom, he doesn't go out of his way to call and his answer was that that was because BIL is such a quiet and private person that even if husband did call him, they'd talk for 2 minutes and that would be it. "but I don't dread dealing with him" was the response. But that's just it. I don't like talking to my brother, I do dread it. And not because he's a bad person or because we fight--we don't fight and he isn't a bad person. He's just not a person I would be friends with.

My mom gets really upset by all this. She thinks that we should be friends. And So last night I started to wonder: when Amy and Emily are in their late thirties (my brother is 38, I am 40) early forties will they be friends? Will it bother me if they aren't? And I posed that question to husband. He never really answered. I certainly hope they will be friends, but I think I'll understand if they aren't. Husband's answer was he didn't think they'd ever fall so far from our values that they'd be hard to be around, but I don't think that's true. I don't think I'd be upset, maybe a bit disappointed, but I guess it would depend on what relationship they have with me.

See it seems to me that the real areas of conflict between me and my brother and husband and BIL is our respective relationships with our parents--in essences our moms now as both FIL and my dad are gone. Husband says his biggest problem with BIL is how he treats their mom and I would say that I certainly have a better relationship with my mom than my brother does. My brother was always closer to my dad, whom I had no relationship with (having ended it when it became clear it would never progress beyond the emotional abusive stage). My brother hates our stepfather while I think that even if I disliked him (which I don't) I can recognize that he is good for my mom on a number of levels. So maybe the thing to do with Amy and Emily is just to make sure that they each have a good relationship with both husband and I. Maybe that's the key.

Again, I have no pithy ending, just a messy bathroom and the whole house to myself for one quiet afternoon.

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