Is it me, or is it aggressive in here?

Recently I went to see a shrink, not a talking therapist like my mother, but a real honest to goodness psychiatrist, to see if I needed medicating for depression. For the past few months my parents have, apparently, been wondering if I should be drugged up, because I have been rather “aggressive” lately. That is my father’s word choice, hence the quotes. The brain doctor told me to get more sleep, and perhaps get out of the house more? I had figured that part out on my own already, thank you very much, which is why I go to the gym three or four days a week and have two playgroups.

I have a bizarre relationship with my folks – I feel partially smothered and partially ignored. They don’t call or visit or like visitors unless it’s the Thursday day off or Saturday, and not always then. (Sundays are “sacred days, when we just rug out” to quote my mother, so there better not be a sick baby around, or a needy child to disturb the peace, or anybody at all for that matter.) Some Saturdays are out, because they like to go to NYC for shopping and beauty treatments and don’t have time to visit the grandkiddies as a result. And sometimes not even on Thursdays either, because that is the day of from the office and my mother told me that is the only day she can run errands. Okay. Fair enough – if anyone can understand someone being busy, I can. However, it is not calculated to make one feel loved when your parents would rather take a day in New York by themselves and not stop and see you for ten minutes, even if your house is literally 7 minutes off the highway they take to get home, and they even pass your exit.

As you may know from some other posts, I have asked my mother not to call my babies trolls, which she does a lot, because I don’t like it. She must really be deaf, not to have heard me say that for the past 17 months, or does she just like to piss me off? Either way, it is extremely annoying and frustrating. Can you imagine why I might show some aggression to the person who calculatedly tries to upset me at my children’s expense?

A few weeks ago, my boys were kind of sick, with high fevers and not wanting to eat. I asked my mother to come by one morning, one afternoon, one night, any old time at all, and just hold a baby and give me a little breathing room. She was just too busy at the office and my father needed his lunch and she was tired and a girl in the office had the flu and she didn’t want to infect me, or the boys, etc. Yep, one lame excuse after the other. My brother tells me not to expect anything from them, that way I won’t be disappointed, but, like the cock-eyed optimist I can be, I always hope for a thaw.

My parents do give me money, sometimes a lot of money, to pay for groceries, clothes, a baby sitter, what have you. They buy plane tickets for my brother and his family to come visit and used to pay for my sister’s baby’s day care. But, they are not around when the kiddies are sick, teething, being crazy, when I am feeling blue, when my sister needs/wants help, when my brother asked them to go to his graduation, but I don’t know that whole story. No, then they are "too busy at the office, or too tired from working so hard". One wonders why they work so hard. Are they addicted to it? Is it to have money to give to the children and grandchildren they are too busy working to see? Or is it to be able to go on crazy expensive vacations to relax, because they have been working so hard?

With events like these, and the feelings of rejection I get from my parents on a regular basis, don’t I have the right, after 35 years, to get a little aggressive and defensive at a very trying time of my life?

Also, my mother has this terribly irritating habit of hanging up on you of she feels you are a) winning a fight b) saying something she doesn’t want to hear or c) you tell her that you need her to do something she has no intention of doing. Man, is it frustrating! The last time she hung up on me was when I was asking her to come over because the DH was going out of town for two days and I had a sick baby at home. I asked her to come over after office hours and sleep with the healthy twin so I could focus on the sick one. She started going on and on about the girl at the office who was vomiting and had had to go home and how she wasn’t sure if she would be infectious and how it doesn’t make medical sense for her to come over and yadda yadda yadda. I got a little upset and said – well, if you won’t help me in my hour of need, and she said – well, if you are going to yell at me – and suddenly I was listening to a dial tone. My sister, who got to hear my tack-spitting version of the conversation, pointed out the obvious – she just didn’t want to help. Hmmm. So I said to the DH, "That’s it, I’ve had it, she is just too hurtful, I don’t need a mother, I am too old for this rubbish, she’s so disrespectful, I am never talking to her again!" However, I have seen her, because I am not that tough, but I have been "aggressive" lately...I wonder why?

All I know is, when I have been in real need; over Christmas with the mouth ulcer thing, a few weeks ago, with the fever thing, and have totally exhausted by it all; my parents started asking each other if I needed medicating, because I “am not the usual sweet little thing I used to be,” to quote my father. Is that understanding? Anyone? Anyone? Beuller? Anyone?


Naturally the question is begged, why can’t my parents see that I am aggressive to them because they have pushed me aside when I needed them and usually offer me money instead of love and understanding? Why can’t I am sick of their behavior and that they see they might be part of “my problem”? Can't they see money isn't enough? Is this worth working on, or should I just ignore them like my siblings do? I am afraid that if I do, my baby trees in the front yard will be knocked over in the gale of wind from their collective sigh of relief. And that really would be depressing.