Mother's Day

I just read my post from last year's Mother's Day and was hoping for a better experience. I wish I could say it was, but it wasn't. Not even by a long shot. Am I disappointed? Surprisingly enough, I'm not. If anything, I'm relieved. Relieved that it's over. That bums me out because this was MY holiday too not just my mom's like it always has been. I waited a long time to be eligible for this holiday and to me, it is a big deal because it's a celebration of who I am today, what I dreamed of and what I worked hard to get to. And it was basically ruined. Now that I am delving into my feelings, I'm really, truly, and deeply angry under that feeling of relief.

It started before we even were seated at the restaurant. I. had to use the restroom as soon as we arrived so while the rest of our group (except for my mom and sister) were seated, we went to the restroom. That's where my mom and sister were. My mom was having an unexpected female problem and she was literally bleeding all over one of the stalls. I mean it was bad. When I. and I walked in, my sister was standing near the sinks with her usual ugly look on her face and wouldn't even say hello when I said hi. She just stared at us until I repeated myself. My mom asked her if she could get some wet towels so she could clean up the floor and stall. My sister held the towels over the top of the door and then started berating my mom because she wasn't immediately taking them from her. I told my sister to just wait a second and stop making a bad situation worse. This is how it all started.

At the table I was trying to figure out what we were ordering since we had organized this meal and was talking to my dad about it. My sister was across from me, staring, asked what we were thinking of ordering and then said, "I'm not eating any of that." So my dad asks her, "Well, what will you eat?" - a seemingly valid question to which she snottily and replies as though irritated, "I don't know." Then she says she just wants a piece of pizza and I told her that they didn't sell it by the slice that she'd have to get a small pizza and she said that everyone else would have to eat it then because she only wanted a slice. Fast forward to the ordering process where she asks for the pizza without cheese, no oil but bring olive oil on the side.

The pizza came before the rest of the food and it appeared to her that there was a piece of pizza with cheese on it, a very small piece of cheese. Well, she goes ballistic that she's not going to eat this, she's sick of ordering things and not getting what she ordered and that they need to make her another pizza. I mean, off the fucking deep end about a stupid pizza. Even though I'm sitting across from her, I start concentrating on I. and others so that I don't lose it and my parents are having to deal with it. If it had stopped there, the meal would have been salvagable but it didn't. Nope, not even close.

Because when the poor waitress shows up my sister basically shoves the pizza platter at her and starts telling her in this snotty, obnoxious tone what the "sky is falling" pizza situation is. She told her once but that wasn't enough. She said it 3 times increasingly raising her voice that "She wasn't going to eat it. This isn't what I told you I wanted and you need to go back, etc." And that's when I lost it.

I told her to stop treating the waitress like she was an idiot and that all she needed to say was that there was cheese on it and could she bring you another one without cheese. She started trying to defend how she was acting and I told her that it was embarrassing how she treated people like crap who didn't deserve it and that she was just the waitress not the one who cooked it and didn't deserve to be treated like an idiot. I asked her if she even realized how she treated people and finished with the fact that even I. knew not to talk to people like that. The whole time she just stared at me with no expression on her face which pissed me off even more so I said I needed to go outside. Because honestly I couldn't stand to look at her across the table one more minute (I didn't say that part). I. piped up and said she needed to go the bathroom so instead I took her and then came back. But the meal was ruined for me and having to fake it the rest of the day like everything was fine while pointedly ignoring my sister was exhausting.

For years I have struggled with my feelings about my sister. And when I say years I mean for the last 14. I have struggled with hating what she was putting my parents and entire family through, agonizing over the wrong choices she made and the pain she was causing herself, feeling guilty about how much I disliked her as a person. Always stopping before I said out loud, "I hate her." Today that guilt is gone and I have no problem saying it. It's a statement of fact. I don't think it probably jives with being godly but in the past much of my own struggles have been caused by all the "I shouldn't think, I shouldn't feel" statements that I would tell myself denying myself my own strong feelings.

Well no more. It brings me no happiness to say it but it also isn't causing me internal conflict. For my own mental and emotional health, it's the healthy thing to do. Right now, I need to stay healthy physically, mentally, and emotionally so that I can be there to teach my young daughter right and wrong, support and love my husband, and provide the best possible start for life of my unborn son. And if that means I have to call a spade a spade, then that's what I'm going to do.