JOURNAL

The wicked witch of the Midwest is on her bullshit. Again. Because, it's the holiday season, of course she is. Duh.

After 70+ years on the planet this woman has not learned how to deal with her fucking baggage and trauma, not even the slightest, and has made basically no attempts to do so in that time, either. It's really mind-boggling. When I'm unhappy with a thing, situation, person (especially when that person is myself) - I do something about it. It hasn't always been the right thing or best thing, or even a thing that remains. But it's still something. My mom, though? Hell nah, nope, fuck that, no way, not gonna do it, hard pass, etc. Fairly certain she enjoys being miserable and thrives on drama. And I cannot stand it. Mostly because she makes it about everyone else but herself.

It's no wonder after as many years that she's been on the planet and as much of it that she's seen that she basically has no friends or communities. Every time a situation or individual pops up that doesn't go or behave the way she thinks they should, she kicks them to the curb with no second thought and a whole lot of bitching. The number of communities and scenes and friends this woman has burned through is nearly unfathomable. To speak nothing of the larger family. I used to think the rest of our family were all shit. The older I get, I'm not so sure.

Thanksgiving is right around the corner, so you know some manufactured drama had to get thrown on the familial platter. And boy oh boy, she did not disappoint this year.

Going from the end of the holiday season last year where she turned Xmas into a typical and uncomfortable shitshow on the heels of a very atypical and downright enjoyable time at Thanksgiving, telling my brother and I that she's not organizing holidays anymore, into preparing plans for Thanksgiving this year without telling anyone. When my brother sent a text to the family channel, everyone was on board for getting together and, after no respopnse for three days, she suddenly didn't want anything to do with Thanksgiving - organized by her or not - simply replying "not intersted". L i k e . . . what. the. fuck.

Since then, I've only exchanged a handful of very business like matters over text with her, have barely seen her, and other than worrying what kind of bullshit she's going to pull between now and Thanksgiving, it's been absofuckinglutely delightful to not have her in my day-to-day comings and goings for the most part, boy howdy.

B U T . . . My mom lives with me and she is going to be around while the rest of us do our thing for Turkeyday, so it's bound to get uncomfortable. I was thinking of just recording every interaction with her, like zero shame style. Just bust out the phone and hit record and let things unfold. Like TMZ and shit. I think I'm definitely gonna covertly record audio at bare minimum. Every time I talk about how terrible of a person my mom is, people always say shit like "can't you just talk to her?". NOPE. Big old fat fucking NOPE. If you do not 100% agree with my mom, anything you talk to her about is treated as a personal attack. So nope, I can't just talk to her. On top of everything being treated like a personal attack, she simultaneously has one of the worst tempers ever while also being the most passive aggressive person I've know in my time on this rock.

All this to say, it's been an uncomfortable dynamic in the family for the past week or two on this topic and situation alone. The first holiday of the season hasn't even come yet. And. We still have Xmas, New Years, and her birthday all within the next 45 days. Weeeeeeee...

To make matters worse, my youngest came out as trans to my mom a couple weeks back. Their grandma - my mom - was the last in the family they came out to and the apprehension to do so was for a good reason. Upon the initial coming out, she seemed supportive from the jump but that quickly turned into a situation that was, again, somehow an attack on her as a person. Since? She's only used their deadname outside of a single interaction in ceonversation with me. So, as predicted, that whole situation went to shit in almost no time, as well.

To the surprise of no one in the family.