My story

[findthelight]

Hello everyone, I'm findthelight.

I'm writing my story so that I can see other people's perspective and like most of you, seeking to find someone else to affirm me in that "I'm not the mentally unstable one".

I grew up in the city with both of my parents who are from another country. I was an only child and pretty unhealthily protected but of course out of "love". Now as an adult, I've grown and try to raise my child differently but very grateful to my parents for doing what they could having dealt with their own issues in life. I'm a nondenom Christian and have been since 16. I tried to figure things out with God and praise Him for being the one to keep me on the right path. I married young and have a loving but emotionally unavailable husband. Now I understand why. I think it is my job as his helper to encourage him to being his best self and also heal from his family.

Anyway, here we go. About a couple years ago during the holidays, I was caught off guard and accused of awful things by their sibling. After confirming with other people in the family, I was accused of things that were false (being lazy or unhelpful when it came to clean up after holidays/also, just had a child and family confirmed they were not upset over this). For a while, I carried these accusations around as if they were true. Until I started realizing that these accusations or situation became reocurring and worse after the COVID 19 epidemic put us all into quarantine. Which my in laws did not want to allow to split up our family during those holidays, they wanted outdoor and masked one hour get togethers which as difficult as it was we sometimes obliged. However this was not allowable from my sibling in law and looked down upon. My sibling in law would often call everyone in the family names for allowing my in laws to take part in these events and would question our sanity, our morals, ethics, and anything else that defined us. Finally, I was sick and tired and fought back sometimes.  Because of this, I was often told to stay away  by this particular sibling in law because I or my immediate family would be the sole reason as to the death of my in laws. I was often told that they wished I wasn't in their family and that I had somehow uprooted the family structure around myself. These are tough things to hear coming from someone who is my own mother's age (yes, my sibling in law is my mother's age). I won't lie, hearing these things or accusations I would argue back and defend myself because more often than not no one else would say anything to my own defense. I felt as if no one around me acknowledged the hurt or the pain until I started talking about it. It all felt as if it wasn't happening or that it wasn't real because no one would mention it. So then I took the liberty to engage others and was shocked to find that they felt the same way but no one wanted to be a part of continuing the conversation or push for real help.

Flash forward to now, I realize my husband's side of the family may also be overspiritualizing what is going on now. Now it's been years from the quarantine so now she is being invited to family reunions and as one of my in laws mentioned "It is a healing experience". I can't help but think that this is all some sort of way that they have coped with the years of repetitive behavior, to kinda over glorify the times when things seem "normal".

Now that it is September, I can't help but feel sad that the holidays are coming up fast. I say that because I personally have felt as if the holidays are such a farce. We get together and say things as if we glorify God with truth but really we're just trying to keep a nonfunctioning family together.

Can anyone relate? Can anyone just say they see where I'm coming from?

[1footouttadefog]

Can relate.  Took me along time to realize that families often dont get along well and are not composed of entirely of decent people, they just agree to behave together on holidays. 

The pact to and the act of coming together to behave in the same place becomes highly valued and individuals will sacrifice much to not be seen as the one messing up the play being improvised in real time.  These often take on a religious importance as they correlate to  religious celebrations etc. 

Making this understanding of the pd festivals I was subjected to helped me not tale ot all to heart so much and I could then concentrate on playing my role without giving up anything of importance to who I really am.  I decoded that being polite and playing dumb was a way to proceed with integrity.

Statements  like "I am not entirely knowledgeable on that topic,( event or who said what, what happened) , I find your take interesting" could get me off the hook with integrity as I smiled and played my part.

[Truthseeker1]

I hear you find the light, sorry you sound like you feel you are facing this alone. That's the most unsettling part of all this for me. I feel like a dog with my head cocked to the side and my ears up just thinking what is happening here? Is no one seeing this? That's how it was in my birth family. I saw and heard stuff but if I spoke up about it I would be shut down by the sibs and even our parents. In my family the one accusing someone of dysfunctional behavior was seen as the problem. For awhile I was that black sheep. I saw confrontation as seeking the truth and desire to get to the bottom of things so we could all move forward in a healthy way. Sibs and parents saw it as threatening the "Norman Rockwell painting". Looking back I can see they were threatened by acknowledging someone's dysfunction that they did not have the skill to deal with. After awhile I learned to chill and let things go with the rest of them. They could not learn because they did not want to learn. I tried discussing matters privately with siblings and they still refused to acknowledge anything was wrong. It was maddening to me. Had headaches every time I would visit them. I would show up with a smile on my face and give everyone a hug but would be an absolute mess inside. I looked for every reason to not show up. I eventually moved out of state. They are all still living in denial of any problems. If you speak up about a problem you are ganged up on and verbally take a beating.  My PDW even found a copy of sisters old journal. Of course she read it and told me about it later.  Apparently my sister was very upset.  She was so hurt and felt devalued because no one ever called her on her behavior. She said she knew she was a f'n B and no one even cared enough about her to even say anything. Kind of broke my heart to hear that. It was not true from my perspective but it was a coping mechanism I had learned to save myself. Like gray rock... 
I wonder if your husband has similarly learned to avoid confrontation because of some family dynamic. You said that your husband is emotionally unavailable. I just wonder if that is not somehow a sign of something he is doing to protect himself from them. I may be totally off but those are just my thoughts based on my experience. I agree with above post that the ones seeking to understand are not usually the ones with the major problem. The ones causing the ruckus in my experience are the ones who think they already know who is to blame.