It's my birthday and I'll cry if I want to (but I don't want to)

[no1schild]

It's one of my least favorite weeks...my birthday is this week. My DH, his brother, and I all share a birthday week, so it becomes a time of obligation to get together. Here's the thing. I'm a grown-up and don't really need/ want a party especially when it feels like the party is more for MIL than myself, She ALWAYS take a vacation over DH and my actual birthdays (and often our children's, but not the other grandchildren). I don't mind, but it does send a message. She picks another day then to squeeze us in and "celebrate us."  I struggle with her use of money and gift-giving as a source of power. I shared in my last post how MIL and FIL are very wealthy. He has a successful business and has worked hard, and that's great for them. What bothers me is the way they use money to manipulate. Even when we've asked for no gifts, or ask that a donation be made in our name, there are gifts. Too many. I end up giving all of mine away to other family members, because to see anything in my house from MIL, makes me feel like her energy is in the house.

Also, we can never be grateful enough. I don't know how many times DH or I have been called "unappreciative"/ every synonym you can fathom for the word. I always say thank you and often send a thank you card. But MIL has told others in the family that I am ungrateful and apparently I think saying thank you once for an item is enough. Is it not? Maybe I'm wrong here? In my FOO a verbal thank you, once, is plenty. It's plenty for me on the receiving end as well.

Gift giving from MIL feels likes it is all about MIL. She sets out to buy the most expensive gifts, the highest number of gifts, and the most wanted gifts. It's a competition. She has criticized the gifts we give many times. For example, once we made a giving plate. The boys decorated it with their sweet drawings and there was a poem about baking a baked good and sharing it/ the plate with someone else to pass it on and do the same. These people have EVERYTHING, I can't spend a lot, and I though it was nice. My MIL however just scoffed and said "So you're telling me I have to give MY present away??" My oldest son heard and flushed. He's highly sensitive like myself, and I think he sensed the humiliating nature of her tone. Comments like this have made me only want to give gift cards or nothing, but I know how that would go as well. Damned if I do, Damned if I don't.

This is also the week that MIL, FIL, H, and I were engaged in a series of verbally and emotionally abusive incidents, five years ago. It ended with my having a miscarriage, my mental and physical health suffering, and 4 months of NC (which was eventually broken by them just "wanting to pretend it never happened). I sought a lot of therapy from this time in my life. The incident with ILs was enough on its own, but it also triggered a lot of abusive situations from my childhood with my FOO. The abusive interactions from this time are mostly what ruminate through my head now on a daily basis, and I do believe I have C-PTSD from it. The negative self-talk saying I'm no good, I'm a horrible person, an abusive person, an ungrateful person. The paranoia I felt from being triangulated with other family members, isolated, ostracized. My DH being told he had to choose between "his family" and me (he told her that was an easy choice--me).

For all these reasons, I dread my birthday. DH and I have made a lot of progress through LC, which we do mostly for our children and the collateral damage involving DHs siblings, who we love. Even if I opted out, she would continue to push for a day sometime in the future, because this is her time to shine, to show the world how generous she is. This is her time to make me say "thank you," and every time I have to, I want to puke. Does anyone else hate telling them thank you, or does this truly make me ungrateful?

Every time this part of the year rolls around, I become physically ill. I will have issues involving my reproductive parts. I'm not saying this is the cause...but is it? It's like my body remembers the pain before my mind does sometimes. I just want to heal myself--all of myself. I feel I've come so far, but every interaction feels like I've been beaten, if not in by new narc behavior, then by the triggering her voice and strong  perfume.

Please, I guess I'm just asking for some help on how to deal with this week. Thank you for reading.

[Call Me Cordelia]

Ungrateful for what? For being dragged into another performance of your MIL's dog and pony show? Cast as the dog, as always? Ungrateful for the drama and the inevitable insults no matter what you do? Ungrateful for gifts for which you can never be grateful enough even though you explicitly said you didn't want them?

Yes, you are ungrateful for the annual abuse-fest your birthday has become. Good! Now you can change things!

I'm so sorry for all of the turmoil and your miscarriage. I have been in a similar place with my parents and in-laws. Ungrateful scapegoat. My heart goes out to you. It looks like you've gained a lot of insight into all the dynamics, and your DH is firmly united with you. Hooray! I hope you keep reaching out for support here. These boards were so helpful to me when I was navigating all of this.

[bloomie]

no1schild - "Damned if I do, Damned if I don't."

So, you may as well do as you please.

I know the Mil's dog and pony show (love that sum up Cordelia) around gifts, holidays, with excessive wealth on display as our family is used as an opportunity for grandiosity. That bottomless pit of need that is my own mil's ravenous appetite for fawning cannot possibly be filled by mere mortals. The. End.

I am going to say it no1schild... it is time to reclaim this time and begin to build memories and peace into this week celebrating both you and your DH in ways that you choose. Your body does keep score. You have that awareness and that is informing you how truly awful and gaslighting to the extreme it can be to have things lavished upon you, or your children, when love is absent. It is a hollow, echoing experience that ties us into knots because we do not want to facilitate it, endure it, give it any oxygen whatsoever, yet we find our shoulders hunching up to our ears and our inmost parts twisted into knots.

To have the specter of all you have endured at your in laws hands over any day, any space of time, is something we can break free from. I know. Because I have done it. And I am rooting for you to do the same.

Give yourself permission to take a time out this week and do things with your DH and kiddos. Simple things... stargazing, picnics, sitting by the water somewhere with a cool glass of your favorite beverage. Whatever sensory things you need to do to bring soothing to your body, heart, and spirit... do those things.

And if you can... shift your focus to how grateful you are for the beautiful life you have built in spite of all you have been subjected to. It is your life to live in empowerment and honor. Respecting and celebrating that you are here, alive, able to love and be loved and surrounded by the care of your little family of choice.

If it is fear that is attempting to break down your front door, enter and own your house, lean into it and ask fear what it is trying to tell you, face it, become a strong tower against it,  and then close that door firmly in its face. I have faced down my own fear of the pain and anguish my mil can and would and has and does bring to my family, DH, myself. But, I couldn't have done it alone. Keep coming back. We get it and we are here.

[Cat of the Canals]

no1schild - "Damned if I do, Damned if I don't."

So, you may as well do as you please.

Calling you "ungrateful" no matter what you do is not an accident. It keeps you in a constant loop of feeling you need to "prove" you are grateful.

My PDmil loves to complain about how FIL only took her camping "three times this summer." Well heck, three times sounds like a lot to me! I've gone camping zero times! But FIL thinks, "Well, I guess I have to take her on more than three next summer so I don't get nagged about it." The thing is, if it's four trips next year, do you think she'll stop complaining? Take a wild guess.

My point here is that PDs are very skilled at designing these little games that are rigged so they win, no matter what. You can jump as high or higher than they ask, and they will still find something to complain about. Some way you've disappointed them. The more you can come to terms with the fact that they will not change, and that it is not your responsibility to "fix" them or the relationship, the easier it will be to stop playing.