I finished prepping for Monday and Tuesday
I spent "family time" with Cameron's mother and sister, with Barry and the kids and a little bit with Megan's partner Josie.
Friday afternoon Cameron told me his mother and her boyfriend were coming over and told me I didn't really have to be there. So I didn't come home until after they left. I set up a cocoon in the back of my car and lay down and had my virtual appaointment with Karri. Karri has been my therapist for some rediculous amount of time like 10 years. Or almost ten years. She always makes me feel better about life.
After that Cameron texted me about bringing home dinner for us and said his parents had already left.
Which relieved me. I didn't want to make small talk but I didn't want to pick up dinner either. We have so much food at home. It felt a little like old alcoholic behavior of past years. So many times five years ago he would ask me to pick up 12 pack of something and I reluctantly said yes because I didn't know or was in denial about how dire the circumstances were.
I asked him what he wanted for dinner and he said it was my choice. But it's never my choice. Wings were on the way home so I stopped there.
By the time I got home there was something wrong with my choice. Too little heat or soggy wings or not enough sides.
He grabbed his portion and went up stairs and I had my portion of dinner and I watched a movie downstairs and by the time the movie was half over I was tired. It was 8:30 on a friday and after being up since 5 I was a mess. I went to bed.
Cameron came in at 11:30 to wake me up from a full slumber to tell me that my sleep machine was making noise and he could hear it from another room.
Told me to do something about it.
Nevermind the fact that he could wear headphones. He could close his door. But it's always my problem.
Woke up Saturday -- before Cameron, he doesn't sleep, but go up and had my tea and finished the movie I started. Took a walk. Read my book. Got some work stuff done.
Cameron wakes up at 12 and demands we go to Home Depot to look at storm doors. Says his mom is paying for them. Whatever. I go with him because I don't want an argument and want to seem agreeable. We grab tacos around the corner for lunch.
He doesn't want to eat there despite me saying I do. We get it to go.
He buys flowers at Home Depot because he wants bees in the yard as pollinators.
We go back home. I have to chaperone prom in Atlanta that night and am meeting a group of teachers for dinner before hand.
I take a nap because I know it's going to be a long night.
I put on a dress and Cameron criticizes it. Tells me I look frumpy and asks if I have a better one.
I say this is comfortable and leave.
I'm early to Atlanta so I browse a nearby bookstore before going to Felinis with my crew.
At dinner I suffer through conversation with teachers that can't turn off work on a Saturday night. I lament having genuine conversations instead of ones where people complain about coworkers I actually connect with.
Mentally make a note to avoid these people at work this week.
We go to prom, it was actually a lovely event, kids have fun, look amazing, and are well behavied for prom.
I come home and the first thing Cameron says is that Miso heard my erratic driving. He heard me pull up and said I was loud pulling in.
It's midnight and I go to sleep.
Mind you, I could have spent the night at my parents becuase they were much closer to the event last night, but I didn't becuase Cameron said he wanted to check out tomoatoes in the morning.
So when I wake up, we go to his sisters and do tomoato shopping.
I said I didn't want a repeat of last year. I didn't want 50 plants sit unused and die before they get planted.
Cameron got so mad. He told me that that was before rehab and he wouldn't do that and not to bring that up.
He told me not to rehash bad situations.
I am ready to resentment process.
He is not.
He is so full of shame.
He is so full of shame and he doesn't realize it.
Cameron's mother told me tonight that she thinks he's doing better from an interaction standpoint, that he was able to talk to her this weekend in a nicer form. She only sees him twice a year. Of course it's going to be performative.
She told me she likes talking to me becuase Cameron is just like his father.
It dawned on me then that this family is steeped in generational alcoholic behavior and they don't realize it.
She is SO USED to being put down by her husband before he died and by her son, and even by her daughter, who is mean as a snake.
It saddens me even further after what I know about generational trauma.
I want Cameron to embrace recovery.
I want him to be nicer.
He is just not capable of it.
And even today with the comment about food and snapping at me and saying "this is just what people talk about"
Which is another form of "you're the one with the problem."
He said it had nothing to do with me.
Another version of you're too sensitive.
So no, I won't bring up bigger issues.
I won't bring up how he makes me feel small.
He's not ready.
But I'm ready to walk away.
Quietly.
I'm ready for my self-worth to not be attacked anymore.
