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Well this Easter has royally sucked. My mum had to have an operation on her back last week so we (grandmother, myself, older younger brothers) had to keep the house going and look after my youngest brother. She started an argument over some cold soup, which was fine - she's bed-bound, what do you expect? Somehow that turned into a discussion about how I'm so lazy because I didn't do a couple of specific things she asked like vacuum the stairs or clean a toilet floor, despite everything else... again fine because she couldn't have seen what I had done. Went out to see my friend, came back and it turns out she's still livid. She's not the most stable woman on the planet... ill or no an ounce of criticism becomes a personal attack that makes Asher and Agathon look like rampant soulmates. The story of her borderline insanity is long, sad and unfortunate... no-one blames her even though she's made our lives hell the last few years, we just see it as inevitable and trying to keep the best karmas we can.
Anyway it turns out that she and her mother had had an argument as I left, nan said something like "three down, one to go", referring to two of my brothers that she had already driven to live at my dads, and myself who isn't exactly under her thumb. Mum flipped, got up and started pushing nan, threw her lunch all over her and down the stairs (hmmm some back operation), leaving my 82 year old grandmother to scrub on her hands and knees. She'd even kicked her out of the house but she didn't go because she was looking after my 7 year old brother, I was out in town by this stage.
Anyway I get back about three hours later to find nan shaking and I made her some tea and lunch and sent her home to chill out while I took care of Aaron. Half an hour later, mums boyfriend shows up. I'm no fan of him; let me put it like that. He's belligerent, aggressive, simple minded and very, very ugly. Also he's 14 years her senior
. My sympathy for him was helped by him brutally dumping my mother in November (they subsequently got back together just after xmas). I think he sees me as an obstacle to him moving in because I would never accept another father figure. Whatever my personal feels, he makes mum happy so we're all prepared to accept their relationship, but that can go too far and start interfering with the children which I think is crossing a line - one father is more than enough. He has had two failed marriages and two adult sons who aren't exactly the epitome of happiness and success... it's safe to assume that he should have learned from his mistakes by now. My dads girlfriend on the other hand is kept somewhat separate from us... we all get on very well with her but when things get bad she stays out of the way and it's dad that deals with us... the best solution would be something like that because that way we could all coexist. Not likely now as I'll say later;
Anyway he gets in and I said that mum's upstairs. He said he knew and that I was "****ing out of order" and various expletives and threats of violence to me in front of my 7 year old brother. I don't give a damn about how unfortunate his own upbringing was; as far as I'm concerned you do not act as though violence and aggression is ok when you're in front of an impressionable kid.
I was still with Aaron when Brian went upstairs to see mum, teaching the kid how to play poker. I get a call to come upstairs. I do, I get told that I've been "bullying" mum (apparently she uses that term to mean anything from disagreement to assertiveness over my own life), that I've been "taking the piss" (i.e., not doing specific chores never mind what else I've been doing) and the rest of it. I reply that we're just arguing over cold soup and try to walk away, then her boyfriend starts threatening violence again and getting aggressive, calls me everything under the sun and takes an aggressive posture. I assumed a similar posture and then smiled homosexually. I went into my room, called the police, and then went to my dads.
I've been staying at dads since (this was Friday), it turns out that the police arrived and they managed to make them sympathetic and they left (after all it was my word against theirs) but I called the police to show Aaron that Brian should be accountable for his aggression and that it wasn't acceptable behaviour. To see him submit to a higher authority I thought would be healthy for Aaron.
The next day, mum and Brian ran off with my 7 year old brother. My father is legally entitled to know his whereabouts but mum refused to tell him, apparently calling him a bully and a wife beater (the only incidents of violence in their 18 year marriage were him pushing her away when she came at him with knives and the like, she's done the same with me and I've had to grab her hand and push her away as well). We were all really concerned about him, called the police again who called mums mobile and turns out that she and Aaron were ok. We haven't had contact since, I don't know if they're home and I wont be happy until I see Aaron. I just think its really out of order to just take flight like that... it solves absolutely nothing and it causes more harm than good. My fear is that she wants to start a new family unit with herself, Brian and Aaron, cutting out his father and his brothers. Most of all I'm just scared for the two of them because though I know they'd never intentionally hurt Aaron (she threatened dad that she'd harm her kids once a couple years ago but that never repeated itself and she retracted that threat), she's mentally unstable and her back can't be too great with all this moving around... so there's the question of diminished responsibility.
So we've basically all been here, more or less helpless, discussing the causes of this and the ins and outs of mums upbringing that led her to behave like this... and how wonderful it would be to thrust the card of a shrink in her hand without getting our heads bitten off. In reality there's nothing we can do except try to persuade Dad to get broadband and keep Nan and the extended family in the loop about what's happening (fortunately for us both the extended family and dad himself have been wonderful through this).
I just don't know how this is going to play out in the long term except that for the moment my access to the internet is spurious at best.
/Pekka
Anyway it turns out that she and her mother had had an argument as I left, nan said something like "three down, one to go", referring to two of my brothers that she had already driven to live at my dads, and myself who isn't exactly under her thumb. Mum flipped, got up and started pushing nan, threw her lunch all over her and down the stairs (hmmm some back operation), leaving my 82 year old grandmother to scrub on her hands and knees. She'd even kicked her out of the house but she didn't go because she was looking after my 7 year old brother, I was out in town by this stage.
Anyway I get back about three hours later to find nan shaking and I made her some tea and lunch and sent her home to chill out while I took care of Aaron. Half an hour later, mums boyfriend shows up. I'm no fan of him; let me put it like that. He's belligerent, aggressive, simple minded and very, very ugly. Also he's 14 years her senior
. My sympathy for him was helped by him brutally dumping my mother in November (they subsequently got back together just after xmas). I think he sees me as an obstacle to him moving in because I would never accept another father figure. Whatever my personal feels, he makes mum happy so we're all prepared to accept their relationship, but that can go too far and start interfering with the children which I think is crossing a line - one father is more than enough. He has had two failed marriages and two adult sons who aren't exactly the epitome of happiness and success... it's safe to assume that he should have learned from his mistakes by now. My dads girlfriend on the other hand is kept somewhat separate from us... we all get on very well with her but when things get bad she stays out of the way and it's dad that deals with us... the best solution would be something like that because that way we could all coexist. Not likely now as I'll say later;Anyway he gets in and I said that mum's upstairs. He said he knew and that I was "****ing out of order" and various expletives and threats of violence to me in front of my 7 year old brother. I don't give a damn about how unfortunate his own upbringing was; as far as I'm concerned you do not act as though violence and aggression is ok when you're in front of an impressionable kid.
I was still with Aaron when Brian went upstairs to see mum, teaching the kid how to play poker. I get a call to come upstairs. I do, I get told that I've been "bullying" mum (apparently she uses that term to mean anything from disagreement to assertiveness over my own life), that I've been "taking the piss" (i.e., not doing specific chores never mind what else I've been doing) and the rest of it. I reply that we're just arguing over cold soup and try to walk away, then her boyfriend starts threatening violence again and getting aggressive, calls me everything under the sun and takes an aggressive posture. I assumed a similar posture and then smiled homosexually. I went into my room, called the police, and then went to my dads.
I've been staying at dads since (this was Friday), it turns out that the police arrived and they managed to make them sympathetic and they left (after all it was my word against theirs) but I called the police to show Aaron that Brian should be accountable for his aggression and that it wasn't acceptable behaviour. To see him submit to a higher authority I thought would be healthy for Aaron.
The next day, mum and Brian ran off with my 7 year old brother. My father is legally entitled to know his whereabouts but mum refused to tell him, apparently calling him a bully and a wife beater (the only incidents of violence in their 18 year marriage were him pushing her away when she came at him with knives and the like, she's done the same with me and I've had to grab her hand and push her away as well). We were all really concerned about him, called the police again who called mums mobile and turns out that she and Aaron were ok. We haven't had contact since, I don't know if they're home and I wont be happy until I see Aaron. I just think its really out of order to just take flight like that... it solves absolutely nothing and it causes more harm than good. My fear is that she wants to start a new family unit with herself, Brian and Aaron, cutting out his father and his brothers. Most of all I'm just scared for the two of them because though I know they'd never intentionally hurt Aaron (she threatened dad that she'd harm her kids once a couple years ago but that never repeated itself and she retracted that threat), she's mentally unstable and her back can't be too great with all this moving around... so there's the question of diminished responsibility.
So we've basically all been here, more or less helpless, discussing the causes of this and the ins and outs of mums upbringing that led her to behave like this... and how wonderful it would be to thrust the card of a shrink in her hand without getting our heads bitten off. In reality there's nothing we can do except try to persuade Dad to get broadband and keep Nan and the extended family in the loop about what's happening (fortunately for us both the extended family and dad himself have been wonderful through this).
I just don't know how this is going to play out in the long term except that for the moment my access to the internet is spurious at best.
/Pekka
. Sorry, I shouldn't joke. I know it sucks. I just thank god I'm grown up and don't have to go back being a kid. It sucks when you are young and you have to witness that stuff. I'm just so glad to be free of that stuff. Independence rules. 
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