It's funny...

I've spent the better part of a decade fighting my family, fighting my mother.. fighting my genes.

I moved 7 hours away to ensure that my relationship with my family could remain stable in my older years.

I had finally made peace with how I was treated when I was younger by my Mother... how my Father was completely absent in my life, and how my Brother was treated as the golden child who could do no wrong.

Life was good.

A month ago I learned that no matter what you do to care for someone, they're just going to bite you in the ass... and even worse, blame the wrong person.

My Mother decided that it would be nice to get the family together for a Long weekend getaway, the getaway being my house... There were at least 15 people over at my house for the weekend. None of them spoke english really well, so my husband was an outsider in his own house, which is pretty fucking disrespectful if you ask me. They were like a hurricane, destroying things in their wake.. even the children would refuse to play outside.. and would rather have played video games (.. seriously, c'mon!)

It was after a game of family bingo that the "adult" members of my "family" decided that they wanted to go to the casino.. they had been talking about it since the moment they arrived in my house... and likely all the way over here.. at one point, my Blackberry Playbook was hijacked to show a video of a slot machine on a winning sequence. I don't mind if people go and have a good time, but when the only thing your fixated on is the casino.. you've got some fucking issues.

It was almost midnight, and the family was planning on leaving early in the morning to get a jump on their long drive back home. It had been nearly 20 minutes after the decision to go to the casino had been made, and yet nobody had made the move to go. I decided to express concern to my mother that they would likely be very late, and I was worried that their drive home would be impeded by them being tired from the night before.

... I was only looking out for her.

I got reamed out, told that I was being disrespectful all day to my "family"... that she just wanted to show them a "good time" she upset me to the point where I was in tears. She ran out of the room that we were talking in, and told the family that she was embarrassed.. at which point I decided to take myself out of the situation and go to my own bedroom.

I had been placed in an uncomfortable position, and told that my care for my family was not needed nor wanted. After I had gathered myself together, my entire "family" had packed up and walked out of my house without a single "thank you for busting your ass to clean your house so we can fuck it up" from any one of them.

The only person from my "family" to come speak to me after the incident was my brother. Nobody else gave a fuck.

It's been almost a month since I've spoken to any blood relatives... I have to admit, it has been peaceful to be spared from the constant drama that my family has brought to my life.

I have come to terms with the fact that my so-called 'family' doesn't really care about me, nor my life or what I've done with it.. that no matter how many things I do 'right' and how many goals I reach, awards I win.. achievements I accomplish... I don't matter. My brother can sail along through life being mediocre, just barely surviving.. and failing out of school, having a kid at a young age.. and yet, he... is the golden child.

They'll help him, they'll talk to him like a real person, they'll worry about him, they will make the effort to visit him and call him.

In the 3 months that my brother has lived here (in the same city as me).. my family has visited more than in the 2 years I have lived here alone.

I've lived my life in fear of "fucking it up".. failing out of school, getting a shitty job, getting knocked up at a young age... to the point where I don't want to have kids at all. The MOMENT, that my mother was aware of my relationship, I was required to be on birth control to be even 50 feet near my boyfriend.

I jumped through the hoops that they set out for me, hoping... no, seeking approval from them. A smile, a nod.. a "you did good, I'm so proud of you."

In my last few years of doing a fuck-ton of good stuff that I thought I could never do ( Scuba diving in Hawaii, Roller Derby, Home Ownership, paying off THEIR debt - I'll get to that one, Buying a new car, having a pretty good job...) not a single "hey, you did great" passed through the mouths of any one of the people I seem to be related to.

What really, really fucks with me... and I've been thinking about this for a week now.. is last week, I was stranded on the side of a 2 lane highway, I could've easily gotten hit by a large vehicle and gotten hurt... I didn't hear fuck all from this so-called family.

The ironic thing is, I was raised with a strong belief in the togetherness of my family (yeah, go figure reading the past 10 years of this diary)... I had reached the point in my life, where I started to really agree with that belief...

That weekend, I felt like I wasn't family... I felt like I was just this person who had a house that everyone could sleep in for free, I was the hotel, and the tour guide... and nobody could be bothered to say thanks for everything.

Well, my mom did.. but she did it very passive aggressively over facebook.

I have spent my life trying to help my family out.. even though I'm the child who won't outright hand out money. I went into $10,000 in debt helping out my family. I naively took out a line of credit to help pay my brother's tuition.. and it spread from tuition, to tools, to vehicle maintenance, to rims.. to all sorts of things that didn't seem to benefit me. It came to the point where they were just showing up to my place of work and asking me for my debit card.

I fucking busted my ass to pay off that debt... and through it all, I was still treated like a child... for the longest time, I could not fly to BC to visit Dave... I couldn't be out past a certain hour.. or out with certain people... My mother would ask me if I could buy dinner.. to which I would say "I don't have any money" (and at that point, I really fucking didn't.).. and she would argue with me that my brother had bought them dinner before.

At this point, if I mention the $10,000 I paid off for them, or the $3,000 that Dave has paid off for my brother.. I get the "OMG, I'm going to get a part time job and pay you back" speech.. like really? I don't give a fuck if you NEVER pay me back (which they never will), I just want a thank you and a "hey, we're sorry we're stupid dicks about everything."

If you looked at my life like a movie, it would be like night and day the way my brother and I were raised. We may have lived under the same roof, and had the same humans as parents.. but his growing experience is completely different from mine.. and we may have been friends before.. but I hardly know my brother at all these days. I know that he's my brother, and he likes cars and airplanes.. and that's it.

His birthday is coming up, and I'm just copping out and getting him a gift card. I have no idea what he likes, or what food he likes or what kind of person he is...

His parents were different than my parents.

His parents let him stay out until late at night when nobody is awake, his parents let him borrow the car at all hours of the day, no matter if it inconvenienced them or not, his parents supported him and gave him money and paid for all his expenses... his parents were proud of everything he did, no matter how small. His parents let him have an active relationship at the young age of 13. His parents let him live his life without a job.

It's funny...

... at this point. I'm not worried about the fact that they're not talking to me. I was even told by my father-in-law that I had made the right choice, because Dave and Toby are the family that I chose... and that I belong with them.

and I do, and right now, where I am. I'm happy.

Even without my "family"

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