So my grandfather is really sick and I haven't seen him in four years. Up until I turned eleven or twelve, our relationship was great. After that, not so much. Long, sorry.
My family is split into two, distinct groups. There is my mother's side, that includes my sister and myself and my mom, obviously. We are a fucked little unit with a long and violent history of abuse (perpetrated by mom). The other side is everyone else, basically. My grandfather is sort of a prolific manwhore. He was no less than 14 children, the youngest of whom is 6, many by different mothers, and all of these people make up my family. His "main bitch," a woman named Bea, is his second wife. The children she had with him are the relatives I'm closest too. Complicated. In any case, the two sides of my family have never really mixed. My mother resents my grandfather's second wife and Bea has never really accepted my mother as a real part of her family. This is partly because my grandfather's first wife, my mother's mother, is crazy. My grandfather's first marriage was crazy abusive, unfaithful, and codependent and ended when my grandmother literally tried to kill him. So Bea doesn't really like my mom.
Part of my mother's abuse, aside from the hitting and emotional stuff, was a sort of intense forced isolation. No visits from friends, no after school activities of any kind, no playing outside, and only select visits from a few members of my extended family: my Aunt Julia, my Uncle Oscar, and my grandfather. The days when they would visit are the few from my childhood that I remember with any sort of fondness. My mother seemed happier, certainly less angry when they were around. Distracted.
Around age twelve, my sister and I began to realize how horrible our home life was and we began reaching out for help. This meant, for me, opening up for the first time to close friends and teachers and to the extended family I was closest too: Oscar and my grandfather. For my sister, this meant burning down our house. My sister's tactic worked better than mine. While my mom isolating us had worked to some extent to hide the abuse, my sister burning down the house pretty much put it all up in everyone's faces. My uncle and my grandfather and social workers could dismiss the things I told them as tough love, but they couldn't dismiss the absolute rage it would take for a 14 year-old girl to burn every single one of her earthly possessions.
My sister was taken away and put in a group home for "troubled girls" which against all odds worked spectacularly for her. It was a safe and supportive place and now she's a kick ass lady. I, however, was left behind alone with my mom, and while the physical abuse stopped once I gained a few inches on her, the emotional stuff never did. It was pretty obvious that something wasn't right and my cries for help became more and more desperate and self-destructive. My uncle believed me but encouraged me to try to work it out with my mother. My grandfather stopped coming over pretty much as soon as I started growing tits. I've always suspected he doesn't really understand the "point" of women he can't, for whatever reason, sleep with.
The years of abuse finally ended with my mother selling our house and moving back to Honduras the year I turned 18, leaving me alone in Boston with no money and no place to go. After 18 years of shit and then a very abrupt abandonment, I was scared and depressed and crazy. Oscar convinced Bea to let me stay for the summer in the apartment she shared with my grandfather. When she came back to the country with him, two months later, she told me I had to go. My grandfather had no opinion on the matter. The only relative I had left to turn to was my crazy ass grandmother. The one who tried to kill him. I lived with her for a year. The worst year of my life. For that entire year I never heard from anyone in my family but Oscar and my sister. My mom wouldn't talk to me, Bea didn't give a fuck, and neither did my grandfather. It took me four years to recover from all of that. I'm 23 now with friends who care about me and an awesome boyfriend and an apartment that I can pay for and that no one can make me leave and a job and school and I feel like I'm getting to be whole again.
So now my grandfather's sick. Really sick. He's had two strokes and apparently isn't breathing on his own. My uncle has asked me to go see him and I'm scared. And angry. I asked my grandfather to help me when I couldn't help myself and he turned away from me. I don't know that he's asked to see me or if he's even capable of doing so. There's a part of me that feels that I have to go in case "this is it," that I owe him that. I feel like not wanting to see him makes me a bad person. I'm afraid that if I don't go my relationship with my uncle would be ruined. I'm afraid that I'll go and I'll be surrounded by all of these people who don't consider me actual family and someone will say some shit and I'll feel scared, and lonely, and depressed all over again. Or I'll just freak out and their suspicions about me and my side of the family will be confirmed. I think I have to go but I can't make myself do it. I don't know how to deal with this and I'm don't even know what the right thing to do is. Advice from people with similarly fucked families would be nice. Thanks, metafilter.
posted by Tha Race Card to human relations (25 comments total)
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posted by banannafish at 5:44 PM on November 23, 2009 [4 favorites]