I [24] apologize for the long post but I didn’t know where to start because I am really confused...
So my mother [51] and I didn’t have a good relationship growing up. She thought my father [48] favored me over my sister, so she was pretty hard on my to try to “compensate.” She also had severe depression and weighed over 500lbs until I was in 9th grade. So she wasn’t a typical mom... we had to do a lot for her and she was unstable and demanding. But she tried as well she could with her depression and obesity being untreated. She eventually did get treatment for her depression, and had gastric bypass for her weight. So she became more stable, but you know mental illness never goes away so it’s always been a battle. She gets terrible anxiety attacks. We fought constantly. When I went to college our relationship improved. We got to the point where I thought of us as friends.
Fast forward to the present. My sister [26] is married to a schlub... who is also an unkempt hoarder. She had a baby this year and he is 6months old. Her husband [30] works nights and my sister is a teacher and works days so they barely see each other, he barely sees the baby, and they’re just in a bad situation. My sister got a lot of my mother’s issues with mental illness and weight. She struggles with depression, anxiety, insecurity, immaturity, and for some reason she lies constantly. Tries to please whoever she is talking to. With her crap marriage she is at my parents constantly. Every night after work, until about 9 and she will go home to see her husband for maybe 30mins. My mother and my sister don’t get along super well, and being together constantly doesn’t help. They feed off of each other’s anxiety. My mom frequently texts me either that she wishes my sister wouldn’t come over so much, or how much she hates my sisters husband and how terrible her situation is.
The terrible situation got worse within the past two months. My sister has bed bugs. Which is BAD. For some reason, her and her husband only shower like max every 3 days, so hygiene is a struggle as they are not small people. They have had a flea infestation for probably two years now (1 decrepit old dog). They do not clean their house or put things away. They just throw stuff or leave it out. Ex. They have a room they call the “dressing room” which is an empty bedroom they just throw all their clothes in. Clean, dirty, doesn’t matter the room is wall to wall clothes. That’s where she found the bugs. Eventually looked in the bed and found 20 bugs when they lifted the covers.
I will be frank- I can’t do bugs. I am a nurse and I will go head first into any wound that looked at, stick any kind of tube in whatever hole it needs to go in, clean up c-diff, MRSA... whatever, anything but bugs. Bed bugs, lice, maggots, flies drive me up the wall. We have had so many scares where I work.
My mom found out about my sister’s bedbugs when she saw bites on her. My dad told my mom not to tell me because he thought I’d make a big deal out of it. Well my mom tells me everything, so she told me. I suggested a bug guy, and my mom told my sister. My sister didn’t call for a month because she wanted to “save up” for the inspection. The inspection is free and she knew that. So I talked to my mom and she just called and scheduled it. My sister tried to cancel it because she hadn’t even talked to her husband about the bug guy and he thought they didn’t need to do anything about it. He had be treating the infestation with home remedies.......... with CINNAMON. We finally got the bug guy in and sure enough they need at least three months of treatment. Another month passed. My sister wouldn’t answer the phone when he bug guy called. All this time, my parents are letting my sister in their house with all her bags. They even let her sleep in their bed. Needless to say, I’m mortified and haven’t seen my sister in a good while. It would be one thing if they were battling the infestation. But they are actively choosing not to do a damn thing about it. And I’m pretty irritated that my sister is subjecting my nephew to that... he’s just a baby. He’s covered in bites. They finally scheduled the treatment after another couple weeks. And then they canceled it, because before the treatment could happen they had to clean the house. And despite having two weeks to do so, they didn’t. The treatment is now scheduled for Tuesday. As of Friday, they hadn’t started cleaning.
So it’s fall. My family has been trying to plan the holidays. I usually host Thanksgiving. I told my mom I can’t do it this year, because I do not feel comfortable bringing my sister into my home. She was mad at me. She told me I was being hypersensitive and overreacting and being irrational. She said that bedbugs do not travel on people and that my sister had gotten them because the bugs had been living in the walls of the house they bought.... a year and a half ago... at which point in time their pest inspection came back negative. I told my mom that is absolutely not how this works and she said my sisters husband googled it and that’s what it told him. Absolute BS. They didn’t listen to anything I was telling them.
Well my parents decided to host, and my grandparents were going to come down. But my parents and sister haven’t told anyone about the bugs. They said it’s no ones business. I disagree. I think it is everyone’s business they come in contact with. They take my nephew to daycare, my parents and sister are all teachers, they could be taking these into schools. I just couldn’t let my grandparents [70’s] come without being able to make an informed decision. They’re retired. They can’t afford to treat bed bugs. So I called my gram today and talked to her. She of course doesn’t want to go to my parents or sisters for Thanksgiving. Which I think is the right decision. But she told me she was going to talk to my dad.
Tonight, my mom texted me. She said “Hey thanks for perpetuating a freakish and irrational reaction to your sisters situation. Grandma is on the phone with dad right now. If I find out you told (my husbands family) about this, it will take a lot for me to forget about it.” I told her that I did tell my MIL. And she said “well there goes me thinking I can trust you. Thanks. You know what is going on? This is a situation that you cannot control which bugs the snot of you. And since you can’t control it, you’ve made it about you, and took control of it in a different way. I’ve gone from being disappointed in you to literally being ashamed of you. But hey, you’ve chosen the group that will agree with you and pretend you’re acting rationally, when hearing the truth is much much harder. I’m done.”
So I found out some things my mother thought about me that I never knew before tonight... and that talking to my grandma about something that is bothering me is worthy of being disowned by my family. I honestly have no idea what to do. I knew they wouldn’t be happy that I talked to my grandma or that I sought support from my in-laws because my family was treating me like a crazy person. But I didn’t expect this. All I’ve done is try to get them to do something to treat the problem.
What the hell, you know? I don’t know what to do. I feel blindsided. I just don’t understand. My mother is ashamed of me, but my sister who is laying my nephew down in bedbugs is doing the right thing? Letting this go on for three months without even trying to do anything?
Did I do something terrible worthy of excommunication from my family holidays? How could I have handled this differently? Where do I go from here?
TL;DR! Warned Grandma that sister’s house is infested by bedbugs after they invited her there for holidays. Mother thinks I am crazy and is ashamed of me and doesn’t want anything to do with me now. Don’t understand. Am crazy?
Submitted October 28, 2018 at 09:32PM by meagerchip https://ift.tt/2COktTH
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