I (21F) don’t want to visit my family on Thanksgiving because I don’t wanna see my grandmother (70sF) with dementia that would attack me when I was younger. (Long Post)

When I was about twelve, my grandmother on my dad’s side developed Alzheimer’s or dementia or both. I don’t remember her official diagnosis but it was something like that. I remember she was pretty normal up until a year before her diagnosis. She started doing this that were odd, but we never really questioned it. One day, she cornered my mom and screamed at her about some almost irrelevant. That’s when we knew something was up.

When I was around sixteen my grandparents decided to move closer to us. They lived about two hundred miles away and they were getting too old to deal with the snow and ice of their area at elevation. They bought some land near us and were trying to build a house. The county was taking so long with permits and it was going nowhere.

So, as winter settled, my grandparents decided it was a good idea to just crash with us. I fought it so much because whenever they showed up, I’d get kicked out of my room because I had a queen size bed and we had no guest bedroom. I had to sleep in my parents walk in closet in an air mattress. We thought they were going to be there for maybe a week and they’d go home. But oh no, they would not leave.

They stayed from late November to early March. This was about four years after my grandma’s diagnosis, and she was absolutely insane. I can’t describe with words how bad it was. She was very aggressive with us and would fight and yell and try and attack us. She would get up at odd hours and walk around and move things around. Her talking was words but it didn’t make sense anymore. She didn’t know how to take care of herself. She would constantly just leave and the cops would find her and take her back. It was horrible. My grandfather refused to get her care even though she really needed it.

She was so aggressive with me. I was genuinely scared of her because she would try and hit me and she was so gross because she never bathed. On Christmas when I was sixteen, she found me in my makeshift bedroom closet, and started screaming at me. She came in the room and tried to punch me. She grabbed me and tried to pull me down. I managed to shove her down outside of the room and she started screaming. I grabbed some of my essential stuff and just packed up and drove away. I drove for hours, just needing to calm down. Eventually I went to a friend’s house and got to spend my Christmas evening with someone sane.

My grandma attacking me has left me with severe anxiety and PTSD. It wasn’t just one instance where she came for me. She tried to attack me all the time.

I haven’t seen her for years, but somehow she’s still alive. I’m twenty-one now. My family wants me to come see them for Thanksgiving but I know she’ll be there and I don’t want to see her. I’ve finally calmed down and “recovered” emotionally from it, so I don’t want to see her. I want to see my family, though.

My family always says “oh it’s not that bad.” But they’ve never been in my shoes. She may be just an inconvenience to them, but she’s literally my worst nightmare. My extended family is renting out a huge house that all of us can stay in for Thanksgiving. I’m only agreeing to go if my fiancé (24M) and I can get one of the rooms to ourselves so we can have privacy and a place to cool down at if my grandma starts to get aggressive with me. My family doesn’t think we deserve a room to ourselves because we’re not married yet and we don’t have kids. I say screw that, I need my own room. They’d try and make me and my fiancé sleep in the upstairs living room, but I know my grandma would attack me in my sleep.

I’m only agreeing to go if my fiancé will come, too. I know he’ll protect me from her because I remember being so scared I couldn’t defend myself. I’ve had anxiety problems and he’s helped me cope with it, so I really need him to be with me. I remember hearing her walk around my house, screaming and talking and trying to get into different rooms at night. It was terrifying.

I’m so scared and I really hope I’ll be able to see my family without it being ruined by her. I need help as to what to do.

TL:DR - I don’t want to see my family on Thanksgiving because I’ll have to see my grandma that used to attack and torment me.

Submitted November 11, 2019 at 02:47PM by certaingirls https://ift.tt/2O7iptI