#saintscully venting

[therealsaintscully]

I'm 40 y/o and only recently have I caught on to the fact that my mom makes so many excuses for extended family members being assholes. And it's so fucking annoying that I've been doing that all my life, too, cowering from conflict and not being allowed to even feel angry about the way other people treat me.

I have a cousin who was my best friend growing up, all the way to our mid 20s, until she met her wife. Her wife separated her from everyone who was important in my cousin's life, including me. We've barely been in touch for years, and at some point I stopped trying because every time we made plans to meet, her wife had some excuse about why she shouldn't leave to meet me (and it's a pattern of control that's been going on for years, with multiple other people). My mom just texted me to tell my cousin's wife just had a baby. My cousin never even told me her wife was pregnant, but she was in touch with me several times over the past six months because she's looking for a job and I'm well connected - I've always helped her with that kind of thing. I helped this time, too, referring her to several positions through my professional connections. But she couldn't say "oh, and by the way, X is pregnant?" Is that not a big enough deal to tell a cousin who used to be your best friend growing up? So now the wife had the baby. I wrote back to my mom that that's nice, but it would have been nice to be told about it personally and not being told by a third party. And my mom was excusing her - aren't you on the family group chat? No, I'm not, and neither is my mom. We both left the group chat together years ago. So I wrote back to my mom: "I don't have to be on the group chat to be contacted. She know perfectly well how to find me when she needs something." Mom never wrote back after that and I'm mostly angry at her, for raising me to grovel instead of standing up for myself and know what to do in this kind of situation. I've actually come to terms with no longer being in my cousin's life, although that's her loss as much as it is mine, but I'm so fucking angry at my mom for making excuses and for years making me sound like I'm not trying hard enough. It's pathetic.