So far, I have survived the pandemic. I've done the exercising, started mindfulness, drank too much alcohol at times (getting that back under control) and am struggling to reconcile my relationship with spouses family of origin in a soon-to-be post pandemic existence.
The short version is that I don't want to deal with them in any way, shape or form in my post pandemic existence.
I written A LOT about trying to navigate a relationship with them over the past two decades. And things went from stressful to "OK, I can live with this" for a pretty good period of time. I set and enforced some personal boundaries, closed my ears to the criticism and lived my life. I made a point of never denying them reasonable access to their grandchild. In all honesty, things were actually pretty good once I stopped caring about what they thought about me and stopped trying to please them.
Then one of J's niblings got married, there were some seriously bad behavior on the part of J's parents surrounding the nuptials. I made some mental notes under the heading "things to keep an eye on in relation to my own kid" and moved on.
Then the pandemic happened.
And the bullshit got bad. Really bad. Bad enough that packing up and moving far, far away feels like a viable option.
Now things are opening up and I'm having anxiety attacks over dealing with socializing with them. Bad enough that J gently suggest that I see a therapist. And he is right,
But I'm also going to write about it again, publicly because I'm tired of playing nice.
