My mother

I can't believe I haven't written all of this down.

I am not speaking to my mother.  Well, she's not speaking to me, I guess.  I don't know.  I don't understand her at all.  Well, I guess that's not true.  I understand her better than most people do honestly.  I think I see more than my dad if you wanna get real.

The very first weekend that Emily had been in the first hospital and she was out on outpatient stuff for the weekend, they kept Josh for me while we went to visit friends out of town.  We were planning to leave on Friday evening after the kids got out of school, but since David was off, and Emily was going to be home for the weekend, we decided to stay home that Friday night and just leave Saturday morning.  I didn't feel comfortable taking both Emily and Joshua with me.  I needed to be able to have a place for both of them.  I certainly couldn't leave Emily anywhere, so Mom and Dad said Josh could spend the night with them.  The next day was going to be Mother's Day.

On Saturday morning, I took him over and he was so very excited.  Emily and Jake stayed in the car.  I walked in with Josh and got him settled.  On my way out, Mom was coming back from the van, having talked with Jacob.  He had gotten out to talk to her and hadn't gotten back in yet.  I asked her if she had spoken to Emily and she started telling me that Emily was "doing stupid" and she didn't talk to "stupid".  I got upset and told her that she didn't need to be cruel about it and she said she wasn't going to talk to her at all.  I was very, very upset.  If Joshua hadn't been so very excited about staying and I would have crushed him, I would have gone back in and pulled him out with me.  I probably should have anyway, but didn't see a way to do it without breaking his heart.

The next morning, we headed back to Mom's pretty early to get Josh.  Jacob was reading a book and ready to go home.  Emily was sleeping.  I went in to get Joshua alone.  He of course, didn't want to leave, but I got his stuff and him headed out to the car.  Mom asked where the other two kids were and why I didn't bring them in.  What?  That just didn't make sense.  I told her I wouldn't bring Emily in her house with the way she was treating her.  It wasn't an option.  She started asking me to just "listen to her for a minute".  I told her no, I wouldn't.  I didn't want to hear anything out of her mouth except an apology.  I was not going to listen to her excuse her behavior with some explanation.  I've done that so many times and let things go.  My Dad was telling me that I was making a mistake, overreacting and being disrespectful to her.  I told him that no, I wasn't making a mistake or overreacting and I was not being disrespectful, but drawing a boundary line that I would not make the mistake of making a fuzzy line again.  I should have done it years ago and didn't.

We left.  I didn't talk to them again until a couple of days before my graduation.  I called Dad to see if they were still coming and he said he had planned to call me that day.  They came and she didn't even speak to me.  She acknowledged me and acknowledged Emily, but not with speaking to us.  After the graduation was over, Karleigh was asking to go out to lunch.  Mom said no, she didn't feel well and was going home.  She went outside without another word and Dad huffed and followed.  A while later, Dad came back in and asked me if he could take us to lunch.  I asked if he was sure and he said he was.  We went to lunch, but she didn't speak to me at all.

It was that night that Emily cut again and ended up back at the Center.

I have seen them on two more occasions.  The first was Allison's graduation.  She didn't speak to me.  The second was her house for my grandparents' 60th anniversary dinner.  I couldn't exactly miss that, and had to take Emily with me, but we had Connie and Rosie with us.  It wasn't too bad since the whole entire family, including Granny Franny was there.  She didn't speak to me again.

I sent her a Happy Birthday text on her birthday and she said thank you.

That's been about it.  It's sad, but I'm not upset or angry anymore at all.  Just sad.  I feel so isolated sometimes and I know that has some to do with it.  I can't talk about anything to them without being criticized.  I mentioned to Dad that we were going to wait to do our 3rd year of school and he was really negative and said we wouldn't go if we didn't go now.  How is he supposed to know what the Lord has planned for us?  It's all just sad.  So sad.