Its been a tough week with regards to my relationship with Susan. I thought we were making headway, but it always seems like one step forward and two steps back. After a long talk on Monday I thought I had communicated to her that fixing our relationship had to be a two way street . . . she/Mike had to give a little and take a little and Adam and I had to do the same. But maybe I was wrong in my thinking. Maybe it is all my fault.
Today she called and said that she was thinking that Adam doesn't really have any issues with her, its just the fact that he knows that I do and he loves me so much that he's siding with me. And I guess ultimately picking me over her, which is something I never intended to do. I find myself wondering if that is true . . . is it really me that's causing all this drama?
She brought up holidays ~ a new topic of discussion. She was really hurt because we had my parents over for Mother's Day and didn't invite them over, too or didn't bother to go over there after Mike planned a special dinner for her. I had no idea that Mike was planning anything special for Mother's Day for her or I might have tried to work something out. But as it stood, my parents came up to celebrate my birthday because it was the day before and my first Mother's Day. It was really important to my mom to be able to celebrate that with me, so it was more about me than about her. But I don't think Susan realizes that ~ how could she, I never talked to her about it, but there's another example of assumptions making things complicated. She said how it made her sad that we never do anything with them on Christmas Eve; we always go to my cousins'. Which isn't true because last year we spent the evening with my family. Does that mean that she wants us to split our time on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day? Or does she want to get us all Christmas Day and part of Christmas Eve, too? I've given up celebrating with my family on Thanksgiving and Easter both so that we could celebrate with Adam's family. We've stopped doing our memorial day and labor day traditions because Adam's family has BBQ/picnics on those days. So basically, the only thing my family "gets" is Christmas Eve. Sure, I go to church with my parents on Easter morning, but its not the same. I don't remember the last time I got to have a traditional holiday (other than Christmas Eve) with my parents ON the actual holiday.
Its really starting to bother me how she's starting to pull my parents into our "confrontations" and she's bordering on putting them and their lifestyle down. My mom has heard me say plenty of nasty things about Susan and could easily have agreed with me and put her down, too, but she's always encouraging me to give her a chance and to give her the benefit of the doubt, so why can't Susan do the same thing. Both sets of parents are never going to be equal. Both are loved, but differently . . . there's no way that they could ever be the same. Its like the love you have for children. You love each child, but in a different way because of their strengths and weaknesses. They are individuals, so you love them uniquely.
I spent a good part of my session with Jackie today talking about my struggles with my relationship with Susan. She pointed out how difficult it is to forgive someone who has hurt someone that you love as much as I love Adam. I don't ever want to see him hurt and I don't want him to ever have felt pain and because in my eyes his parents have caused pain, I'm holding that against them. And I'm expecting them to do it again, so I put up a wall and I look for the negative spin on everything they do to be prepared. I'm afraid of Adam being hurt, me being hurt, and Alyssa being hurt. I need to forgive and move on and try to forget. Jackie said that it may take years. I wish I could just wipe my memory clean. I wish I could put all the bad and hurtful things I feel in a box and throw it off a bridge to be washed away and never seen again. I don't want to feel this way anymore. But now I've started moving from having anger/dislike towards Susan to having anger/dislike towards myself because maybe it is all my fault. Maybe the root of our problem is that I have a bad attitude and that I'm making Adam chose between me and his mother. Now I have a whole new set of "bad" feelings to sort through ~ now there're centered on me instead of her.
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