impending doom

most people this week are excited about thanksgiving. they're either going to visit their families or their families are coming to visit them.

i am anxious--characterized by extreme uneasiness of mind or brooding fear about some contingency. my mother has invited her sisters. she is the oldest of five kids. her three sisters and parts of their families will be here this week.

don't get me wrong, i like my aunts and most of my uncles. i don't interact with them much, but i do like them. i don't, however, like when my mom has the brood together because she tries to act like she's this wonderful mother/grandmother that we all know she's not.

my brother thinks that once the aunts get down here and see what a wreck things are at my folks' house they're going to start harping on us (me and him) that we should be taking better care of our parents. no doubt my sister will be there 24/7 and they'll talk about how wonderful she is, despite the fact that she's the fucked up one of the three of us.

frankly i'll be surprised if anything is said directly to my bro or i about this. there might be some remarks about how helpful our sister is (this has happened before) however. at this point i don't really know what i'd say or if i'd retaliate.

recently when my sister called to tell us mom was having another of her episodes she mentioned that part of it was because of my dad's drinking. really? because it's not like he just started drinking. my parents are 59, have been married 40 years and he's been drinking at least for 34 that i remember. i don't mean to sound callus, but if his drinking didn't bother her enough when she had three kids at home living with it then suck it up. if it wasn't important to get out of that environment when you had kids at home and were totally aware of what it was doing to them then i have no sympathy for her not liking his drinking now.

i'm not one of those people that say, oh, the fuck ups i've done in life are because of how i grew up, but i do think that when it comes to drinking my siblings and i are more susceptible to it. there have been times in my life that i've had issues w/ alcohol. not that i drank every day, but when i do drink i don't know when to stop. i think i'm getting better about it though. there also have been times in my life when the hubs' drinking bothered me. like i didn't want him to come home and have a beer or a drink, i thought he'd slip down the slope my dad did. the hubs doesn't drink much at all really (usually just when we have a party) and occasionally he'll drink beer, like MAYBE once every other month? if that? i think it would totally freak me out if he came home and drank every day. to this day the smell of jim beam makes me ill (my dad's drink). wow--don't know why i got off on the alcohol tangent.