Wednesday I'll turn 34. I guess that officially makes me mid-30's or one year from it.As if that weren't bad enough, this is the first year that I won't have anyone to celebrate it with. In the past, whether I was here, in college, or in law school, my mother would always visit me on my birthday or on the weekend before or after it. We'd go out to eat, usually for a steak dinner. Afterward she would buy me a cake and give me a present. The last few years, my nephew would usually come with her, and we'd spend the weekend playing video games or going to the zoo or the aquarium.
In contrast, this year if I want a cake, I'll have to buy it myself. If I want a steak, I'll have to buy and cook it myself. As for gifts, I guess I won't have to buy them per se. My sister had me text her my mailing address last night so I assume that means I'm getting something from her and His Majesty, even if it's just a card, but I'm not going to hold my breath on getting anything from anyone else. My father has a long history of forgetting my birthday, even though it's three days before his own and four days before Valentine's Day. He always has some excuse for why he does so--he's bad with dates, he got mine confused with someone else's, his mother isn't here to tell him the correct date, and so and so forth--but in my opinion there really isn't a valid excuse for forgetting your child's birthday. You're just a bad parent.
Then there's my grandmother. It's not even Wednesday yet, and she has already managed to ruin the day for me. She called a few hours ago to ask me if I wanted her to take me out to eat for my birthday. She was using that syrupy sweet, fake voice that she uses when she's in one of her up moods, the ones that sends me into sugar shock and makes me want to hurl my last three meals all over the phone. Of course, the invitation came with a caveat or two. Invitations from my grandmother always do. First, she couldn't actually take me out on my birthday. The only day she and her cousin Leila, who she has been staying with Atlanta, could take me is tomorrow. Second, I had to come to them. They couldn't come to me.
In other words, once again the world has to revolve around my grandmother. Birthdays? Nah, they're never about the person who's celebrating another year on the planet. No, they're about her. Just ask me about the time she pitched a fit because no one wanted to leave Chandler's second birthday party to take her to the salon to get her roots done or how she pitched an equally big fit during his first birthday because the child dared to stick his fingers in the icing. Deaths? Nope. Once again they're about her, too. That's why she pitched yet another fit when Her Highness and I refused to reschedule Mama's viewing to fit around her Sunday school class's dinner. Hospitalizations? Yep, they're all about her, too, even when she's not the patient. Hell, I spent six weeks in the hospital in high school with antibiotic-associated colitis. Do you think those six weeks were about me or whether I almost died? Hell, no. They were about poor, pitiful Chain-Smoking Granny and the "pain" she must have been going through, or so said everyone who came to my hospital room.
Sense a pattern here?
I do. It is why I'm sitting here, a few days shy of my 34th birthday, furious as all get out. In my opinion, since it is my birthday or will be, I should be the one who is catered to and not the one who does the catering. However, in my grandmother's opinion, the only person who can ever be catered to is her. She is the sun, and everyone else in the family, if the not the world, is a planet. In her mind, she's essentially doing me a favor by asking me to cater to her needs and her time schedule since she's such a great person to be around. She's even better than Oprah and Mother Teresa. It's a gift just to be in her presence.
That's why she expects me to shell out $40 or so on gas to fill up my tank and drive in what will most likely be rush hour traffic tomorrow, given her propensity to sleep until 3 p.m. every day, to the other side of Atlanta, just so she can spend $10 tops on me for dinner, assuming she pays at all. You see, my grandmother has this tendency to offer to take someone out for dinner and then conveniently forget her debit or credit card when it comes time to pay the bill. She did that to my mother more times than I can count. I'll be damned if she's doing it to me, which is what I told her on the phone.
My grandmother, in turn, called both me and my dead mother a liar. That never happened. She has never intentionally left forgotten her debit or credit card. She has never forced someone else to the pay the bill. She has never done anything wrong in her entire life.
Excuse my language, but bull freakin' shit.
(Sorry, it's horse feces. I couldn't find a picture of the bull variety.)Then she started in on how my mother took all her money so if she did stick her with the bill, there was a reason. That's when I hung up on her. My mother did not--I repeat did not--take her money. That would be the one-legged con artist half my grandmother's age who my grandmother had living with her and sharing her bed a few years ago. He was the one who convinced her to buy him houses, clothes, jewelry, and a new car. He was the one who took out credit cards in her name without her permission or knowledge. He was the one who became a cosigner on all of her accounts. He was the one shuffling money around from one account to another to cover his tracks, and he was the one who cleaned out my great-grandmother's bank account and pill drawer five minutes after she supposedly died of natural causes. Him, not my mother.
Yes, my mother may have had to borrow money a couple of times, but how about all the money my grandmother "borrowed" from her? That is, how many times did she ask my mother to pick her up some groceries and never pay her back? Uh, every night. His Majesty and I both can attest to that fact, since Chandler was usually in the car when it happened and my mother usually called me on the way the store to rant about it. How many times did she ask my mom to buy her cigarettes or a $7 salad from Zaxby's and never pay her back? Again almost every single night. It's what she's doing to my sister now. How many times did she reimburse my mother for the gas it took to go all of those places, in a SUV nonetheless, or for all the times my mother had to take off of work to run her errands, pay her bills, or take her to the beauty shop or doctor? I don't know. How many times has hell frozen over this last year?
I would love to get an accountant in there and go through her and my mom's respective checkbooks. I would love for him or her to see who owed whom money. I guarantee you that it would be my grandmother owing my mother and not the other way around. Of course, my grandmother would just say the accountant was lying and even figure out a way to blame the accountant for her money woes, the way she did the bank when the con artist was stealing her money.
So anyway, to make this vent a little shorter, I'm not going to hold my breath on getting a thing from my grandmother either this year. I'd rather starve than eat dinner with her or call her back. Meanwhile, those birdhouses that I'm painting for her birthday and the trays I'm still working on from last year's birthday may very well go up on eBay before they make it into her mailbox. I'm not wasting another penny on her to mail them.
I'm just sick of this crap. I'm sick of every birthday and every holiday having to be a stressful event. I'm tired of the world always revolving around my family and never around me. I'm sick of never being able to look forward to something. Instead, all I can ever do is look forward to that something being over. I'm sick of the big egos, the mood swings, and the overall dysfunction. I want out.
That's right. I want out of my family. If someone can't give me a divorce from my family or a new identity for my birthday, then I'm just going to stay 33 for another year. I refuse to be mid-30's and related to them.
