Hello, dear readers…

I know, I’ve been neglecting you and I’m sorry… And no, it’s not because Animal Crossing just had an update and I’ve been spending every moment of free time playing it… Okay, that has been an issue, but it’s been my escape for the past month. My much needed escape…

There was an incident over the holidays that made me drop off the face of the planet…

I’ve been debating whether or not I wanted to discuss it, especially since I don’t want to divulge any of the personal content of it and it kind of doesn’t make sense without it. But… almost two months later and I’m still getting a lot of backlash concerning how I decided to handle the situation and why I made said decision.

So here I am, writing a blog entry, hoping that you, dear readers, will give me your take on this no matter what it is. I need unbiased opinions…

So before I begin, I need to give some background first…

This all seemed to start after Christmas 2024. It was a bad year for me, I couldn’t really afford to get much for anyone and I’d talked to my sister about not getting anything for my nieces and their respective others. I’d been buying for my nieces forever, going out of my way to get them stuff I knew they really wanted (and was hard to find) or stuff they’d really liked. Even now that they’re in their 30s, I’d still been buying for them and the boyfriends (some of whom never made it to the following year). They never got me anything, but I still did this because it’s what you do. It’s about giving, not receiving, right? Do I think they had started feeling entitled? Oh yeah… Especially because my sister drops a metric fuck ton of money on them every year, my mom spends a good amount on them and the boyfriends… And I had been spending money I could ill afford for too many years. Well… 2024 wasn’t a good year and I was hard put to buy anything for anyone. So I talked to my sister about omitting my nieces and their boyfriends from my Christmas shopping list for that reason. I was worried that might upset them (I don’t know why I cared as they never bought me anything) but I spoke with my sister and she said don’t worry, they wouldn’t care and it was fine. I asked her to explain things to them as I don’t go over to her house for the holidays and she said she would. What a relief! I could get through the holidays without putting myself in a worse position than I was already in! I don’t know why I worried… They’re not children anymore. But I try to please everyone, so…

Yes, I’m using a lot of lo-fi wallpapers I saved… I need the soothing images to write about this…

Anyway… After that Christmas, I noticed my youngest niece was snubbing me more than she had been prior to that particular holiday. I had no idea why, but I left it go. Or I did until my oldest niece got married… The youngest, I’ll call her Monica, snubbed me so badly at the reception when I said hello and asked how she’d been. She treated me like I was the fucking plague and embarrassed me in front of all those people with no explanation as to why. I had no idea what I’d ever done to her to make her treat me that way. After that, I was putting a bit more thought into exactly what the fuck her problem could possibly be. I was coming up empty.

Fast forward to Christmas (two months after the wedding). My mother took it upon herself to ask Monica why she was treating me the way she was. At first, she lied to me and said she had no idea why Monica was treating me this way before she told me she did know and then proceeded to tell me what had brought my niece to this conclusion that it was okay to treat me like I was a piece of shit that she stepped in that ruined an expensive pair of shoes.

Now… I can’t get into specifics. It’s not that I don’t want to tell the entire story. It’s just that it will reveal personal things about my life that I don’t wish to divulge. I like the fact that you don’t know what my relationship status is, what I do for a living, whether or not I have a family of my own, things like that. It keeps me neutral, I guess, for lack of a better term.

Bear with me, this is a bit to explain and I may jump around a bit…

The one thing I can tell you (that won’t divulge anything) is that Monica said she didn’t like that I yelled at my mother… Neither of us had any clue what she was talking about. The closest thing we could think of was that time when I didn’t speak to my mother for months. I’d asked her for a ride to an important appointment and she left me in the lurch at the last minute because her Sponge boyfriend found out and told her she couldn’t take me. I thought I was justified in not speaking to her… But if that’s the time Monica is referring to… Why does she care?! It was over 20 years ago! She was just a child! And it was none of her business, just as it was none of her business when my sister and I got into a fight and Monica posted nasty shit on my Facebook, airing out my personal issues against my wishes. I’m a very private person and I don’t post much personal stuff, especially conflicts. Monica was in high school then. I told her she needed to stay out of adult matters and not air other people’s dirty laundry. See the pattern here…? I didn’t until I thought back to that incident and realized that Monica had a bad habit of poking her nose in where it didn’t belong and deciding I was always the bad guy. Forget that I babysat even when it was really inconvenient for me to do so (like when I just got off an 11-7 shift and babysat instead of sleeping), that I would take them places and do fun things with them or that I’d literally go way out of the way to get them the difficult to find gifts they wanted every single Christmas, getting up and out of the house at some ungodly hour of the AM every fucking Black Friday and running to dozens of stores…

Yup… This is me, the piece of shit bad guy…

The rest is about things that would divulge too much about my personal life… I can say this much: Monica accused me of doing things that never did. And one of the false claims she’s making is something that could ruin my reputation and damage my life in ways I might never recover from. My mother and sister know none of this is true, but do you think either of them came to my defense? They did not…

I realize that, age wise, she’s technically an adult. Maturity wise, I’d say absolutely not. Falsely accusing people and harming their lives with said accusations is not acting like an adult, at least not in my book. And I realize that, as the supposed adult she is, no one can tell her what to do, say or think. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t defend a person being falsely accused. You’re not telling the person what to think, say or do, you’re standing up for the person who a) isn’t there to defend their own honor and b) is getting smeared when you know that the person isn’t like that. That’s all I wanted from my “family” (again, for lack of a better term), but I didn’t get it… What I did get was, (from my mother) “Well, your sister should be the one to talk to her, not me, she’s her daughter” and (from my sister) “She’s an adult, I can’t tell her what to do”… Again, I’m not expecting anyone to change her mind. If Monica wants to hate my guts, fine. But at least have a valid reason to do so and don’t falsely accuse me of things you think I’m guilty of that I’m not… I’m not expecting anyone to change her mind, I do expect them to come to my defense when I’m getting bashed undeservedly.

But wait, there’s more…

After the fact, I get this infuriating text from Monica, bitching at me for getting other people involved… See, again, here’s false accusations. I never asked my mother to talk to her about it. If I wanted to try and resolve whatever her issue was, I would have spoken to her directly (if she would have replied, which I doubt). Now, there were a lot of things about that text that irked my nerves, other than the fact that I never asked anyone else to stick their noses in. First, who is she to bitch at me for that, the person who was forever sticking their nose in my business?! Second, she claimed she didn’t need to explain herself as to why she didn’t want a relationship with me and hadn’t for some time (something she thinks “hurt” me). I don’t care if she doesn’t want a relationship, but, contrary to her belief, I feel I do deserve an explanation when she’s spreading misinformation and damaging my reputation and my life. An explanation is the least she could give me after that. She also bitched that I didn’t talk to her myself… Well, maybe I would have, but after I got no response from wishing her a happy birthday at the beginning of December and no response when I texted her Merry Christmas, what would have been the point? She wouldn’t have responded to my asking her why she seemed to have an issue with me.

So after all this, I’d literally had enough… I texted my mother, telling her I was angry that not one of them defended me against these false accusations and that I was done. Then I blocked every single one of them…

Now… I’ve gotten a lot of flack for this decision, that it makes no sense and Monica is the only one I should be angry with, block and not speak to again. I’m sure some (or all) of you are thinking the same. But before you pass judgement, hear me out. The rabbit hole goes so much deeper than this…

I’ll try to paraphrase this as I don’t want to tell my entire life story. Let’s just say I’ve been used, abused and treated like the family punching bag for almost 53 years. I’m the Grinch… “Why, for 53 years I’ve put up with it now…” Hahahaa… Anyway… The Sponge used to accuse me of doing things I never did and would have my mother punish me even though she knew his accusations weren’t true. That’s just the tip of the iceberg with him and his shit… My mother was no better. And my sister… You know, I’ve never felt like I was wanted or part of the family. It was always using me, treating me like shit, gaslighting me… The reason I didn’t want to discuss how I felt with them is because they’d say I was being silly, overreacting, that I was being irrational. Nothing like having your family tell you that your feelings aren’t valid your entire life, then wonder why you act the way you do… This wasn’t an irrational act. It was impulsive, yes, but not irrational. I was perfectly clear headed when I made this decision. Honestly, I’d been thinking of shutting my family out for a very long time. I don’t need or want their toxicity. It’s been horrible for my mental health all these years and has made me a very self loathing, untrusting person that can’t handle any act of kindness they’re shown and feels everyone is suspect.

You know why I’m so obsessed with Animal Crossing…? It’s because, as the creators intended, it gives a small town, tight knit, family kind of feel to it. Look at me and my villagers, having a blast, jamming out to some good tunes… They never put me down (not intentionally), they don’t use me, talk down to me, gaslight me, accuse me of things I didn’t do, try to damage my reputation… They compliment me (even if I’m wearing a hideous outfit), they gift me little things all the time (even though I still don’t know what the fuck I want an “instant muscles” suit for), they’re very appreciative and will make sure you know it. They welcome you into their homes, their lives… They do all the things that great friends and family will do. And I’ve never had that… I’ve been knocked down so much by life, I don’t know how I keep getting back up… It’s honestly a wonder I’m still here. I made an attempt to check out back when I was 16, but something told me I still had things to do, here, and I needed to stick around. I’ve often wondered if the something I needed to do was provide my family with a punching bag because that’s all I’ve had since. So if it makes me feel like I matter (in a good way) when I play a video game or when I write in this ongoing story I created for me alone, so be it. At this point, I need to do what’s needed to save my sanity.

My therapist has different views on all this…

After several sessions of me getting highly irritated with him because he kept wanting to talk about a subject I wanted to avoid because it wasn’t one of my issues and feeling like I was getting a lecture about how I should manage things that I can manage fine on my own (he’s my therapist, not my financial planner), we finally discussed this shit with my niece. Now, it took a lot of me discussing my past and how my family has treated me (a subject I try to avoid), but once he got the full picture, he understood why I shut them all out. He still thinks that my family expects me to react by flipping shit or being irrational (even though I’m totally rational about my choice) and that maybe I should talk to them. It took me a long time to get him to understand… Even if I started out with, “I know you think I can be irrational,” like he suggested, it wouldn’t get me far. I’d get cut off with, “Well you are…” That would be the end of that conversation, trying to get them to see that my feelings are valid. To them, nothing I say, think or do is valid. But my niece makes false claims against me and her feelings are valid?! Please make that make sense because I’m just not getting it.

One of his major concerns is my mother’s age and health, do I really want to be doing this at this particular point in her life? If he thinks I’ll regret cutting her off when she dies, he’s mistaken. A person can only put up with so much before they become numb and unfeeling… I reached that point decades ago. I just kept getting sucked back in.

I can tell you this is the happiest and most at peace I’ve been in my entire life. And you know what? I think I’ve more than earned the ability to have this right now. I know a lot of people who put others down for disowning their families, shutting them out, because they’re toxic to them. Yeah, maybe it’s a shit thing to do, especially if you have a nice family. But when you seem to be the target for all the family animosity, you start to see that shutting them out is probably a great idea. I have reached that point…

But I want to hear from you, dear readers… What is your take on the situation? Be unbiased; if you think I’m being an asshole, tell me. I’m looking for honesty, here. And, if you were in this situation, with a very toxic family, what would you do? Would you cut them off or continue to put up with their shit and their horrible treatment of you because they’re family and no other reason? Let me know, I’d love to hear from you.

Thanks for hearing me out… ❤