midnyte

I think there is a curse on my husbands family. His ancestors decimated Native American lands and if there is any truth to curses I would say it has been brought upon them. When I got married into the family, by pure coincidence it was the same anniversary as his parents marriage. My father had a massive stroke and later died the Monday after Easter the same year we got married. His brother got married a couple days before our anniversary and yesterday, the Monday after Easter, her sister randomly died. His family did very little when I got married and they did very little when my father died a couple weeks after. My mother in law called me but she was very judgmental because I wanted to keep the ashes. She made me feel very bad about it, like I was weird. Maybe in the south they do things different, but where I'm from keeping ashes in an urn is a very traditional thing and I don't really see a problem with it. I can't say I appreciated being made to feel like a freak about it though.

My mother in law is paralyzed and her younger son cares for her. My husband has been long riddled with guilt because he was living out of state, got married and had a life with me while his brother was caring for his mother. A couple of years ago I was informed the brother had met a girl he really liked. I heard it was probably serious and I agreed to give up my life in Arizona and move 2000 miles to take over care for the mother so my brother in law could have the same luxury of being able to spend the day in bed with his lover and enjoy a certain freedom in his dating. We felt he deserved that.

When we got there, I found out he did not want us there. I gave up my entire life to move to the fucking deep south and he didn't want to give up his little control freak life at all. I was insulted over and over and over and nothing I did was right. They would talk shit about me and the girl who lived with them could hear it from her room and was so "sweet" as to tell me all about it. It was so awesome to hear about what a huge piece of shit I was all the time. My husband didn't want to be involved at all so he just emotionally checked out completely. It didn't matter what new thing they had said or what other insult had been carried out, he was completely unaffected by any of it. He had a work from home job so he could lock me out of the room all day while he worked. Totally checked out. This left me with no privacy, nothing that was mine and nothing I could do. I was so unhappy. Every conversation had my mother in law listening in on it. They had baby monitors all over the house so nothing was private. They are from a totally different culture than I am from. We are more relaxed on the west coast about some things. My household has its little inside jokes and things we say which might seem weird from the perspective of an outsider but they are our inside jokes. These people never ASKED me about things they didn't understand, they never asked me if I wanted or needed help with things or anything else. Or they would ask me about weird stuff which I didn't care about while completely trampling me on things I did care about. Talked down to us. It was horrible. I would regard the time I spent with them as probably the worst 6 months of my entire life. And considering what I grew up in, that is saying something.

My brother in law got married a few days before our anniversary last month. We did not do anything for their wedding since he calls me a little bitch and a few other choice names and put us about $40K in debt moving there to help him when he didn't even want us there. That family is REALLY bad at communicating I have learned. He didn't even so much as offer me congratulations or a card or anything when I got married. And he treated my marriage and my relationship with my husband like it was nothing when we were there. He accused me of being Hitler the second day I was there because I asked for a not Mexican grocery store. I guess in the South when you ask for a specific ethnic grocery store it's because they used to actually keep people out who were of other races. Where I'm from we have a LOT of ethnic grocery stores which have very different foods. The Mexican store is fun to shop at when you are cooking Mexican foods, but if you want Kraft and Dole and Del Monte or Organic Milk or whatever that is not the place. Same with the Middle East, Jewish, Russian, Indian and other grocery stores I like when I want certain foods and don't want when I want others. If I want ham, I don't go to the Kosher store, you know. I would like to think as the woman married to his brother who he grew up with, even if he misunderstood that I come from a culturally diverse part of the country and am used to shopping at a variety of ethnic stores and my request was not in fact racist in any way, he would have enough respect for the choices made by his brother to ask me before deciding I'm Hitler. Since I'm German that is a really sensitive thing to me. Especially because of the complete financial ruin my family, who were incredibly wealthy before the war, suffered at the hands of Hitler and the sacrifices they made to keep my uncle and their children and themselves out of the war. They had to lose everything and they never got it back. It was gone. When you do that to stay OUT of something, when you suffer the way they did, starving, living in garbage dumps to defect and then my grandfather got caught and they said to him old man, you or your son, my grandfather went to Russia and got shot, nobody better dare accuse me of being a Hitler. It's a sore spot. I would like to have thought there would have been enough respect for my husband to at least ASK for real clarification on something or finding out what our inside jokes are before ASSUMING the worst. I suppose I didn't help any after that. I made a point to be a bit of a cunt about it after that. I was really upset but my husband asked me not to make a deal about it even though I was FUMING about it. I guess I got my digs but never got to really let them have it about it.

It was hell being around these people. I have never been more insulted in my life. It was like insulted was a permanent state of being when I was around them.

So now this sister has died and it has picked the scab off of yet another old wound. I was hurt when I was excluded from the wedding invitation, not that I would have gone, but it was a snub. My husband bitched and they later sent us an invite and information on where we could send gifts. I sent exactly the same thing I got from them for my wedding which was a big fat nothing. It isn't like the initial invite I was excluded from could just magically be erased by later sending one with me and our son on it.

Now my new sister in laws sister died the same day as my dad and I am inclined to send her the same thing I got when my dad died, well, less the insult and judgment about her burial and remembrance choices. But then I feel bad. I feel bad about doing nothing for their wedding. I buy gifts for almost everyone I know when they get married. Certainly if I get an announcement or an invite I have never not sent a gift and well wishes except this time. Now this. I know how awful it is to have the joy of your new marriage ruined by the grieving process, which is a process, long and slow and sometimes confusing to those around you. Now here I am again made to feel bad because I feel shitty not doing anything but on the same hand, nothing was done for me and it hurt me and the old wound has been opened up again.
I don't know what to do. It is unforgivably tacky to not do anything to celebrate or console a family member when something like this happens but it was unforgivably tacky when they did it to me too.

The girl he married was not around when any of this was happening so part of me feels bad that she is now suffering from the same curse I was hit with when I married into the family. I feel bad not doing something for her, but on the same hand why should I go out of my way to make her feel welcome into the family? I was never welcomed and when I put myself into debt and completely upset my life I was regarded with name calling and insults and made miserable so I feel really disinclined to go out of my way here. I don't know what to do.