Holiday Escalation...

[Dreamstalker]

I have an aunt L who we all think is clinically depressed but there are other issues in play as well (fibromyalgia, definitely SAD, serious type A, prone to irrational outbursts, some other things). She always has to be the one to do the holiday cooking by herself (food for an army, when her mom was alive she would recruit everyone she could fit in the kitchen even if that meant calling relatives in the next town and some prep spilled into the living room), refuses any help and then yells at the closest targets when she gets overwhelmed (implying that we don't want to help...well you've made it crystal clear that don't want us to). It's gotten so that we don't even like being in the house anymore when she's cooking which is a shame as that used to be a lot of fun. Her mom's health went downhill in that house, she's done very little in terms of changing anything and the vibes in that place are just off.

So it's time when everyone is sending everyone else their Amazon wishlists...for ideas only. Nobody has to buy gifts if they can't do so which has been in place for a few years (L knows this). A few of us like spoiling people (especially my 3-year-old niece) within reason. A few of us do our Christmas shopping all year and want to give people neat stuff. No expectations.

So L starts the list-posting and I innocently throw mine in the ring, as usual. Which almost immediately results in a fairly vitriolic group reply from L, all caps and colored fonts, reiterating that nobody has to buy anything...included in there is a political mini-rant (Fratching territory, but involving the goings-on with SS/Medicare/etc) along with "Maybe just buy me a gun. I don't even think I'm kidding."

*recordscratch*

Whoa, whoa, WHOA. Where the did that come from?! It's the holidays, and dad and I are going to be in your house for a week. Don't even joke about shit like that, especially not you. Even mom who knows how moody and weird L can be--and tolerates it in small doses--was appalled when I showed her the email.

I'm tempted to reply to the list with something along the lines of "Cool it. It's the holidays, family time, we're all going to get together and visit and have fun, we all know the national situation and dislike it as much as you do so can we leave politics out of everything for a few days?" Or I'm also tempted to not reply to her at all...this is just too weird.

[EricKei]

(implying that we don't want to help...well you've made it crystal clear that don't want us to)

Sounds like a self-fulfilling prophecy -- from her point of view, this makes her "right" for complaining about the lack of aid; the reason behind it is not relevant.

From all you've said -- I hope she's willing to seek help o_O ...or to accept it, should the time eventually come ($DEITY forbid) that is needs to be thrust upon her. I hope that time is far, far off, if it ever comes at all, and that she's willing to take the plunge on her own.

[protege]

So L starts the list-posting and I innocently throw mine in the ring, as usual. Which almost immediately results in a fairly vitriolic group reply from L, all caps and colored fonts, reiterating that nobody has to buy anything...included in there is a political mini-rant (Fratching territory, but involving the goings-on with SS/Medicare/etc) along with "Maybe just buy me a gun. I don't even think I'm kidding."

While my dad's mom never mentioned wanting a gun...are you sure we're not related somehow? Just about every holiday, she'd rant and rave about how much gifts cost, how that nothing was made in the US, politics, health care, and other stuff that she'd heard on a certain "news" station. The last time I was over there, she went on a 45-minute rant about how she didn't want "free health care for people who didn't work." Wanting to see the fun, I called her out on it. She lost it when I brought up that she was on Medicaid and had been retired since 1975

Yes I'm an asshole, but I (and the rest of my family, my dad excepted, obviously) thought it was hilarious. Every year, she made the holidays about her, and my aunt. Any conversations that didn't include them in some way...were magically steered in their direction. Most holidays were usually held at her house. She's spend days cooking because "nobody else could do it right." Then we'd hear about how "nobody helped me."

At least until about 2001-02 when my grandfather died. That year, we decided to have Christmas at our house. My mom cleaned the entire place, did all the decorating herself, spent days cooking and cleaning...only for them not to show up. Seems they decided that they'd rather go to Friendly's restaurant, than get a home-cooked meal. Mom was beyond pissed. Didn't stop my brother from going "oh well, they did give us the best Christmas present ever." Not having to deal with them

[Dreamstalker]

Sounds like a self-fulfilling prophecy -- from her point of view, this makes her "right" for complaining about the lack of aid; the reason behind it is not relevant.

Precisely. Dad says she was always this way to a degree, but it's gotten steadily worse since her mom died (nobody in the house consistently to actually take control of things, while L's mom could also be controlling it was in a nice way if that makes sense). There are many other skeletons in the closet that I don't know a lot about....but from what little I've been told it makes mom's family look like the Cleavers O_o I doubt L is ever going to admit that she needs some kind of serious help (just hope n one of the rest of us are in the blast radius when the meltdown does happen), and we don't have a lot of empathy for her anymore as none of us can relate to or understand why she is where she is and why she likes driving people away. The last time any of us saw her happy was at my cousin's wedding 5 years ago and dad doesn't even think that was genuine happy. She'll only get involved in family stuff if she has some sizable hand in the planning of such and I think in general everything with her has to be plotted out in advance (nobody else is like that, dad and I have been known to just get in the car and figure out what movie to see when we get to the theater).

Ultimately she made/was talked into some very bad choices years ago (similar to what happened with me, but I had the brains to make a plan to pull myself out) and wants everyone else to know it.

[EricKei]

dad and I have been known to just get in the car and figure out what movie to see when we get to the theater

This is my preferred method, as well. Go get some cheap eats, then go to the theater and pick something. This is how a friend of mine and I ended up seeing Tropic Thunder -- we just perused the "Now Showing" posters, saw the one for TT, and mutually agreed that it looked the movie attached to it was gonna be incredibly effing stupid. Thus, we HAD to see it as soon as humanly possible; so, we did! ^_^ We were right about the movie, too; it was wonderful.

[Pixelated]

I have to admit, I'd be very strongly tempted to make other plans and let the chips fall where they may. Nobody needs that kind of crap on the holidays.

I'm guessing it's not possible to talk to her about how her attitude and behaviour is making everybody else wish they were in another time zone ... ?

[Dreamstalker]

Not at this point; dad's tried, but that didn't end well. We can both tend to be blunt about things like this, and L seems to want someone to give warm fuzzies but not actually force her to do anything. In a way L reminds me of some of the more stubborn cases on Hoarders; they know something's badly wrong but think it'll be fixed if everyone else changes.

It's probably too late to change plans on where we're staying (we always stay at L's), so all we do is try to minimize the disruption to her...hard to do when nobody knows what will set her off when she gets in this state (when she does get like this, I worry about the only vehicle being under her control; we have to ask if we want to take the car). She always insists we stay with her though, so she must get something out of having 'normal' people in the house...but we always still feel like outsiders. Even her cat doesn't make the house seem normal; while he is adorable the poor thing is badly overweight (feeding cheap canned food probably doesn't help), L doesn't know exactly what to do about it so she doesn't do anything.