I need to vent

This post is going to be full of anger and disgust, so if you wish not to read such things, move along.

Over the past week I have been alerted to four separate instances of Motherhood Most Foul. Some are far worse than others. My issue is that I simply don't understand how a person can give birth to someone and then turn her back on them. Or worse.

A very good friend of mine has come to the realization that she is not welcome any longer in her family. Her mother and brother, who are all she has left, have made that quite clear. Assumptions were made about her character, and rather than going to her for the straight dope on the situation they simply cut her off. She's putting on a brave face, and handling everything with her usual (and famous) brand of sarcasm and wit, but I can't even imagine how deeply this hurts. How do you go through life knowing that a choice was made between two children and you were the short straw? I simply don't know. Along those lines-

My father's niece who is in her 60s (my parents had me rather late) had four daughters. The oldest daughter was belittled from the time she was tiny. They told her she was fat. They told her she was stupid. They called her names. You know what? She believed them and reacted accordingly. She became the family fuck-up. Self fulfilling prophecies and all that. She got knocked up while unwed, and even though she and the father have been together for 2 decades and eventually married and had another child, the family pointed to that as proof that she was No Good. She's been a waitress her entire adult life. A damn good one. Her mother and three sisters prefer to pretend she doesn't exist. At one point they even tried to take her kids away from her for not providing a "good enough life." Both of her children are smart and her oldest, a boy, works hard for what he wants. So, my cousin, who is a couple of years older than me, was told recently that she might have breast cancer and would need a biopsy. She asked her mother to take her and was informed that she would drop her off but she would have to "find her own way home."

How do you do that? How do you let your own daughter go into the most terrifying day of her life without offering comfort when she leaves that office? To say I'm seeing red is an understatement. My cousin is the only one of the four girls who looks even remotely like me, and even though she did some fairly bad things in her younger years, I'm partial to her. The rest of the girls, entitled blonde princesses who look down their noses at everything, can suck it. I don't even acknowledge them as relations most of the time.

I want to beat my father's niece within an inch of her life. And then leave her in an alley downtown so that Bad Things can happen to her.

Bitch.

(I fear no repercussions for telling this story, because they will never read it. As far as they're concerned, I don't exist either. Besides, I haven't said a single thing that isn't true).


I'm not going to go into the details of the two episodes I heard about on the local news this week. I can say that the first episode involves the prosecutors seeking the death penalty against the mother, and the second episode should.

I am, as I said previously, not the best mother on the planet. Hell, I'm not even fond of babies. Kids? Yes. Babies? Not so much. But even when I dislike my children for how they're behaving, the love I have is deep and terrible. I say terrible specifically, because if anything ever happens to them, woe to the person who caused them harm. I'm talking massive amounts of woe. Nothing mild about it. I own a replica Narsil (it's a sword, hush), and I mentioned to Rich that if anyone comes in after the kids or us they will find it used on them. He told me I couldn't swing it because it's too heavy, and besides, it isn't sharp. I told him that I've actually practiced swinging it and can even lift it above my head. Then I told him, "I wouldn't swing it anyway. I'd hold the hilt at my hip tightly and ram them with it." He said I could probably get two good hits in that way, and I told him, "Oh no. I'd impale them on the dull blade, which will hurt like hell, and then I will yank the blade to the side to unbalance them. When they fall, I'll kick their head in. Over and over and over."

And then I laughed. And Rich was slightly frightened.

Do NOT fuck with my kids.