I'm writing this because I really can't deal with this going around in my head anymore. Family involved don't want to listen. I feel very hurt at how they have treated myself and my daughter and the daily flashbacks and ptsd I am having are seriously affecting my health.
Last summer younger sisters wedding abroad. I'm a single parent. D8 and I stayed in a house with mother and 3 sisters and one of their one year olds. Each morning D8 and I would wake up, have a light breakfast, clear up after ourselves and then get out of the others way. Sometimes made and left breakfast for my mum if we had time and space in the kitchen. Sat in living room when we were ready and waited till others were ready if we were going out. There was no time set any day, everyone just got ready and came down.
One day someone from outside the house was meeting us, so it was arranged everyone would be ready for 11am, which we were.
The day after that, we got up, had breakfast, cleared up, went and showered and got ready and came down as usual. Sat on the sofa and saw mum and other sisters still pottering around and eating in the kitchen. It was around 11.30-11.45am. No one spoke to us so I asked if everyone was ready. Then sister with a one year old started by asking in a very angry and sarcastic voice why it had taken us so long to get ready when we were only 2 people sharing a bathroom, so why had it taken so long for us to get ready? My daughter must have come down stairs for a glass of water while I was in the shower and sister also said she'd asked my daughter what she was doing upstairs and she said my daughter said she was "relaxing" (again all said to me very angrily and sarcastically).
I was really surprised and taken aback, I wasn't expecting this. I told her all I'd done was go to the loo then shower and wash my hair, and then dry my hair. I hadn't been relaxing. But I told her obviously my daughter was sitting and reading in bed while I was in the bathroom and then drying my hair. I was really surprised at her anger, so I also said if you wanted to leave earlier and us to hurry up you could have knocked on our door to let us know (in my head I was thinking that then I could have either hurried up or told them to leave ahead of us and we'd catch them up later if they didn't want to wait for us). But then she says - no, we were all ready at 11am yesterday so I OBVIOUSLY thought we'd all be ready at 11am today. But I told her no one said to me that we needed to be ready for 11am today and that it was unreasonable for me to be ready for a time I didn’t know about. She was so angry, and screamed back at me that obviously we were ready yesterday at this time so she’d waited for everyone to be ready at this time again. I said I didn’t think that was fair, I hadn’t done anything extra but get ready and I didn’t know there was a time to be ready for. My mum and other sisters had been listening and said nothing till now. Then my mum came in from the kitchen area and started to support my sister and shout at me - telling me my sister is busy with the baby, and that my other sister had been busy cooking her own breakfast in the kitchen and how I should have been helping clean the kitchen up after the other sister had cooked.
As I realised how everyone was behaving I was very sad. In that moment I thought to myself, these are the people that back home I go out of my way to visit regularly so that my daughter gets to see her grandmother, even though we are short on time at weekends I still prioritise them. These are the people I drive an hour out of my way for to drive them to or from mums house so they don’t have to take a bus or taxi. These are the people I spend free weekends taking to visit relatives when asked, putting mine and my daughters needs secondary as that then eats into our only weekly free time for cooking cleaning laundry homework etc. These are the people who I go out of my way to help whenever there is a problem or whenever they need me to do something, because I want to help them. And I am the only family member who drives so I do what I can to help whenever needed. I was thinking of all the times I’ve spent hours on them, helping them with things, waiting for them to do something, waiting to take them somewhere, or the thought I’ve put into the things I do for them. And they were creating an argument between them and myself and my daughter, ruining the holiday that we were all so excited to come on and had spent so much money on. I felt very sad. All 4 of them (mum and 3 sisters) didn’t speak to me again. I repeated that we hadn’t done anything wrong, we’d just got ready and we didn’t know everyone was expecting to leave at 11 just because yesterday we’d left at 11. The day before that it had been a different time. And the day before that it had been a different time. How could we have known they wanted to leave at a certain time today? It felt so unfair. It felt like they’d shared information between themselves but purposely not told me so they’d have an excuse to be angry at me later, unreasonably. They didn’t speak to me or my daughter and left the house. I couldn’t understand, even as they left I said I don’t understand why you’re all angry, all we did was get ready and come down, we didn’t know we were late for anything. None of them looked back or acknowledged me talking, they just went out the door. There was only one key.
I was really sad at this. It had come out of nowhere. Daughter and I couldn’t leave the house so we had to stay in all day. When they came home later that day they all still ignored us. No one spoke to us. They made dinner for themselves and happily chatted over dinner as my daughter and I were upstairs. No one asked us to join for dinner.
The next day they continued ignoring us. No one spoke a word to me or daughter. They went out again all day so daughter and I again had to stay at home. We also had no way of getting to a shop to buy food for an upcoming train journey to the villa part of the wedding.
Two days of living with 4 other adults who pretend you dont exist and don’t talk to you. It felt like my daughter and I were being bullied. Unfortunately this is very normal behaviour for my mum and sisters and it happened a lot growing up. But on a family holiday at a wedding, didn’t they know they were ruining the WHOLE experience for myself and my daughter? I messaged my sister who was getting married and told her that there had been a silly argument and they all gone out. I think I needed someone to help stick up for me and my daughter. The youngest sister did come around that night to the house, and she did very briefly and nicely tell everyone not to argue because it was obviously creating a problem that wasn’t needed. She specifically told my mum not argue with people after she left so that it wouldn’t ruin the experience for everyone. The youngest sister left and my mum turned around to everyone in the room with the angriest look in her face. Who told her?? she shouted. She went up to each sister one by one. Did you tell her? No. Did you tell her? No. Then it was my turn and I was very scared, I held my daughters hand. Did you tell her? Yes I answered. I was terrified. She then started shouting at me at why I had created problems and told the youngest sister. I said we hadn’t done anything wrong and you all have been treating us like this. She went on shouting at me, honestly I don’t know anymore what she was saying. Probably that we had ruined things for everyone. Instead I just remember looking down at my daughter who was crying and screaming for it to stop. I just hugged her and didn’t bother replying anything more to my mum. The sister with the baby stepped in and told my mum to stop, saying that it was going to ruin the wedding experience for us. My mum was still furious but she stopped and went to the bathroom around the corner. I was alone with my crying 8 year old hyperventilating daughter, trying to comfort her. I told her not to worry, ‘we haven’t done anything wrong, they’re just being mean and grandma’s just being mean’. That was the truth for me, I don’t think we had done anything wrong, and I think my mum and sisters had been cruel. After a minute or so my mum appeared from behind the wall. She pointed at me and said ‘Oh my God! I have been listening behind the wall and do you know what she’s been saying! Do you know what she’s been saying!’. She carried on walking around the room pointing at me. ‘She’s been turning granddaughter against me!! She’s there saying things to turn granddaughter against me!!’. I was completely confused. I had no idea what she was talking about, I had no idea what this made my sisters think I’d been saying too, but it was not true. I was calming my daughter and letting her know that the way we’d been treated was not okay. I was mentally exhausted by this point. I couldn’t defend myself anymore against unreasonableness and meanness. I took my daughter up to our room and was really traumatised myself so she must have felt worse.
An hour later I came down with my daughter to get a glass of water for her. As we walked past, my mum grabbed my daughters hand and pulled her towards her. I took my daughters hand and very calmly said to my mum, if you can’t treat us decently then don’t speak to us. She was shocked. My mum then ignored my daughter and me COMPLETELY for the rest of the 2 week holiday. She pretended we didn’t exist. Throughout the family dinners, wedding, everything. At one point I just wanted the ignoring to end and I put my arms out and said let’s make up, and she shooed me away with her hands and shouted ‘get away from me’. My sisters also followed the same example, no one willingly spoke to me or my daughter for the 2 weeks. Because we hadn’t been able to shop for food the 2 days we were in the house, I had no child friendly food for my daughter throughout the wedding. I asked each sister if there was anything they thought I could give my daughter, and always got told I don’t know. I looked in a fridge and saw expensive food that I thought was for family dinners (expensive meats and fish and cheese etc) so didn’t help myself to anything. I only found out 2 days before we left that there was a shelf in a separate pantry room that had found for all the kids to eat. Since 2 of the sisters were staying in the villa at that point, im guessing they knew and could have told me. I felt like I went around asking people constantly if there was any simple food I could give to my daughter and everyone either got really exasperated and told me to look myself (I had and the fridge was stocked with adult food for dinners, and I also didn’t know what food belonged to which people as there were also their other friends staying in the villa) or just said I don’t know. I wasn’t living in the villa but had been put in a apt nearby with my daughter, mum and another sister at this point, and we got taxis to/from the main villa everyday so I was also in a kitchen in a house I wasn’t living in and already felt weird going through cupboards and fridge with people who were actually staying there watching me look through their food. My daughter was cold tired and hungry every day as adult meals were quite posh and also it was very long for a child to wait between meals. She spent a lot of time in the pool at the villa, but when she got out almost no one interacted with us. The other guests greeted my mum and sisters as a group, as that’s how they presented themselves, and it was evident to other guests that we were outcasts for some reason. That made it very hard to meet other guests, along with feeling so completely alone and rejected in the inside. At one point I broke down to my sister who was getting married, I burst into tears and told her that I felt bad because my daughter was cold and hungry and tired and I couldn’t do anything about it, we didn’t have our things in the villa. She helped by getting us a hair dryer so that I could dry my daughters wet hair after the pool. Obviously I had broken down due to more than that.
I know this post is long. I had saved hard for this wedding/holiday and I wanted it to be a great experience for my daughter. I felt that my family were unreasonable in making the original argument, then cruel in ignoring us over the whole rest of the holiday, knowing that would make us feel isolated and alone and ruin the whole experience for us. None of them were helpful when I was looking for simpler food like pasta for my daughter. In the end pasta was sat on a cupboard in a room I didn’t know about, but no one wanted to tell me that.
It’s been over 6 months. I think about what happened daily. Mentally I can’t process that we could be treated like that and 5 people thought it was okay. Daughter and I were hoping for a lovely holiday and wedding, I don’t think we caused any of this. I truely think sister with baby was angry at something else and took it out on us. Family got behind her, regardless. My sisters are like sheep, they follow who they like most, being reasonable rarely come into things. It’s not the first time that things like this have happened, but this time I can’t get over the cruelty and how sustained this behaviour was, from grown adults. It’s causing me daily mental and physical symptoms, and I’ve had to go to hospital a few times it’s been that bad. I just needed to get this out.