short backround(not too whiney i hope):
my family is a patchwork family , i was product of loosish relationship and later my mum married my dad whom she met at church basically because he was also a single parent. my mum is very immature, and quit work ( which she had done for just a year or so) right after marriage without talking to her husband, as she expected to be taken care of now. up until her fifties she got money from her mother monthly. stayed at home with us (2 more brothers), quickly lost any social life she might have had, which made her family her whole life: hated and fought with stepbrother, no matter he was only 5 at the time. endlessly analysing her own childhood ( always same stories about her young childhood, for thirty years now). obv. loveless marriage gives her decades to talk about trying to fix what cannot be fixed and expect what cannot be expected. tying youngest child to her so closely he is completely infantilised ( at age. 21 still woken up by mum to go to work, dont see him leaving home ever. psychosomatically limps ( when she rembembers ) . father: enabler. has to be needed , likes having someone dependend on him as he is very weak towards any other authority. me and stepbrother moved out as fast as we could, i live on different continent now and he around the corner though sees parents maybe a few times a year. anyway, obv we never were a family united by love and our parents were too busy to look at their own navel to truly care about us and respond to us. so contact, now, is fortnighlty emails and yearly visits. its not a "real" relationship, however they feel like they have this whole virtual relationship with us, wondering if my baby daughter likes them ( they saw her once at a few months) etc. two years ago my beloved grandma started getting really old, and when icame to visit a year ago ( without parents ) to show off newborn baby daughter it was clear she had become incontinent, as the whole house stank so horridly we retched after a few seconds and had to sit outside ( and couldnt lwt her hold the baby). couldnt believe it had come to this as my mums sister (severe psychologicall issues ) lives with her! my mum played shocked " its never been like this before" blabla, i offered help, nothing really happened except reassurance that its not like this anymore. now i got a mail where my mum tells me how much fun they had with grandma, that shes doing so well, except, haha, they had to convince her to eat outside as the stench was so unbearable.
this hit me hard. and i decided that this is the final straw. nothing personal, im not furious, but i cannot watch this anymore in my life. im pregnant again, and my grandmas situation is the only nightmare i have. the situation just makes me so desparate inside, loosing my grandma and having her live like this, the guilt is so heavy on me, as i am obviously the only one that cares, after her own three daughters, my father ( who usually loves nannying people and actually used to work as a nurse for the elderly), and my three brothers (although i dont expect anything from them). but im hundreds of miles away and am also just starting my own family, and there is a limit to what i can do from here! anyway, wrote my mum a short mail explaining that it is difficult for me to be in this situation and that i need some time out, and that it seems to me that a relations that doesnt take care of you in the most basic way and lets her own mother sit in her excrements doesnt seem to be of much value. after a day full of long mails attacking, understanding, pleading, insulting there is quiet now.
my thoughts are now the following:
was i justified, or should i have glossed over, seeing that my parents are not reAlly healthy themselves?
am i being a terrible person hurting my mother (who loves me more than anything - it just never means something, never translates into anything real worldly, and who i am tearing her heart apart) ?
am i just supposed to live with this and bear my cross and pretend some sort of normalcy?
but if i do, i am so afraid my two wonderful baby daughters will grow up inheriting some of the same baggage , it always cost me so much energy and strength to behave normal while knowing! that basically everyone in my family had real psychological problems and also substandard levels of hygiene and understanding of the " real world" - thats so tough to overcome, and maybe itll be much easier for them to know much about that.
and also, if i leave them in my life, even just by being exposed to this kind of neglect and behaviour coupled with their very lovey-dovey rethoric , wont i be planting the tiniest slightest possibilities that my daughters will grow up thinking that people can, and do behave that way toward people they profess to love,and thatis a very slippery slope.
also, i wonder what are the true downsides of cutting off your family basically, when anyway im all alone in this country (not that my virtual family would provide much in terms of safety in numbers- but its more than nothing i guess?)
input much appreciated...