Poll of the Day > Really dreading having to go and see the folks later this month.

(+) Yeah! (+)

I haven't seen my family since quarantine. They're all die-hard anti-vaxx Qanon conspiracists who spent quarantine harassing me about not coming home for a year and refused to accept COVID as an excuse. Treating me like I'm nuts and ridiculous for not wanting to spend the holidays in cramped quarters with 15+ people who think COVID is a joke. Of course I also didn't want to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas hearing them bitch about the results of the election. And those holidays were already bad enough with Trump Christmas tree ornaments and Fox News blaring on Christmas morning during the big Family Gathering.

They did whittle me down to accepting their request to come up and spend an hour with me on Christmas Day, but the fuckers showed up maskless, scoffed at me for wearing one, got all up in my face, and even went on campus when I explicitly told them visitors weren't allowed.

Later on, a couple days before 1/6, my father calls me up and starts asking me questions like how much food I have and whether I'll be able to drive home on a moment's notice. I asked him what the deal was with these vague questions but he refused to elaborate. Once I made it clear I had no intention of driving home within the next few days he giggled and said "Okayyyyyyyy" in a drawn-out 'don't-say-I-didn't-warn-you' sort of way.

On Mother's Day my father called me, screaming about how my mother's crying because I haven't been home in a year and how I'm emotionally abusing her and saying I need to either come home immediately or whatever happens after will be my fault because I wasn't there for them, and that I need to "make a decision". Presumably he was referring to whether or not I intend to just never see them again, which... I mean, I'm always entertaining that possibility, for obvious reasons. I called my mother up and promised I'd come home over the summer, which seemed to smooth things over, though the next time I talked to her she was accusing me of being extremely selfish over the last year and not understanding why I won't come home.

I really am reaching the end of my rope with them. If I had been born into a remotely sane family none of this would have been an issue, but instead I have to deal with all this inane and utterly unnecessary drama because they don't want to accept my not wanting to be coming in close quarters with them during a panic. And to be honest, I don't think I'm going to be able to avoid confrontations by changing the subject or skirting around conversations like I have for the past several years. Both because I'm sick of their bullshit and kind of willing to take a hit to my financial security for the sake of being rid of them and because they're becoming increasingly rabid and I don't think they'd let me avoid an inquisition into my political beliefs at this point. And I know THAT won't go over well, there's extended family that they cut contact with forever ago because they're liberals.

The worst part of it is that I do love them(to varying and increasingly diminishing extents) and would genuinely feel awful for the rest of my life knowing how crushed my mother would be to not have me in her life, but good fucking gravy. I can't keep walking this tightrope, and I can't keep pretending to be something I'm not by omission. I think, once I go home in a few weeks, that I will very quickly be harassed about my decision to get vaccinated and/or not come home for a year, and everything will spiral out of control from there. I think there's a very real possibility that I'll show up one day and be on my way back to my current residence the very same day because I got disowned.

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Covid isnt an excuse to not see your family

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ArvTheGreat posted...

Covid isnt an excuse to not see your family

What a shit take.

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Dont visit them. Tell them their views make you uncomfortable and leave it at that.

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Put on an act for the day and tell them college has really opened your mind to their perspective and that it is the only true and honorable way to live as an American.
At the end of the day, drive away laughing hysterically and yell just kidding!!.

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Mead posted...

Dont visit them. Tell them their views make you uncomfortable and leave it at that.

No, but here's the thing. I feel like I've been enabling them for years to keep on overstepping boundaries with me by skirting the issue in order to avoid confrontation. At the latest, I should've grown a spine on this back when they first started giving me shit about COVID. I need to set the record straight on who I am, have the confrontation I should've had already, and get closure.

Also if I cut contact over them being Trump supporters that's just going to make them fap even harder to what Triggered Snowflakes liberals are(even though they'd throw a shit fit if I so much as told them I didn't stand for the pledge in high school). I don't want them to honestly be able to make the claim that I cut contact with them over our political disagreements, if it comes to it. And I think I would ultimately prefer that it not come to it, and they just leave me alone about politics. Fat chance it'll happen, but I should to give them the opportunity to prove me wrong on that, so I'll put the ball in their court.

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