Family Matters: The Uninvited Party Guest

My family is rather dysfunctional. Don't get me wrong, I love them and all, but nothing about my family is sane. And as years fly by, they only seem to get worse.

As a child I was raised by my aunt because my mother and father were young and so not in love. In fact, I don't think they ever were. Since the day I was born, there has been a rift between my mother's family and father's family. To be frank, they cannot stand each other. I'm sure there is a great deal more to the story than I know but the bottom line is, they don't have to be around each other, therefore they do not.

I've always had an estranged relationship with both my mother and father since childhood but now that I am an adult, things have gotten much better . . . with my mother. My father, on the other hand, has not muttered a word to me in 5 years or so and very intermittently in the years before. He's always been very bitter about not having the model family he wanted and blames my mother for this. Always has. To this day, his bitterness has consumed his life and he doesn't deal with anyone . . . including his own family.

For a while I harbored the same bitterness for him and found myself taking it out on his family as well. They've lied to me many times and held my father up on a pedestal. I didn't want to be associated with such sneaky and conniving people. But as the years have gone on, my heart has softened, and I have learned to forgive . . . my father's family, not necessarily my father. (I'm still working on that!)

Stay with me here so you can understand. About 3 months ago, my first cousin on my father's side went to my grandmother's house (my mother's mother) looking to make contact with me. My grandmother (my mother's mother) raised my from my teenage years after my aunt passed away. Over the years we have really become the best of friends and I am closer to her than any other family member. However, my grandmother lives alone and has become completely involved in my life over the last 10 or so years, even though she's in CT and I'm in DC. I digressed. My cousin stops by my grandmother's house to try to relink with me. My grandmother, without hesitation, gave her my contact information and proceeded to shoot the breeze. Through her brief conversation with my cousin she found out that they are throwing my grandmother (my father's mother) a surprised 80th birthday party this year and she wanted to contact me because they are looking to have all of her children and grandchildren be in attendance.

Upon speaking to my cousin I found out that the party is going to be quite a big deal. They are renting out a resort facility in CT and it's going to be an all outdoor event. Games, food, fun, family. She proceeds to tell me that they are going to be sending out formal invitations shortly. A couple of weeks after that, I got an incredibly beautiful invite in the mail. My grandmother was visiting that week from CT so she got a chance to see it. So I marked my calendar and began to make plans to attend. Like I said, I haven't really talked to this part of the family in years so I was kind of reluctant to go because I thought my father was going to be there. That was the last person I wanted to see. I didn't want to be fake with him by making nice, but I also knew that this wasn't the type of event where I could tell him to fuck off. But I prayed on it and decided that I would take my boyfriend for moral support.

A couple of days ago I get a call from my grandmother (my mother's mother) and we have a normal conversation as usual. Toward the end of the call she very quickly slipped in the fact that I would have to attend the event alone. WTF? Huh? What in the hell is Gram talking about. She proceeds to tell me that she never received an invite in the mail so I would have to go alone. WOW!

I was a little floored by this and felt like I was being put into an awkward situation. First off, the two families don't get along and I'm sure they were only contacting her in order to get in contact with me. I'm the only person that they care about in that family and I know that if they didn't have to contact her, they wouldn't. However, it just happened that way. Secondly, in the past, when I didn't get an invitation to something, I just assumed I wasn't invited. Isn't that what that normally means. So I very quickly told her I would look into it and got off the phone.

When I got off the phone, I called my boyfriend and tried to get his advise. I had to ask myself, how is she going to take the news that the BF was going but not her? She's so sensitive to things like this. Furthermore, having her there would make the situation really uncomfortable as I can just see everyone saying, "Who invited her?" My grandmother also has a habit of bragging on me too much . . . to anyone. I'm sure she would love to have them eat mud by telling about all my many accomplishments. I would think they would rather hear that from me, not her. She also has a very very nasty habit of answering questions that were posed to me before I can get a word out of my mouth. She's always been that way. I've always had a mind of my own and am not a stranger to using it. There are times when I have to tell her to back off alittle but she always get so offended. I need a really nice way to tell Gram that she wasn't invited and that she cannot attend. I have the moral support I need without having her there. I've put off talking to her for a couple of days now, but I know the issue's going to come up again. HELP CYBERFAMILY!