I’ll be back home in a week, and oddly enough, I think that the time outside of the weekend is probably when I’ll be more relaxed and feel like myself. I told my cousin who lives in San Jose that I’d be back, so he suggested he drive up to the city with his wife to have dinner with me, which would include my anti-immigrant uncle, my cousin’s Jehovah’s Witness mom, and inevitably my parents. Because my parents generally dislike everyone in the family, they hate these gatherings and for whatever reason, feel like everyone else is “cheap” and “fake” and won’t pay the bill, so they always end up paying the bill before anyone even sees it. This has been a decades-long source of tension and resentment, which they’ve pretty much caused themselves. So the last time we all got together when I was home in February, my mom told me not to tell anyone else in the family I was coming home because she didn’t want to see them. “Things are not the same,” she insists. “We’ve changed.”

No, my parents haven’t changed. They love to make themselves to be the victims of every situation (where there are really no victims), and to blame everyone else for any “problems” that exist.

Well, I did. And a family dinner is happening. She just doesn’t know about it yet. And when she does, she’s going to be pretty angry about it and say endless passive aggressive things.

She’ll also add, “And you aren’t pregnant yet!” to the list of things she’s mad about.