I usually don’t tell my mom when Chris goes on work trips. The main reason for this is that she worries when she knows I am by myself in the apartment, and she gets paranoid that someone will break in and kill me. So she also tells me that when Chris takes trips that I shouldn’t go anywhere after work, that I should go straight home, double lock the door, and stay there until it’s time to go to work the next morning. Yep, that’s a fun idea.

The other reason I don’t like to tell her he goes away is that she thinks that when he’s away, it means she gets extra phone time with me. I’ve gradually cut down the phone calls from every single day (really) to about three to four times a week now in an effort to keep my sanity, but she always ends up calling in the evening when she knows he’s away, as she says that “since Chris is away, we have more time to talk.” That’s never a good thing. Why? Because what inevitably happens is that she ends up nitpicking me for some senseless thing (which likely happened months and months ago that I can barely remember even happening), and I tell her she’s being too sensitive or irrational or looking for something to get mad about, and then she yells. Then I yell, then we both yell, and it’s never a good thing.

It happened again last night. She asked me to write her a check a few weeks ago and said it could wait until late May. I asked her what the check was for. She did not appreciate the question. Apparently, questions are not allowed from me. She accused me of being reluctant to give her money when she has raised me and paid for my schooling and that I was ungrateful and “you’ve changed!” “How can you be reluctant when your own mother asks you? I do everything for you!” I never realized that asking what she’s planning to do with the money is another way of saying, “I’m reluctant and I don’t want to give you the money.” Isn’t asking why simply asking why?!

Yes, I’ve changed. I don’t take s*** from her anymore. The way I think hasn’t changed. The way I respond has.

I was on the phone with my mother the other day, and she let me know that my aunt told her that my cousin in Brooklyn just got laid off. That’s sad news, I responded, but I’m sure he’ll find a new job soon if he looks hard enough. She then added he was given six months’ severance paid at 100%. Okay, I said, if I felt sorry for him at all, all of that has now quickly dissipated. Who gets six months 100% paid severance after getting laid off?

She suggested I call him “to comfort him,” and I balked and told her the idea was ridiculous. When the entire country was in a recession in early 2009 when I got laid off and stayed unemployed for almost three months, where was my cousin to “comfort” me? He never called once, and at the wedding of his brother that I flew to attend, he barely said one word to me because he was angry I told him to stop complaining so much. That was a cue to him to stop calling or reaching out to me at all.

I told her I don’t want to spend any time on my ungrateful cousins or my psychotic aunt anymore. No more unneeded family dysfunction; the wedding was the end of the “optional” contact. The most I’m willing to tolerate at this point is just the dysfunction of my parents, and even that, I can only take in small doses.

Last night, I dreamt that I was walking through a huge green park, and everywhere I walked, I could see dead white ducks with bright yellow beaks lying around me. I peered closely at a few of them, and as I examined the ground, I realized that they were all attempting and failing to eat the pins that you poke into Pilates balls to get them to seal the air in. The white pins were lying all over the grass, and some ducks had tried to cough them up before they had died. I felt distraught as I continued walking, trying not to step on any of the dead duck corpses.

Chris came out of nowhere, and I grabbed his arm and told him that all these ducks were lying around and had died because of eating all the white pins that some evil person had left lying around for them. Chris shrugged, acted as though this was all normal, and insisted it wasn’t a big deal. I wasn’t sure what to think.

I had a dream that it was my friend’s daughter’s third birthday. They are hosting a birthday party for her at some rented space on the top of a 50-story building. I’m chatting with one of the party goers, who is a friend of my friend. And we were talking about how people are dying younger and younger for some reason. Maybe it’s the chemicals in our food, the stress in our lives, but every single one of us is doomed to have a shorter life.

And there comes the birthday girl out of nowhere, who starts balancing herself on the sofa. Behind the sofa is a window that is half open… big enough for a baby to fall out of. The girl tries to use the window to lean against to balance herself on the top of the sofa, but because it is open and she cannot see that, she falls right out in front of our eyes. The friend’s friend and I both witness this at the very same time, and we both yell out. The girl just fell out of the window of a 50-story building, and she’s going to die.

Last night, I met with a friend who has been troubled recently. In some ways, the way he talks, his tone, and his attitude toward life remind me of my brother in his last weeks of life. I spent about an hour with him and he left, but as I made my way home, all I could do was think about how this was like deja vu all over again, and all I could feel was powerless, powerless in the same way I felt with my Ed.

And to remind me of how powerless and hopeless I felt, I saw Ed in glimpses in my dreams last night. It was just flashes, but I could see his despair, his eyes as though they were just dark holes staring into a world of nothing. I woke up this morning feeling awful. You never really get over knowing that you failed at saving your brother’s life. There are times when people lighten the mood in dire situations and say, “Well, it’s not like it’s a matter of life versus death.” Well, that can’t be applied to this situation.

Family is overrated. People always say that blood is thicker than water, but most of the time the people making statements like that have no idea what a dysfunctional family can be like. It’s easy to make sweeping ignorant statements like that when you are blissfully unaware of how bad it can be.

Most of our wedding guests RSVPed in a timely manner, most far ahead of our RSVP deadline. I have one cousin who makes it seem like it is painful to say yes and that he doesn’t really want to come, so he decided to RSVP on the very last day for both deadlines I set and then complain that the sites were malfunctioning on the last day. That is probably our wedding website and Evite quietly telling him that his presence is unwanted. We really don’t want to host guests who are ungrateful and make it seem like it’s a chore and a hassle to come to our wedding. Just don’t come with an attitude like that.

And then I have an aunt who has been passive aggressive with me since I told her that her on again, off again boyfriend would no longer be welcome at the wedding. I refuse to host drama at my wedding events. I sent a reminder to RSVP for the optional wedding events. She forwarded my e-mail to her best friend… well, she thought she did, and asked her advice about whether she should continue ignoring me or just respond finally. She actually made the mistake of sending it…. straight to me. So I called her out on it and emailed her back, telling her that I don’t believe I was meant to be the recipient of this message. She dumbly responds, saying she has no idea how that got sent to me and that it had nothing to do with my message, and yes, she will be attending both optional events. What a pity.

I realized today that a short attention span is not only affecting my generation, but also the generation before me. I sent out an e-mail reminder regarding the welcome dinner and farewell brunch that Chris and I are hosting around our wedding to my side guests, and my cousin’s wife responded to me, letting me know that she already let us know that she is coming to our wedding. Well, if she had read the message I wrote, I explicitly asked for an RSVP for Thursday night and Saturday morning, not Friday’s wedding. Her message came off as passive aggressive and just annoying. She also probably didn’t notice that I blind copied everyone, so it wasn’t just like I was singling her out.

It’s sad when people can’t even read one- to two-line e-mails anymore and immediately read two out of ten words, choose to get mad about it, and then have to have someone else point out to them that they misread, misunderstood, and are just flat out wrong.