We've all heard the jokes about mother-in-laws being nightmarish creatures to be interacted with only when the consequences of not doing so outweigh the danger. Wives' mothers don't ever think their daughter's husband is good enough, and husbands' mothers never stop blaming their sons' wives for usurping their power.
Well, I'm not afraid of my mother-in-law any more. Not after yesterday. In fact, I'm pretty overwhelmed at how much we shared with each other, and how much wailing and gnashing-of-teeth and passive-aggressive sniping did not happen. It isn't that I ever had reason to believe Matt's mom was a monster. It's just that I have had precious little positive experience with family of any kind, at any time in my life. Even the word "family" has, in the past, been enough to trigger feelings of dread. And not just the "normal" dread people talk about when dealing with lots of family interaction at holidays and whatnot. I'm talking about any interaction at all.
Yesterday afternoon, I met my mother-in-law for coffee. I had initiated this little get-together, which is an accomplishment in itself for me, due to my abject terror of mother figures in general. I wanted to talk to her about her experience with spinal fusion surgery, since it's something I may have to deal with very soon. I reached out because I needed reassurance that all of my anxious, paranoid fears were indeed simply anxious, paranoid fears. (For contrast, my own mother, upon being told that I was considering surgery, promptly sent me links to scary articles warning of the dangers of anaesthesia and antidepressants.)
We talked, and she gave me the reassurance I was looking for. And then, the conversation took an unexpected turn. I told her about my panic attack of the evening before, and she asked me, point-blank, if anything at the memorial service may have triggered me. I had told her before that I am not Christian, and she hadn't run screaming, but I was still apprehensive about talking about my views (discussed in the previous entry in this journal.)
"I... really don't want to argue about religion," I told her, fidgeting in my seat.
"I won't argue, I promise," she said. "I just want to know."
So I told her about why the service had made me uncomfortable. To my surprise, she empathised with me. She actually seemed to agree, at least somewhat, in particular with my irritation at the assumption that all of the fallen had been Christian. She went on to imply that their church had changed a bit since the pastor I was familiar with and had liked had gone into mandatory retirement. (Apparently it's just a thing Episcopalian priests have to do.) The previous pastor, a woman, had made me feel quite at ease when I had visited the church previously. The energy of the place was definitely different without her leading the service. The new priest kind of gave me a bad vibe.
We went on to talk about other subjects that I didn't think I would ever dare talk about with my mother-in-law. (I'm not going to go into them here, as they're rather private, and this journal is public, but the subject of boobs came up.) By the end of the evening, I felt like I'd actually made a friend.
Wait... a ... what? A friend? Who is also my mother-in-law? I ... don't know how to process this. Family is family and friends are friends. There's my chosen Family, people who are not related to me in blood that I love as if they were, but that's different. I've almost never been friends with people I call "mandatory family." Blood relations, relations-by-marriage, that sort of thing. My mind is now desperately trying to categorise this new type of relationship. An "adult," who is the mother of my husband, who likes me as a person and wants to spend time with me. And there's no weird ulterior motive, no secretive back-biting bullshit, none of the stuff I'd come to see as "normal" in my own family.
The closest I've ever had to this kind of friendship was the mother of Brian, my first truly long-term relationship, and she died just as I was finally beginning to trust her. That was a long time ago, and I was a very young adult. Is my mother-in-law going to up and die now, too? I know that's ridiculous, but I can't help but think it. It's part of the feeling that this sort of relationship is so rare and fragile that it could disappear or implode at any moment.
Regardless, I'm incredibly grateful for my mother-in-law... and her son. I think maybe my life is finally starting to round itself out, with mature and non-dysfunctional (should I just say functional?) relationships with people of all ages in varying roles. It's just still a little hard for me to believe.
Where do we go from here?
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