My immediate family is awesome, and most of my mom's side is cool. My parents and us kids have been through a lot together - my brother's lifelong illness and death, my sister's accident and brain damage, and my mom and I both have fibromyalgia and a slew of other chronic stress-related conditions, my dad has a ton of health issues and almost died last year, and a ton of other random stressful shit. So we're super close. We actually appreciate each other because we know first hand things can always be worse, and life's too short to deal with bullshit, and we all adore the baby, who is this sweet little bundle of joy we got as payment for the last few decades of stress.
I have a couple psycho family members on my mom's side that are total fucking assholes. They lie constantly and put everyone down to try and make their shitty little lives better. And a few are co-dependent on each other to enable each other's behavior while crying about their behavior to everyone else. Recently told one of them off for talking shit behind my back.
My dad's side, besides one uncle, are coke addicts that are half in prison and half trying to start drama. I have seen my grandparents once this decade, and once last decade. Haven't seen the rest of them since I was a kid. They don't know my husbands name, my married name, where we live, my phone number, nothing. Despite seeing them so infrequently, they still call my parents and cause fights. My parents have blocked the numbers, didn't answer, hung up on them. But eventually my grandma lies about someone being sick and my dad falls for it. He's still desperately seeking her approval after 60+ years of her narcissistic, manipulative abuse. The other kids are her favorites and can do no wrong, despite being complete fuck ups. One of my cousins robbed a bank for drug money (been in prison now for over 10 years), another cousin is in prison for selling a guy heroine, which he OD'd on and died so they found her liable, and the rest of them are complete low lives and drug addicts. I wrote them off entirely at the ripe age of 8 and never looked back. I was 2 or 3 years old and told my parents that my grandparents hated me, so my decision to never see them again wasn't a shock to my parents.
Then you have my in-laws. Pretty small family overall, and the ones I've met have been overwhelming good people or some of the biggest assholes you'll meet. Take your pick. Luckily my husband is rational enough to realize he'll never gain dear mom's approval, so hopefully that will save him decades of trying, like my dad did for so long. Actually my dad is trying to seek their approval for my husband and is constantly saying, "Well if they just see the baby again and how sweet she is, they'll have to fall in love with her and make things right." They saw her 2 months ago, immediately caused a scene at her birthday party and left, and haven't asked about her since. They've actually called in that timeframe but went out of their way to not bring up their only grandchild. My husband even said something snarky about how they're more than welcome to call and check on her, you know, show interest. Still nothing.
My grandma, my mother-in-law, and my aunt and her daughter could all be the exact same person. They'd definitely be the type to drown their kids in a bathtub and claim god told them to, but really because kids are just inconvenient for them. My MIL, aunt and cousin hate me and my mom so bad it's ridiculous, primarily because we are natural caregivers and maternal, which they are 100% not, so it makes them feel inferior. And when you're your biggest fan, you don't take too kindly to feeling inferior in any way. Comments were always made to my mom before that it just wasn't fair that her kids were so close to her vs my aunt and her kids. They never had an issue with me until I got pregnant, then it's been a race to prove that I'm some sort of fuck up asshole. Unfortunately for them I'm really laid back and nonconfrontational until they hurt my family and I have a really great excuse to tell them off. Feels good man. Now that I've told them all off so recently (except my grandma cause I never speak to her), I just troll them on Facebook. It's to the point where I could delete them without it being a shock, but it's more fun this way since they analyze everything I say there. It's great.
