So, something I don't necessarily enjoy talking about too much is my recent history with my mom's side of the family. After my mother died in 2013, my relationship with them fell apart. They're not great people, in my opinion. They gave me what you might call a "complex", being raised in kind of a cruel and somewhat mentally abusive way - the old "you need to grow a thicker skin" mindset. A very vivid memory that I have is when I was 15-16 years old and got my hair that had always been shoulder length or longer cut into an emo-punk pixie cut - or whatever you'd call it. Cropped off almost entirely in the back with longer bangs in the front. Some might call it a reverse mullet, or nowadays a "Karen" cut even though that term didn't exist then (this was early 2000s - maybe '01 or '02). Anyway it was drastic for me but looked pretty good, my parents supported my decision and I loved it, and it was a big step for me in regards to starting to become my own person. My uncle from another state visited shortly after, and when he saw it he said something to the effect of "Were you going for the d*ke look?" (Censored because the word is pretty offensive.) Needless to say I went off to my room and bawled my eyes out. My mom chewed him and my grandmother out, and in response she was told "It was just a joke; she has to finally learn how to take a joke sometime in her life." It wasn't ever intended as a joke, and I never did get any sort of apology for that, I just had to "move on" on my own. It would be offensive on its own, but an added detail of this story is that no one in my family knew at that point that I was bisexual, I had not come out yet to them. Anyway, that's just one example of the way my mom's side of the family was. The day that my grandmother, red-faced, called me a "selfish b*tch" to my face was the day I was done. I have had no contact with any of them since; in fact I've moved twice since then and I'm not even sure how many details they know about my moves or my whereabouts. One of the only things I do know is that my uncle has since made claims that he believes my dad "murdered" my mother and that he should be charged. (She died of a rare blood cancer in one of the best cancer hospitals in the country - my dad willingly went bankrupt trying to save her. I believe my uncle is beyond insane.)
Anyway, when I started scrapbooking again I had a rough choice to make. I don't have many photos of them but I do have some. My son is old enough to remember them so I can't just erase them from his existence. At the same time, I'm still so angry (especially after hearing that "murder" thing) I don't want to see their faces.
To my recollection I've only scrapped pictures with them in them twice since I started back up - once for a challenge here and one page while working on my son's first year album. I only do it when I'm mentally prepared to stare at a picture of these people for an hour or longer. I decided it's not fair of me to cut them out of my son's scrapbooks - simply because he IS old enough to remember these people, and if I'm "controlling" what goes in these books that will one day be passed down to him because of my anger, I'm stealing a chunk of his history that isn't mine to steal. On the other hand I do not go out of my way to make sure they are included, or go out of my way to scrap the photos if I'm not mentally ready to do that. It's not quite the same as scrapping a photo of an ex. But...I've more willingly scrapped photos of exes than photos of my family, so...take from that what you will lol.
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