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Last summer I visited my homeland for the first time in my life since leaving as a child, and met my cousins in person for the first time. Naturally, I was so happy and excited. Until on the first day, they started yelling at their elderly parents in front of me, deeply insulting and criticizing them, about the state of the apartment, that it wasn't clean enough (even though it was actually very clean and the parents had spent 10 days cleaning it in advance for their daughters' visits). The elderly man had even repainted the walls, which the daughter found faults with (minor things I would have never noticed) and yelled at him, basically calling him inefficient and incompetent. They called the mother "manipulative" and "liar", including saying she was a liar for saying the state of the apartment was clean (when I would also agree that it was clean!). I was shocked but thought it was none of my business and best for me to stay out of it, although in hindsight I wish I stood up for the parents immediately. I'm a person who is medium in cleaning/organization; I'm generally clean, but not a clean freak by any means and can be disorganized sometimes. During their fighting, I even started to cry because of how sad and stressed I felt about the situation. In response to my crying, the cousins just stared at me, kind of laughed, and seemed confused/annoyed by it. Then they started blaming their parents for me crying. Note these cousins were 28 and 32 years in age, and I was 24. Over the next few days, they generally behaved passive-aggressive, moody, and rude, with everyone to varying extents, except with their fiances and in-laws. Well, the older cousin did yell at her fiance too at one point. The cousins also got into a small fight between themselves too. Eventually they got mad at me too. What happened was - 1) after eating at the table, I handed the plate to my cousin (actually I can't remember if I handed it to her or just left it at the table) instead of taking it to the sink myself. I thought it made sense because she was closer to the sink and she cooked the food. I don't know if this was rude of me. 2) Apparently I left coffee cups around the apartment several times. I wasn't aware of this. We were drinking coffee several times and every time guests visited - as things were very busy that whole week there, I think I just kept forgetting. 3) One time after breakfast, I just washed my own plate, while I guess my cousin was expecting me to wash all the dishes in the sink. I thought we were going to talk about how to divide dishes later at night, I told her I would have been glad to help her with dishes and I offered to do them all later to compensate. She still maintained an attitude and passive-aggressive behavior with me regardless, calling me inconsiderate indirectly and speaking with me in a condescending/patronizing way. For all of these issues, instead of calming and respectfully addressing them with me first, they just either acted passive-aggressively or attacked. One night at dinner, she attacked her elderly stepfather for accidentally double-dipping, telling him that he's careless/inconsiderate/selfish and that he doesn't care if he's spreading covid or bacteria, and complaining loudly about how dirty the house is and that there must be bacteria everywhere (when it was totally normal and clean at that point). Another night, she and the other sister mocked him for wearing the same shirt two days in a row and asked him if he showers daily and started lecturing him about showering. In these situations, I tried to calmly stand up for him, which annoyed them more. Overall, it was a very negative atmosphere in the house, which was very taxing on me as I was also working 8 hours daily that summer and taking a bus commute that took 3 hours each day, plus job searching at night and working on a research article, as well as adjusting to a foreign country overall, and unaccustomed to all the social events they were taking me to (especially as I am a huge introvert and speak with an obvious accent), and I have my own health problems to manage too. In the end, I couldn't take it, and started snapping back and showing more my own frustration, which is not typical to my nature. In response to this, they pounced on me like wild hyenas calling me selfish/manipulative/inconsiderate/liar/user/immature/sociopath and all kinds of things that nobody has called me in my life. I was living there for a month (first three weeks with just their parents, and then the cousins arrived in the last week). When I was just with their parents, everything was fine, I got along with the parents as they were generally nice people towards me. In the beginning, I offered to pay the mother for my stay, which she refused. I sometimes offered to clean the apartment and helped with that, one time cleaning for 3-4 hours after work and the commute. I did not do the dishes, because the mother had told me she'll take care of that and their dishwasher seemed broken. The cousin brought this up at the end saying "you didn't do dishes the whole time you were here, for a month! You're not a guest, you were living here for a month!" When she was yelling at me like this, I did not even know what to say and I forgot the fact about how the mother told me to not worry about the dishes. The mother seemed to have forgot it too and went on the side of the cousins (who were denigrating her the whole week), resulting in a family mobbing situation in which I believe I was scapegoated. In response to me saying that I did not like how the cousin insults her stepfather, the cousin said "Oh yeah!? Well, you don't know that when I failed my university exam, he told me I'll never graduate!" While of course that's not a supportive thing for him to say, I don't think it justifies her insulting him in the ways she did. My father has said 10 times worse things to me undeservedly, and I would never use that as an excuse to insult him, especially not about hygiene, competence, and other cheap shots like that. So anyways, once they finished denigrating me in every way possible and making me out to be some horrible person (in hindsight, really I should have left as soon as it started instead of trying to reason with them at all), I packed my bags quietly. While I was packing my bags, the mother came in and told me to come eat with them. I said "no". To which she responded "come eat with us or we'll be mad at you." To which I responded "I don't care!" as they were already mad at me and had mistreated me. Then as I came out of the room with my suitcases, them 3 (the cousins and mother) started attacking me for saying "I don't care!" to the mother, even though they were saying worse things to her all week! Nuts! One of the cousins was begging me to stay while the other was saying "go ahead and leave! In fact, let's help you leave!" So it was a totally psycho nightmarish situation. What made it even worse was after I had gotten outside with my heavy suitcases, I realized I left my passport and work documents in the apartment, and had to drag my suitcases all the way back (one of the cousins saw me struggling with the suitcases and was cackling with glee from the balcony). So I came back in just to get my passport and work materials, exposing me to more denigration by them, and I had to ask the mother if she can call me a taxi to the city because I did not have phone service. So, she called the taxi, and as I was heading out the door, I said "maybe we can make up someday if you apologize to me", to which they replied "apologize for what? you'll never get an apology!", and then I responded "it doesn't surprise me, because I know you are shameless." and those were my last words to them. Therefore, for a few hours, I was homeless in a foreign third-world developing country, with my suitcases, until the taxi driver drove me to the capital city and I was able to contact my other cousins and they helped me rent an apartment in the city for the remainder of my time in the country so I could do my work properly and had a normal 30 minute commute. The rest of the time in the country was great. Crazy, crazy, crazy summer.
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