My grandma still talks about her divorce, iin?

55% Normal
21 Comments

I don't know the whole story behind this, as I have heard so many.
Something like 40 years ago, when my father was 2, my grandparents got divorced.

It could be because my grandfather was an alcoholic, or it could be because my grandmother cheated on him. Hell, it could be because they are both crazy asses who had screwed up childhoods and unresolved psychological difficulties but were not bright enough to resolve them before having children.

The fact of the matter is, they got divorced, grandpa left and found a woman with as many problems as grandma and grandma STILL theorizes as to why her husband left her, coming up with new theories every so often. I swear, that woman puts the "late" in "speculate".

The new theory is that there was a boy down the street who had two older sisters and became a "wuss" and grandfather was so afraid for his youngest son (my father) who was born to two older sisters of becoming a "wuss" that he just had to leave grandma for a woman with three sons. He's not exactly a big tough asshole of a man, he was a sailor for 20 years, but pretty chilled out. I doubt I would call him a wuss, though.

Personally, I'm summing that up to yet another in a long list of idiocies that have spawned from the Pandora's Box that is her imagination. As far as beating the dead horse goes, I believe that this horse has decomposed into the ground and she is just beating at the flora and other various plant life that has spawned from the nutrients of the decomposition.

I understand that our past carries every bit of relevance to who we are today, but I would think that, after 40 years, she will have had ample time to come to her conclusions and/or seek professional help.
Is it normal that my grandma STILL talks about her divorce?

Voting Results
55% Normal
Based on 31 votes (17 yes)
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Comments ( 21 )
  • thinkingaboutit
    11 years ago

    beating at the flora haha

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  • [Old Memory]
    11 years ago

    40 yrs is a long time to hold something inside like that. Did she do it with other happenings in life or is it basically just this divorce?

    At the end of the day we spend alot of time ruminating on those things that have been taken from us, even while more is being taken from us at the very same time. I often find myself wondering what motivates people like that to continue on.

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    • NeuroNeptunian
      11 years ago

      Basically, her relationship with her husband. She has literally been talking shit about him non-stop ever since then. It's like she is inventing more reasons why we should hate that side of our family.

      I'm tired of this "family feud" bullshit going on. She wants her ex to be more involved with her kids lives (which is mostly is except for a few), but she does nothing but give us more reasons to hate him. She does the same for my father.

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      • dalmationUntoyourSoul
        11 years ago

        almost all the women in my mom's family act like that. be glad you dodged the bullet. i don't think it's normal, some people are just manipulative and don't really want to work for their own well-being and happiness, when they can just drain everyone else and feel powerful and drag people down with them. i don't understand it. i either maintain a superficial relationship with those people, or none at all.

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  • regisphilbin
    9 years ago

    yes

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  • theresaside
    11 years ago

    My grandmother still talks about her first marriage/divorce and she just celebrated her 45th wedding anniversary to her second husband, who treats her kids from her first marriage as his own and was fine with not having any biological kids of his own. Her first husband was an alcoholic too and she never really got over it fully.

    I don't think it's something you can really just forget and heal about, even after all of those years.

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  • Shackleford96
    11 years ago

    Maybe it's not normal for her to hold on to something like that for so long, but I don't want to judge her though...

    I really enjoyed reading your post, it was very well written and you have creative diction :)

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  • Avant-Garde
    11 years ago

    40's years does seem like a long time to obsess over it, but sometimes love wounds take a long time to heal. She sounds like she's putting the blame on others instead of facing facts. She needs to move on especially if it's causing problems in her day to day life.

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  • Java
    11 years ago

    Old people mental issues?

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  • kingsleycrowne
    11 years ago

    Ah she must really love him. :) I really enjoyed the read, well written :)

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  • NerdyChickFTW
    11 years ago

    I call normal. It's normal not to forget your past, and maybe she just hasn't gotten over your grandfather. I don't think it's a big deal, honestly. Unless that is all she talks about.

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    • NeuroNeptunian
      11 years ago

      Other than her hobby and husband, yeah. If she calls me and I pick up (I usually do unless I am busy), I will more than likely have to listen to her yap about it for 2 hours.

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  • dappled
    11 years ago

    I don't want to be mean but you sound really scornful towards your grandmother. I know you are going for a humorous angle but "idiocies" isn't nice.

    I'm not sure everything can be neatly filed away with professional help. My own grandmother had a tragic childhood, a tragically short marriage, and a tragic second half of her life. The time she talked about most was her childhood; the one she should have had longest to reconcile.

    I know it's easily to ridicule the old. Another way to look at it is that this is a woman who has been hurting for longer than nearly everyone on this site has been alive. There's no merit in mocking that.

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    • NeuroNeptunian
      11 years ago

      I understand what you are saying.
      I'll admit, I do feel a fair bit of guilt in making fun of her, and I do not publicly berate her, but she is keeping a painful issue alive by doing this.

      Our family is already feuding over this divorce, over the religious chasm etc. and she has been attempting to pull me to her "side" since day 1. My generation has already agreed to put those family issues to rest in our own circle, but she keeps the hatred alive, the same way that the other "side" of the family does to our "side". I'm honestly just tired of all of this, and niether of them want to decide to just let it go.

      I have a bit of animosity towards her, I will admit. She has been prompting me to take my little sister away from my Mom and ridicule my father for years. I keep telling her that my Mom is fine and that I have no desire to continue the "feud", but she prefers to continue the hatred and the least I could do to ease my mind is to vent on the internet. I apologize if I had offended you.

      I'm tired of being used as a weapon or a way to gain information. She is over 60 damn years old. She involved a child in an adult conflict. In the end, I don't have any pity for her. She should know better.

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      • dappled
        11 years ago

        To be honest, I wasn't sure I should post what I did because it was only two days ago I was calling my father a bastard here and it seemed a bit hypocritical of me to point the same thing out in your words.

        In both our stories, there's a heck of a lot more going on than can just be said in an IIN story. Families, eh?

        You didn't offend me in the slightest. The picture of your grandmother I got from your reply is a lot different than I had from your story. I'm not surprised you are venting. :/

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        • NeuroNeptunian
          11 years ago

          Well, like I said, I do feel a fair bit of guilt for venting. I understand that she may still be in pain from it.

          But she has caused a lot of pain in our family. Her abuse of my father and his sisters as well as her childish ploys to convince me to hate my own father for being abusive when I just want to forgive him and get on with my life...

          Yeah, there's a heck of a lot more than some text can describe. I want to sympathise with all of the pain that her childhood and marriage has caused her, but she proceeded to inflict that pain on others (her children) and is proceeding to further the hatred that already exists within our family. Her own children want nothing to do with her for it and she still tries to use me to get at my father. It's funny because 20+ years ago, she kicked him out and told him not to come back when he was 17.

          She is not merely an old woman in pain, she is an abuser in her own way. She beat her children and struggled with "poverty" whilst spending thousands of dollars in child support checks on her special stash of gold jewelry and the savings she put together to buy herself a nice house while my Aunt was bullied in school for wearing hand-me-downs that were SEVERAL sizes too small for her. And she CONTINUES to cause problems. My sympathy for her is minimal at best.

          Haha, sorry. Like I said, animosity.

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      • disthing
        11 years ago

        Sounds like the result of bitterness and heartbreak to me, like something her ego has never recovered from. That's not to suggest she should be excused. I agree with you; she should know better.

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        • NeuroNeptunian
          11 years ago

          I am pretty convinced by the psychological arguments that have been made... but if she loved him so much and her heart was so broken, why'd she up and cheat on him, and then abuse his children?

          I'm not expecting you to answer that. And I really don't enjoy her attempts at continuation of this feud and hatred in our family. It has been 40 years, leave me out of it.

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  • Captain_Kegstand
    11 years ago

    My mother and my father got divorced years back. My father is now getting married to a new woman and has moved on. My mother, even though she divorced him twice, is still trying to come up with a reason they got divorced.

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  • thecoldhardtruth
    11 years ago

    It seems when people get old they stop caring about being normal, so a lot of what they do is not normal.. So it's normal that it's not normal.
    You're a great writer by the way. :)

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  • nightmare28
    11 years ago

    The difference between an elephant and a woman is that the elephant eventually forgets.

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