Counselor, I like to say that hubby's family is my family now. I look forward to when his mother visits. She is an invaluable source of support for me. We keep a photo in our living room of everybody present when his aunt and uncle renewed their vows on their 50th anniversary. It means as much to me as it does to him, because it represents everything family is *supposed* to be. They make no secrets of their own problems, which they do have, but were discussing openly, even in front of me.
By contrast, in my previous marriage I would have been considered "an outsider" even though we were married. My ex's sister ran the show. Her own husband, now HE was family, but I was an outsider because "he was my brother before he was your husband." I have now come to the conclusion that it was no coincidence he also had disabilities, as I do. Ex-SIL was a major caretaker. The worst thing that can possibly happen to her would be to have everyone around her suddenly well and healthy. She would have no purpose in life if that happened. Nobody would "need" her. She can't let that happen!
And thus the self-fulfilling prophecy. I faced it in my own family, I now realize. That's why it made me so mad to see it happening to him too. Basically, it's, "This person is disabled. Let's not bother teaching the life skills he needs in order to be independent. He probably can't learn them anyway." So, never having been taught a certain skill, naturally he finds that he cannot do it. "Now see? This is why he needs me!" Ex-SIL just hated me, because I was teaching Ex to do all kinds of things for himself, thereby proving he could do it, and what did he need her for, exactly?
Looking at my own life, though, I would have been better off getting myself out of that crab bucket, instead of getting him out of his, especially since time proved he didn't really want out of it. Ultimately, he found it easier to sit back and be helpless, letting everybody do everything for him. I didn't fully know it at the time, but my family was doing the same thing to me that his was doing to him. Prime example is the driving thing. Everyone was so perfectly willing to teach my younger siblings how to drive, but until hubby came along, all I got was promises of "Sure, I'll teach you," but nobody ever actually stepping up and doing it. That's why I'm almost 50 and have only been licensed for a year. They assumed I couldn't learn, didn't bother to teach me, and then used the fact that I didn't know how to drive to demonstrate how helpless and incompetent I am.
The giraffe--well, I'm writing my autobiography. It goes in fits and spurts because at times it gets so deeply emotional that I have to stop and take a break from it for a while. At one point, I used an analogy in response to the challenge, "Look, the same things happened to me, and I survived. You're making a big deal out of nothing." Well, picture accidentally knocking down a curio cabinet, and your prized animal figurines come crashing to the floor. Chances are, your wooden elephant is just fine, but your glass giraffe is in pieces. The elephant might say to the giraffe, "Hey, I had the same fall you did, and I'm not complaining." But that doesn't make the giraffe any less broken, and neither does the fact that it was an accident rather than deliberate abuse. Nor can the elephant expect the giraffe to just transform itself into wood instead of glass. That would be impossible.
So I was going to title my autobiography, "The Glass Giraffe." But I don't want to step on toes, so I'll find another analogy.
