BrokenFingernail.com

I just don’t know about my grandmother. She has issues with me that I can’t begin to understand and she’s not about to tell anyone, so it’s just a mystery.

Tomorrow, I’m supposed to take her to a doctor’s appointment. It was rescheduled today to 8:45AM, but that’s not a big problem for me. I was fine with it, but I knew that I would have to find the quickest route there to get her to the appointment on time, since she won’t ride in my car and we’ll be taking my mother’s. My mom won’t be home till about an hour before the appointment, so I didn’t want to have to rush down there, and, having never been to the clinic before, I looked it up on MapQuest.

My mother and grandmother have both given me directions. They have both given me different directions. My grandmother has a tendency to go the longest route to avoid traffic, and I am not like that. I can get through traffic–I am an aggressive driver when needed. So, I just wanted to look it up to see what way I was going to go.

Well, MapQuest says that it’ll only take about 40 minutes to get there. That would be fine and all, if my grandmother was okay with it. She wanted to know where I got my directions from. She kept asking until I explained that I looked it up online. (Apparently, saying “I found it on MapQuest” wasn’t good enough for her!) She proceeded to shout about “well if I don’t get there on time” thing, which was stupid because I had just explained that I found the shortest route there so we could make it on time–39 minutes.

I’m just tired of her doing this. Ever since she got sick, I’ve offered to help out but she never has wanted me to take her anywhere. She’ll admit that I’m not a bad driver, but she’d rather my mother take her. Once, when my mother and I both asked her what the problem was with me taking her, she broke down and said that she “didn’t want to be alone,” as though I would just drop her off and leave her there!

It’s just not always possible for my mother to take her. She works six days a week and has to sleep during the day, but anytime she can she takes her mother. This appointment, my grandmother tried to reschedule so my mom could take her, stating that she “didn’t have a way down there otherwise.” A handful of family and friends have been wanting to take her to her appointments and such, but she’ll have none of it.

What is her problem? I may never know. She won’t explain it and the one time she has let me take her to an appointment, she told me to sit down and wait for her to come back out. My mother didn’t understand this when I told her, because my grandmother doesn’t like doing things alone.

In any case, I can’t just up and blame it on her medication either. She’s been withdrawn from all of us from some time and that’s the way this family works. You don’t cry. You don’t show emotion, except anger. We’ve all had shouting matches and it’s been like that since I was a child and I was raised this way. We don’t try and open up to each other, because that’s just not how they work. So, maybe that’s a big part of it too.

I’m upset, of course, but that’s beside the point. I just wish I knew what her problem is with me. It’s like how she used to be with my uncle, who is now rather accepted in the family.

Does that now make me the black sheep of this family? Would that really surprise me that much? ..No.