Person
Every time my husband’s father hurts himself, he tells me how I’m going to have to help him. This last time he got something stuck in his foot and he left it for two weeks until he was pretty sure it was infected. He started off the way he always did “Hey. I need to borrow…” and he’d name the tool. This time he wanted a needle. Being the only woman in the house, I definitely have those, right? So I went and got the tweezers and told him that he could borrow those. Before I can leave he complains about how you can’t really dig into your foot with tweezers and how deep in there it was. “You’re probably going to have to dig it out.” he says. He doesn’t ask. He doesn’t imply. He directs me. When I told him that there was no f*cking way I’m doing it and I’m not his nurse he tells me “But you did it before!”. Why is this always the retort? Sir, I’ve done plenty of things before that I would never do again. My husband and I talk a lot about his father’s behavior and this is not an abnormal pattern for him. Despite the fact that his own child lives with him as well, and that he’s an able-bodied adult, it seems to be his belief that because of the uterus I was born with, it must be my directive to care for him. He’ll do things very frequently to indicate this. If I’m cooking he’ll tell me about how much he loves whatever food I’m cooking. If he’s hurt, he comes to me. If he needs anything that is relatively feminine, he comes to me under the assumption that I have it and that he’s welcome to it. Once he asked for yarn and I lied and told him I gave it away. He asked me why I keep getting rid of things he needs, you know, because I totally anticipated him coming to ask for yarn at random one day for a random project. He then complained that I gave away “our” yarn. Sir, it’s my yarn. I spent years and hundreds of dollars getting the different kinds and colors while learning to crochet. It was never once “ours”. Naturally, he expects that I have to nurture my husband, too. If I make myself a comfort food on a bad day, “(name) doesn’t like that.”. “Why do you always make things he doesn’t like?”. Twice. I made salmon twice. It never once occurs to him that I could cook something for me. “Why aren’t you making one for (name)?”. “Oh, (name) is going to hate that!”. One time I was making a comfort food that my (dead) mom used to make, potato farls. It’s not a difficult recipe, but it’s messy and it takes a lot out of me so we don’t get to do them often. I finally snapped and told him that “I don’t care what (name) wants. I am cooking this for -me-.” and he responded “A good woman would care.”. I’ve never yelled so loud in my life “I don’t give a flying f*ck about being a good woman. How about being a good f*cking person? I just want to be a f*cking person!”. I kept going until he ran off and eventually, to his son’s surprise, he apologized for the comment. I’ll never forget it and what it really said.