Photo by Hailey Kean on Unsplash
There are days that I move on after my mother in-law fiasco and the things that she hurt me before does not hurt as much.
Today, I am reminded of her nastiness. My husband sent a whatsapp image from his father.
This is a Microsoft Word wedding invitation. As the couple’s first language is not English, they spelt ‘wedding’ as ‘weeding’.
I would have been ok if my husband did not tell me that it was a wedding invitation. I really thought it was some gotong-royong going on.
Why I was so triggered? Because my mother in-law was a pain in the ass before I got married until we moved out to our own place. Everyone gives me the same advice about dealing with in-laws and for some people, this whole thing is a blind spot to them. Sometimes I try to think through, why am I so affected with her? There are so many reasons why I was affected by her, but it boils down to her disrespect for me.
When she first met me when I was dating her son, she ignored me. I knew something was wrong but I thought, just give her a chance. Maybe she wasn’t comfortable with me. After all, I know I have a scary face when I don’t smile.
Why I said disrespect?
- She disrespected my money decisions. I went all the way to spend below the expected budget and was criticised for spending and commented why everything is expensive. I even get things below market prices and was being criticised for that.
- She criticised my identity for not being a Penang Peranakan. She judged my family for not doing certain cultural things that she does.
- When I was trying to chase my photographers (that will come in another blog post) for the photo for my invitations, my mother in-law was chasing me for the invitations was done. While I am trying my best to get things done, she went, “I don’t care about design. I actually wanted to created a Microsoft Word document and print out so she can send to her friends. 4-5 months after I got married, my mother in-law and my sister in-law were looking through my parents in-law wedding photos and my mother in-law said this, “You see, I went to the printers and printed my card. Why you didn’t do that?” I was aghast because I did go to the printers and printed my own wedding cards with my design, and my husband passed them to her.
- She treated me as the lowest of the hierarchy because I am a designer. When she found out that I was doing Masters, her treatment towards me changed.
- Whenever I am around (before getting married), she ignored me when I call her ‘aunty’ and start calling for my husband to talk to her or help her.
As the points stated above, the possible reasons why I felt that I am hit to my core is because her attacks were towards my identity. I know there are advices that our identity is in God, and we have to be secure and know our identities. She hit me hard on that, and while I am slowly healing, but at the same time, it still hurts. Of course there are other things that I am hurt about, but identity and culture attack is the worse, and it is hardest to recover. Because when your identity and culture is hit, we may be left with nothing to hold on. We are left with broken pieces and thinking what part of our identity is wrong. I was left with doubts about my worth. Is being a Hainanese-Foochow wrong? Is being a designer wrong? Is doing masters wrong?
God help me. I am only human.