Strength Defined (Diary)

I came from a family where the women resided in the nose bleed section of the family tree. .
Where it was a turn on to act and do everything a man could do...only better. You didnt dare offend the women in my family on my moms side because there would be hell to pay.
I'm thankful it takes two because my fathers side was absolutely wonderful!
Soft, caring, loving...
It's not a bad thing to be a strong woman, but when it causes you to enslave your man in a psychosis of eggshells and glass, then the balance is wrong.
I watched my sick grandpa beg to be taken care of, to which my "loving" grandma slams a plate of food down on the table and screams at him to come eat, your shit is ready!
Carrying around his oxygen, which probably weighed more than himself at that point, nothing but skin on bones, he came and ate his shit.
I tried to step in and care for him, coming up every day, making sure his belly was full so he could....oh yeah LIVE a little while longer.
But that offended her and made her look bad so I was told I was no longer needed. Yet she didnt want to do it herself, and she didnt. I heard gravel popping one day and I couldn't believe my eyes, when I looked out the front door, there is my grandpa, only able to take three steps at a time, dragging his oxygen, and was wondering where I've been and I just didnt have the heart to tell him what grandma had done, so I just said oh, I've just been busy papaw. Still breaks my heart to this day. He ate at our house that evening. And for a moment he smiled. As a child I used to watch my grandma thump around on all the sons and not one time raise her hand to the females of the family.
I went digging once, to try to understand the anger this women held, I ended up learning that her dad was an alcoholic, and my grandma was made to grow up fast in a very confusing and hard situation.
Every night when her daddy would come in in his drunken stoopper, my grandma, at the age of 12 would be the first one he would beckon. Then afterwards she was made to clean up his vomit. I could read between the lines of what probably took place.
I didnt know that version of him, by the time I came along he had given his heart to Christ and had put down the bottle for the bible...thank God!
So...after learning all this, i tried to see through different eyes, but honestly, you cant take your past out on loved ones of the present, it was her choice to get married...to a MAN. It was her choice to have children, knowing they might be male. You cannot hate something you chose to step into, and you sure as hell cant use your past to brow beat innocent people. I mean he loved that woman, and gave her every ounce of his life, as well as anything she ever wanted.
And when he died, left her with enough to see her through two lifetimes.
Now, my grandma is 77, and her mother is 97 with dementia, I watch her treat her mother the same way she treated my grandpa in his last stages of life. It breaks my heart, and as irony would have it, she also now picks up the bottle. I just wish she would let us love her, a hug is such a foreign thing to her, that when I wrap my arms around her she will literally pull away and grouch, that's enough!
Shes so full of negativity and hatred that to even be around her in small increments, it takes two or three days to re-adjust and smile again.
And I find the daughters trying so hard to measure up to her, even tho she spews disappointment, they will literally cry to eachother, then keep trying to please her. They think women should be both alpha male and alpha female. And to be feminine is the greatest offence. To love your spouse is the greatest offence...to show emotion...the greatest offence.
I think that's why I've always tried to buck on those generational curses.
I want to be soft for my family.
I want to love and laugh, how miserable it must be to live in a world where they will never measure up to the woman holding the ruler, who doesnt even see how shes shorting herself. I love her dearly, but it's not a weakness to be a woman, it's a blessing in so many ways. And to now see all the males basically gone from the family and shes now taking it out on whats left of the females, the issue has always been within her and nobody else. She cant even measure up to herself, but I just pray she sees, she is enough. And softness is a strength not a weakness.