Just feeling a bit teary and sorry for myself, I'm blaming peri-men hormones for part of the emotions because I'm normally very 'water off a ducks back' about this stuff because I've got a good network of friends and a great therapist. Today I need the CF community, my people who 'get it'.
If the story is a bit long, go to the last 2 paragraphs for the bit that hurt me today.
Context: I am the ONLY person in my entire extended family who didn't have kids. As a very little kid I was pretty sheltered so I didn't even know it was an option to NOT have kids. This resulted in me having a huge fear of growing up as "I didn't want to have babies, ever". Once I got older and realised I had a say in this that fear went away. I got the usual 'you'll change your mind' stuff - I never did.
My parents aren't perfect, I'm closer with my dad then mum as he's never 'bingoed' me about being CF and we share a lot of interests but mum is a lot more like my sisters who both had kids really young. All those kids are adults now. They're objectively all great young adults. Predictably great grandchildren are happening now.
(Side note:I'm in the process of piecing some stuff together with my therapist and there's strong indicators that there's a late diagnosis of autism that dad and I share but that's a whole other story.)
My life is pretty different to the rest of my family, I'm the 'leftie bleeding heart progressive' in a family of fairly conservative rural folks (not MAGA, we're not Americans). My 'achievements' are all things that I guess don't really make sense to them as they're not really celebrated or acknowledged - I've succeeded in a creative field that is traditionally really hard to get in to, have a Masters, now looking down the barrel of PhD, on boards/committees in my industry etc. I don't want to look like I'm boasting, but I've worked hard at this - and as someone who's struggled a lot with anxiety, social issues and other stuff this is no small feat for me.
My family either don't know or don't care. I don't talk about any of this with them because when I did in the past the 'bitchiness' would get back to me because apparently it's ok to talk about your child's achievements constantly but not ok to mention in conversation that you did a cool thing in your work life.
I went to a family event recently and I went away and realised that while I asked people about their lives with genuine interest (I actually do care about these people before anyone thinks otherwise, it's just that I feel its not reciprocated), not a single person asked me what was going on in any part of my life. Not a one. Quite literally every single topic of conversation was about babies, pregnancies or grandchildren. Meanwhile, there are virtual strangers and clients that know me and my values better than some people in my own family.
Now, my parents have driven to visit my sisters twice in the past several weeks (the ones who gave them grandchildren, and now great grandchildren) . Both times they have bypassed me in my hometown and place of work to spend extended amounts of time with them and said grandchildren (as in - a couple of days). I had to make a concerted effort to see them on one of those visits for just a couple of hours. They then went off on a holiday and so I thought, "Cool, - there's this great textile exhibition on near me, mum loves sewing/fabrics, she'd love this space, it's on their way back - they LITERALLY have to pass through here to travel home. Maybe we can grab a quick lunch after and they can keep going". I message mum suggesting all of this.
At first I get a dithery 'maybe' when they're still a couple of hours away, so I check in when they're closer and I get crickets for an hour. This is followed by a 'sorry - next time'. I just... I feel like I'm a 'nobody person' to my family. I'm really lucky to have a great husband and great friends but it's just really upsetting to feel like your own family openly rejects who you are as a person because you don't fit their view of how a person should be. Sometimes I feel like I was born in to the wrong family. I feel like an alien amongst them. That's it - rant over I guess :/