Wednesday 27 May 2009

Am I always to blame?

Every day I wake up and pray that today will be a good day...today my in-laws will be happy with me! Today I will be the perfect daughter-in-law...yet everyday I wake up to a phone call, text or email to say what a horrible daughter-in-law I am..how I am breaking up the family! Is everything I do wrong? Does spending two hours with my sister once a week if that mean I am putting her before my husbands family? Does trying to ensure my career is secure and I progress mean I don't care about family life (I mean I would quit..but how would we as a family survive?) Does dancing 2 hours a week mean I am putting my passion before my family? Surely not! Surely I am just a woman trying to balance all things in life...I still go and have dinner there every day, I still try and talk to them, I help wherever I can..I work late so cannot always make dinner but try and do everything else..even offer to make things the night before...I go out with them, never said no to any social event, wear what they want me to wear..talk to everyone in the community! Yet I am still not good enough...I'm not there enough..I havent taken responsibility of anything..I am not the perfect daughter in law..so what do I do? And everything is naturally interpreted as my idea..never have they thought that it could be their sons...that they are actually pushing him away and hence I am stuck in the middle of it! But somehow in some shape or form it will always be my fault..even if I wasn't even there....
The line at the end of this blog http://quackrites.blogspot.com/2009/01/daughter-in-law-dilemma.html will always stick in my head: "While a woman can work, and be at the top of her career, she may have kids and rear them real well, but at the end of the day, she still would remain the Indian daughter-in-law, forever vulnerable, and never quite up to the mark." How do you make it to the mark? What do you need to do? Cos feeling like you are not good enough every day of your life....well I think I have gone crazy!

Tuesday 26 May 2009

Who should decide?

Do you honour your husband? His parents? or yourself? I feel I am torn between what I want, what my husband wants and what his parents want from me! My parents and family don't even come to it...and its a shame...as with only 2 daughters is it right to leave them to their own devices..just cos they had girls! I have so many questions running through my mind at the moment I just don't know where to start and who to ask!!! Who does have the answers?? When does a girls life stop being her own and becoming the property of someone else? In this modern day is too much to expect to live your life the way you want to? And if it is someone elses property whose is it? Your husband or your in-laws?
This weekend the in-laws told us that as the eldest we should be taking on more responsibility and therefore less for them to do...and I agree and always have done...however the problem is not in the idea but in the method by which it should be conducted. How is one supposed to take responsibility of a house if you don't actually live there...and they don't actually want you to live there!! I am quite happy to move in with them..but they don't want us too! However, they do want me to cook lunch and dinner, help with cleaning, do the shopping etc...but they will not tell me when or how! I am meant to GUESS! So if on a Saturday I get there at 10am..lunch may already be ready...but I will get bad marks for not being there...even if MIL told me she wasn't making it until 11! Or if I go there and want to leave early as husband wants to go out...and MIL does the curtains after...how am I meant to know? Is that fair? For me a relationship works two ways...give and take! Surely, MIL can call me and say lets cook at 11am and we will make xxx...or I want to go shopping today..what time will you be free? Is it too much to ask? I have never been able to guess what my mum wants to do...so how can I be expected to know what in-laws want to do if they don't tell me? I have a million questions...each one with no answer? Should it be one big Guessing game? Surely thats not how life is supposed to be lived!