To my ex SIL:
You have an 8 year old daughter and a 6 year old son. You have very few opportunities to visit them because you live 3000 miles away. You were supposed to take them for six weeks this summer. My brother made arrangements to fly the kids up there, with him as an escort, and then fly them back home, with you as an escort. Four round trip plane tickets, which he paid for. Why? Because his 8 year old daughter worships the ground you walk on and thinks you hung the moon. But then, it’s easy to be a hero to a child you never have to see, right?
So then, two days before the planned trip, you cancel. They can’t come. You’re in a very bad place right now, personally, you mean. Your ex-boyfriend is abusive. You haven’t actually made any day care arrangements for the kids, even though you’ve known for months they’re coming, and you can’t take care of them during the day because you have to go to work. You don’t have enough money to keep them for six weeks anyway. It’s just a bad time.
My brother has to explain this to his 8 year old daughter, who is broken-hearted. He has to eat the cost of four plane tickets (non-refundable, non-transferrable); he has to make daycare arrangements for both kids for an extra six weeks; and he does not get the break he needed from being the only parent to two lively children, which he is, 24/7/365.
But it’s okay, you explain! You still have the plane ticket HE bought in your name! You will fly down to see them instead! You can take a few days off of work and come stay with them – in my brother’s house, which you can imagine how excited he is about that, but he says “okay,” because you haven’t seen the kids for a year and the 8 year old is eating her heart out to see you. More plans are made. The 8 year old literally bakes you a cake. The house is cleaned. Plans are laid. Your plane lands tomorrow.
Today you call. You aren’t coming. You are in a very bad place right now, personally, you mean. You can’t take the time off work. You’re not feeling well. It’s just not going to work. So now my brother’s on the phone with me, infuriated, and his daughter is upstairs crying her eyes out. And in the kitchen is a cake with your goddamn name on it.
So I have a very simple question for you, you self-centered unstable irresponsible
bitch: DO YOU WANT TO BE A PARENT OR NOT? Because if you DO, you better start stepping up and meeting some of your responsibilities, especially when those responsibilities are nothing more difficult than getting on a plane to go visit them at NO EXPENSE TO YOU. lf you think my brother is going to sit quietly by while you build up the hopes of a child and then cruelly shatter them, over and over and over, you are fucking insane. The ONLY REASON he has not put a stop to this nonsense is the fact that he knows how much your daughter adores you, and he wonders if having a piece-of-shit mother isn’t better than having no mother at all. At this point, none of us is at all sure about that. Grow the fuck up and start being a part of your children’s lives in a way that is not hurtful and damaging, or fucking do us all a favor and disappear.
Oh, and here’s a little bit of info that will probably make you feel better even though it should make you feel worse: Your son? The six year old? He doesn’t give a shit if you come or not. He barely knows who you are. You are so much absent from his life, either as a reality or as a dream, that he doesn’t give a rat’s ass if he ever sees you again. So nicely done there, as well.
Dopers, my brother and niece and nephew are coming to visit this weekend. Any suggestions for how to comfort/ distract a broken-hearted 8 year old girl would be greatly appreciated.