Please don't.

I had an argument with my mother on the phone. 

She called to ask about the dog. But we got on to talking about what to do when I go home to Taipei. My grandmother is going to be staying with my parents, and I said I'd go stay with Ben. My mother wanted me to stay at home, but I really dislike my grandmother and I said I didn't want to see her. 

The reason I really dislike my grandmother is because she's very close to my aunt Judy (the one whose husband abused me). When I was in Toronto, just after I'd pressed charges against my uncle, I saw my grandmother. I took her downtown to do some government paperwork, and on the train she told me how she wanted me to forgive my aunt and forgive my uncle. 

I hate it when anyone tells me to forgive. I don't know if they realize that it's not something you can just do. I don't know why they think they have the right to advise such a thing. However well meaning, it just makes me want to stab myself to prevent myself from stabbing whoever it is said it.

In contrast to my grandmother, my grandfather never mentioned my uncle's name in front of me again. I respect that more. It bothers me when people used to talk about him normally in front of me, like I wasn't there, or like I MUST be ok by now, since it was SUCH a long time ago. 

If nothing is done, do injustices cease to be unjust because time passes? Not to me. It's not a matter of how much I hurt, and still hurt - though of course that is also important - it's a matter of what the fuck have you done to redress the situation since it happened.

And for as far as I can see no one knows what they can do. So I feel like not much has changed except we are getting older all the time. 

I'm sick of being asked to forgive. I'm sick of being told that I should get over it. I'm sick of being the bigger person. 

But of course that's exactly what my mother asked me to do. She said that my grandmother won't ever stop being my grandmother and I should stop tormenting myself. I told her that I'm not tormenting myself. I've just decided to cut myself some slack and not try to forgive everyone or pretend like I forgive everyone because I can't. 

She tells me that I'm hurting her by not getting over it. I told her that if we can change places so that she goes through what I went through, then maybe she'd do better than I did, and then she could give me some advice. I probably shouldn't have said that, but I really just wanted to tell her to shut up telling me what to do when she has no clue what we're dealing with. 

And it kind of broke down from there. We argued and cried and then my dad intervened and they hung up rather abruptly. 

If my pain is so unbearable to them, what should I do? Hide it? I did that for so, so long. Should I continue to try to shield them? Initially I didn't want to expose my uncle because I wanted to protect his children. I didn't want to reveal the extent of my trauma because I wanted to protect my family. 

Is that my responsibility? I don't know.