2002-01-04 10:14 a.m.

Is this a normal thing?

OK, well, it's funny sometimes. I live in a great family, right? I mean some people probably even look at us and think we're like the perfect family or whatever. I think it'd be easier to live in a family that looks dysfunctional, because then people would except things to go wrong. When you live in what other people think is a "wonderful" family with what people think is a "wonderful" mother, it's VERY hard to know if you are just exgaggerating problems. Maybe every family is like this and maybe I should just shrug this off as a normal family fight.

OK, see, yesterday, my mom kinda, like, attacked my sister. It was real weird. My mom is kinda interesting; she sometimes gets in these funky bad moods that seem to come from nowhere. We(the kids) are pretty used to it now. You never know when she'll come upstairs and start yelling at us how we live in a household and never do anything to help out and then she'll tell us to do some stuff and then not speak to any of us and close herself in her room til she calms down. Then she'll try to talk to us and ask why we don't ever talk to her and why we treat her like we don't like her, etc. We know better to answer anything back, though. Everything is always our fault. We're used to that, so we say nothing. And then everything is fine until mom goes into another of her moods.

But the thing is, it's like my mother's moods determine how things are run in our houshold. If she's upset, we walk on tiptoes until she's not. If she's in a great mood, it's like we're allowed to be in a great mood. She's also incredibly sensitive and if we ever mentioned her strange moods to her, I swear, I don't know what she'd do.

Anyways, yesterday she was in a normal mood, or so we thought, until she came upstairs and told me that I was this close to being thrown out of the house(I've heard this several times before, it's not a serious threat) and then started telling my other sisters to go do some stuff and then gave us the usual lecture about how we never do anything. Well, my next younger sister kinda gave this smart little noise, like "whatever mom" and then it all happened.

My mom just grabbed my sister and started hitting/slapping her and started pushing her towards the door telling her to get out of her house. My other sister, who could see what was happening better than I could, started yelling "Mom, Stop!!", not that it was helping or anything. My dad ran out from a back room and my mom had stopped then, having pushed my siter out the door. Then my mom, I guess maybe realizing what she had done, just took the car and left and came back hours later.

yeah, we're not all talking today. the 3 youngest girls(there's 6 of us) weren't there, so my mom is normal towards them, but would't speak a word to us. I don't blame her. I don't want to speak to her, either. We have a family event to attend today. I bet none of my mom's family would ever expect something like this out of her. I wonder if we'll have to act like the typical "wonderful" family everyone thinks we are.

Anyways, I'm just wondering if this is a normal thing? Are other families like this? Am I being dumb to even think that perhaps our family has problems, though you wouldn't imagine it?

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