My wedding is about three weeks away and DH and I are both ready for it to be over with. I fluctuate between enjoying the planning and hating his family for making this stress necessary. I also fluctuate between adoring DH and hating HIS guts for lacking the backbone to tell his family we already got married and they can either be happy for us or act like selfish assholes, demanding we pay for an expensive party for THEM.

This wedding is more trouble and drama than it's worth. With my family problems and this big, elaborate lie… It's making me feel so burdened and angry.

My mom and brother are still unable to speak to one another–as are the rules of their religion and I'm so angry at my mother for making this MY problem. I'm already under a ton of stress and she keeps heaping things on my shoulders that I keep telling her I don't need.

First with her offering money, and then renegging, and then turning around and offering me $500, but only giving me $400, and then telling me she'd mail me a check for the other $100, but never doing it…etc.

I called her in tears last week because I told her I was overwhelmed and she offered to buy a centerpiece for our head table–all I had to do was call a flower shop and ask for pricing. I told her the price and now she keeps asking me if I've ordered it yet. NO, I haven't. She said SHE was paying for it! I'm not ordering something I can't afford so she can dick me around with the money again.

I also asked my brother to cue up the ceremony music for us–to give him a way out of having to sit by our mom with whom he's not allowed to speak. He was happy to help and my mom seemed satisfied with it, until she called me yesterday asking whether or not I was sitting my brother with her at the reception.

I said, "He'll be at your table, but you can sit Jo (my aunt) between the two of you if that'll make you more comfortable.

"WHAT?" my mom bellows. "You said he'd be doing the music!"

Me: "For the CEREMONY, Mom. He'll be in the balcony for the CEREMONY. He's not DJing my wedding reception!"

Mom: "What ceremony music? I didn't know there was music for a ceremony."

Me: "Who DOESN'T have music for a wedding ceremony? What planet are you from? Look, I'm not sitting my brother in a closet!"

I was so disgusted that I told her my sister's kids were being too loud and I'd call her later–which I didn't.

Later, my brother confessed to me that he hasn't gone to the hall (their version of church) in a month and doesn't want to be reinstated. He says he feels more alive than he has in a long while and was vague about why he's come to this conclusion or how set in stone it was. Just that he felt like he'd been drifting through his life and wished he'd done more with himself, and that he's lost the motivation to do it anymore.

Part of me was extatic, to be honest. The other part was terrified. The man is 39 years old, has been totally constrained by a strict religion for his entire life– to the point where he married a virtual stranger just to keep in within his faith (now they're getting a divorce). He's going to be a walking DISASTER of unaccountability.

AND, he' going to have to break this news to my mom, if he's really serious about this and not just lashing out.

I told him, "Well, she'll just have to deal with it, just like she dealt with Dad, and me, and C (our sister) when we quit going. It's deal with it or lose your family."

For anyone who doesn't know, it's pretty common for JWs to disown family members for leaving. More common than I thought while growing up, because my dad was around to keep my mother thinking sensibly. Now that he's gone, I worry that my mom will bail out on us for thinking we're trying to influence her to do "worldly" things. We actually don't. My sister and I respect her way of life and want her to continue doing whatever it takes to keep her head together.

He said, "Yeah, but it's different with me. You know it is."

Meaning he knows damn well he's always been my mother's favorite.

"Yeah, I know." I said.

So, now in addition to the stress of planning a wedding 95% alone, paying for it with our meager incomes, trying to find a decent job before my school loans run out of deferment (soon), trying to maintain the illusion that we're marrying for the first time, going to work, editing my first novel, writing my second novel, making it to my exclusive writing group in hopes that they don't replace me, trying to figure out where to put my brother so he doesn't feel like a leper, wondering if my mom's going to back out of walking me down the isle just because DH and I chose to marry in a church (basically nondenominational)… DEEP BREATH… now I get to worry about my brother's soul and how he's going to act out with his newfound freedom. Now I get to wait for my mom to LOSE IT.

Oh, and my only ally, my older sister, may have to move to Philly with her husband and kids, if he gets a job out there.

Believe it or not, my family life used to be relatively boring and drama free (aside from my mother's breakdowns). My dad was our voice of reason and he's just dead now and the two holy rollers have gone nuts. I sometimes wish my dad had been the one to survive, but I know he would have just died of a broken heart if my mom went first.

What a shitty but honest thing for me to think.