Respect

What is the true meaning of respect?        "politeness, honour, and care shown towards someone or something that is considered important"

That is the Google answer.  I looked it up trying to understand why I apparently am like Rodney Dangerfield, whose hook line was "I get no respect". 

I do get respect from most people.  Most important to me,  I've received respect from my mother and brothers Even though the respect from my mother came very late in her life,  pretty much on her death bed,  and Mike spent a decade trying to destroy all respect anyone had for me.  My mother was largely influence by Mike for several years and by just never really getting to know me until she was dying. Mike is a much more complicated story that sadly started with an old grudge.  A very old grudge he likely still holds but has decided to overlook in our old age. If course I would rather h could see what happened between us now clearly but Mom told me that he never would and she was right.  But,  I understand those things.  What I don't understand,  what I find myself fighting to understand,  is the total disrespect from at least 3 of my 9 grandchildren.  Lindsey. Joey. Jessalynn. And maybe Kira. I can almost understand Lindsey. Or at least excuse her.  She is a sociopath from birth,  doesn't truly respect any one that I know of,  and when you add bipolar and drug abuse it's a mess.  And,  honestly, Lindsey has taken the trouble to show huge respect at times even though she has almost no memory of the years Steve and I took care of her.  Joey didn't grow up around me at all and was raised by people I really don't know,  some I don't like the things I do know,  so maybe there are things there I don't know.  Jessalynn is one of the most confusing for me.  She was the grandchild I did Everything for.  Dad was lost dating everything that moved and Jess just couldn't handling the world and battled addiction for years,  so i tired to be there for her from when she was 4 years old through her first year of college.  I try to find an excuse for her,  the only one is that her mother actively hated me for years and was always whispering in her ear how terrible and narcissistic I was.  I knew it at the time but let myself believe Jessalynn wasn't really effected by it.  I was the closest person to her,  always the one she called for everything and the one she wanted taking care of her whenever she was sick or hurt.  Jeanette told me that Jeremy poisoned her"against" me but how could he when her mother couldn't? (If her mother couldn't?) The year before Brandon Jlynn told me almost daily that I was wrong to let Jeremy stay (and I was telling him and telling him he needed to leave!) so when she told me the way I treated him was "disgusting" at first I thought it was a joke.  I know Brandon has a huge influence on that but still don't get it.  I do hate Jeremy for it But I am aware that he should have never been able to do it.  Maybe to Brandon, he's not the sharpest crayon, but Jessalynn should have had years of just knowing better.  This really isn't on Jeremy or Brandon so much as Jessalynn. 

It isn't just them.  There were those years Jess hated me even as I took care of her! and Jami still holds these things.  They are both pretty extremely mentally ill and have a horrendous history of drug abuse.  If you google drug abusers blaming their parents and lying about them it is pitifully common.  

But I can't stop seeing that I AM THE COMMON DENOMINATOR here.  

I should be afforded respect just for my old age in an older society.  But even without that,  I have singlehandedly held together my household against all odds for decades. When I was with Steve he was weak and had zero clarity on how to survive anything.  That was all me.  Then Jeremy was more helpless than anyone I've ever known.  It's been Me.  I KNOW  this.  So what the hell is this???? I got if thru a freaking Pandemic with Jeremy refusing to take a job that was "beneath him"!!! On just my SSI and a couple of government Covid payouts!!!