Poem about trying to please others…

When I laugh, they say: ‘Aren’t you embarrassed’?
When I cry, they say: ‘Why can’t you smile’?
When I smile, they say ‘He’s showing off’!
When I frown, they say: ‘His real personality has become apparent’!
When I’m quiet, they say ‘He can’t talk’. When I speak, they say ‘He talks too much’.
I was tolerant so they said ‘He is a coward, if he was able to take revenge he would he would have taken it’.
When I pulled up some courage, they said ‘He is ill-mannered, he wouldn’t be bold if he ruled’.
If I say no, they say ‘He is strange’.
When I approve, they say ‘he is foolish’.

I found this poem when I performed a Google search "poem about trying to please people". No author was listed.
 It sums up the way I feel when I am around my in laws, particularly my mother-in-law.  This poem sends me down a path of remembering times when my actions or motives have been questioned, denied, criticized and commented on.
One of the first of these moments was when my husband and I had been married just shy of a year. It was summer and I was set to go into the hospital to be induced as I was 2 weeks overdue with our first child. Early that morning I felt like something was wrong with the baby and so I called my doctor. He asked me to explain what I felt and I told him that I felt like the baby's spirit had left me. I thought he would think I was crazy but instead he had me come into his office. He tried finding my baby's heartbeat for quite a while and he then left the room for a while. When he returned, I could tell he had been crying. He told me my baby had died. He suggested I still go through the labor process. I was induced and 8 hours later I was holding my baby in my arms. She looked like she was just sleeping. She looked so perfect and beautiful. She was 8 lbs., 8 oz. and 22 inches long with jet black hair and long eyelashes and long fingers. I wanted desperately to scream and demand that they bring her back to life. How could this happen? The autopsy showed she had gotten a blood clot in her umbilical cord and oxygen rich blood could not get to her. This did not help me feel any better as I wondered why I did not feel that something was wrong sooner? Could she have survived if I had gotten to the doctor sooner? I was so ready for this baby and it was ripped away from me. I was overwhelmed with sorrow but I stayed quiet and cried silently and tried so hard to keep it together. I was afraid if I let go I might never be able to stop. The hospital released me less than 24 hours later as they did not want me to have to hear the babies in the maternity ward understanding that this could be difficult for me. The day after having our baby I was sitting at the bay window of our home. I looked outside and tried to find some peace in myself, some greater understanding of what had happened and I was trying to turn to God for comfort but the tears would not stop streaming down my face. At that moment my mother-in-law came close to me and whispered in my ear, " you need to stop crying you're making [your husband] feel bad." She made me feel like I was being selfish and that I had no right to feel the way I was feeling. My husband had not told her anything nor had he conveyed that he had wanted me to stop feeling bad or anything. He understood that I needed time. She never once asked me how I was doing or feeling. She looked at me with contempt the whole time she was there. She made a horrible moment in my life even worse. There, I said it. I have never said that before. She made things worse. She has made soooo many things worse!
Why is it that I try so hard to please them and want them to like me? I am so lost and feel so drained. Somehow, I have got to find a way to just move on without them in my life. But, tell me how I do that when I am married to their son and I do not want to negatively affect his relationship with them?
My sister-in-law visited with her new husband last summer. He pulled me aside one day. He is a good man and a very straight forward individual and he is older, quite a bit older than myself. He looked me straight in the face and said, "honey, you have got to move away from here. I see how your in-laws treat you and what they think about you and staying in this place is going to kill you." I wish I felt vindicated as it has been hard for even my husband to believe that his parents feel so negatively towards me as the things his parents do are done when he is not within ear shot or there.
I wish I had a strong desire to just move but instead I think about how they need us to stay and help and that I could not feel good about leaving them when I am married to their only son and he feels the obligation and desire to help. I like to help when I am with my husband as these are the times they are kept in check.
Writing this helps. Still, it is only something I am only willing to write but not willing to say.