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Music to read to - "Your Life Flashing Before Your Eyes" by Dream corp.
The question of what family should mean to you is something I have been thinking about for a few years now. Especially your perspectives on it and events with your family.
I say I've never been super close with my family, but I think I mean to say that I've never felt close with them. Growing up you're obviously dependent on them to take care of you and their motives might not always make sense, but for most typical American families I think they relatively well by doing what they think is best for you. It makes me question what life would be like if I were ever a parent myself.
I bring this stuff up today after attending two family gatherings. Generally I wish to avoid interaction with my family because I share little-to-nothing in common with any of my members besides maybe a single cousin or two. I feel drained or judged being around family, or I know my opinions matter heavily on some topics and would wish to not get dog-piled for expressing as much. On my ride back home I stopped to question why I felt so exhausted all ready from the second gathering. All I did was sit in a recliner in the back of the house away from everyone else for a little more than an hour with maybe three minutes of interaction total.
The feeling of listening to them talk a few rooms over which is just judging some cousins and praising others felt gross. Especially hearing them all rat on the one cousin I'm closest with, who I understand and probably live a lot like. We do our own things, not at the same pace as others, but we definitely do. It was a reminder that I just don't enjoy being around a lot of these people. It's not to say I don't like them, as there's that base level of connection which we could just describe as "being family" that keeps them tethered by all means. When I meet these people though, that's all I really feel or see. This includes my direct relatives like my brother, mother, and father.
My relationships with all three of them are complicated as is, and I ponder on them every so often. Some days I think it's all my fault that things aren't better than they are, but most I keep it under the idea that I was being mistreated and/or misunderstood for my entire life by them. A good example is recently when I came home to find that my father put up a bunch of new pictures in our house. Photos I had never seen before of my brother and I between 1995 and I assume 2003. I took a while, maybe an hour or two, just standing in the house staring at them. As I was home alone, I could feel comfortable just observing them and thinking aloud. I took some that weren't put up into my room to scan for my own computer archival, just ones of myself. In the box I took, I sat around looking at photos of my brother and I very young, him holding me and the sort. I was questioning what our relationship really was, because growing up he just beat me any chance he got, or made me feel small and constantly made fun of me in a malicious way. My father comes home in the middle of this moment for me and tells me that my brother just got diagnosed with cancer. It was a massive blow for me, and because I was already questioning all of this is made me feel quite bad. It didn't take long for me to remember where I sat in our house though when everyone went back to making me feel bad, even during a touchy few weeks.
In an era where I couldn't make up who I was, like a lot of boys, I ended up just becoming my father. All it did was make me angry and condescending. I hated every second of it, but it was who I was. I had moments that were just like how I was treated as a kid with my own partner. He'd start crying, mostly if not always my fault, and then I'd berate him for it. I never wanted to, I just did by instinct and I always felt horrible doing it but for some reason couldn't stop. It was just like how my father was with me my whole time growing up. Financial purchases were gifts, although compliments or appraisal was never dished out. Any time emotions that made him uncomfortable happened, he'd just get upset and make you feel worse. Sometimes when I get uncomfortable, I fall into old habits but try my best to get out of them. My brother had similar things happening, and a few interactions we had after I moved back home for college showed we had a little of a mutual understanding that we aren't like that anymore, easily angered. Still, we're not close. When talking with a friend of mine who was studying to be a psychologist in Japan, she mentioned that when I talk about my father I stray into two different areas; when I talk about something I like from him I call him my dad, and when I talk about things I dislike I call him my father. I realized I almost never call him dad, and haven't since I was a little kid.
My mother is a mess. I don't know much of how she has made me who I am. A few things for sure, as in controlled by my emotions and if I feel like I need change in my life, I rearrange my bedroom instead for a comfy new environment. You can easily tell how much I'm going through it by how much my room will move around. I've done it at least three or five times so far this year alone. She did get me into some things as a kid such as Star Wars and Indiana Jones, but that's about all I can remember. She was a lot easier with me than my father was (and still is). I guess I never gave her enough credit, but understandably on my end, she gave away my dog without asking me to a man she got bored of and left after an eight year relationship post my parents divorce. She acts like a child, which bugs me. Her use of racial slurs also bugs me a lot. It's rare, but she's the only one to drop those and it would always catch my father, brother, and I off guard. Same with how she went from not being political whatsoever to working in a factory and being fed a whole lotta bullshit that's just plain stupid. For the longest time I was almost certain I didn't care for her at all because of her willingness to just get rid of my dog without asking me once, and during my years of drug abuse I let the overwhelming emotion (enhanced by the drugs) get to me and broke down having to admit that (at the time) I didn't love my mother. These days that's not the case, but I still feel just as complicated.
I only really get along with two of my cousins. One when I was much younger and spent a lot of time with her, although these days she works in Pittsburgh doing medical stuff. The other I've been close with since the mid-2000s when their mother and our family made up after what I remember hearing about were lies told to the adults which they felt for. I don't know, and honestly don't care. They've done a lot to help me be me growing up, and introduced me to a lot of the things I love even today. They still frequently show me things I love. They stick out amongst the many cousins I have as being the only two I really built any meaningful relationships with, as the others were just heavy rednecks or military folk who I couldn't find personal interest in bonding with.
I moved home for college hoping to find ways to mend all of these relationships and live a happier life with my family before I move to Japan in 2027, where I plan to never come back to the USA for anything but my parent's funerals. Living away for close to five years made me a bit forgetful of all these emotions. When I was working as an assistant teacher, I'd come to my father's house between my lectures and work to take a nap, sometimes finding myself standing in my childhood bedroom, now a storage room. Staring out of the window at a view very familiar but also alien to me, I kept getting this feeling that I didn't finish my time here, or I didn't get to appreciate it enough. It gave me hope for something better to move home to, but in all honesty all I ended up doing was forgetting the stress I get here. Constantly being judged, yelled at, having my food eaten, my space disrespected. I felt the heavy weight on my shoulders from years past that I had forgotten all about. All the hope I had to mend things pressed underneath it until it vanished. Just like it used to be, I hide back here in the corner of the house, in the corner of my room furthest away from everything and keep to myself. I feel alone, even when surrounded by people I am under the assumption love me to some extent.
I want to be nothing like my family if I were to ever have my own in the future. Never to judge and pick on my kid(s) for what they like, but to understand it and appreciate it with them. Never to be emotionally distant, be overbearing, or anything of the sort. I'm sure this is how a lot of people feel before ending up in a family, so I feel anxious for the future and the unknown. I'm trying to become my own person, with the occasional slip-up where I'll fall into old habits for a week or so. I wish to become more emotionally exposed (which is why I've made this blog to begin with) but still can't bring myself to be face-to-face, as I'm too used to being ridiculed for showing emotion, or punished for it. Either shoved to the ground and kicked repeatedly by my brother, or shoved against the wall and held by my shirt collar, then screamed at by my father. My mother was more of the "I will cry and scream louder and hide in my room, blaming you for everything" type.
Finding your own family is nice. I often hear people or media talking about "found family," which I think I've found currently in my college anime club. We're like a weird sitcom with our own ups-and-downs, but in the end, even when I feel exhausted and don't want to attend our meetings, Friday nights always make me feel aright. The idea of what life will be like around graduation and after make me nervous, as I don't want to leave some of these people behind. Especially those like our "shadow president" who has become someone very close to me, or our vice president who I'm just as close with. Maybe this is just because I know how lonely it can be to still have connections, but not having the physical connections.
In reality, my family is me and my computer. It's my home, my island, my rock, my grounding. I hate that it is sometimes, but It is. This is where I feel safe, and I can let some of my guard down just enough to ramble on nonsense like this for a little while.
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