more family crap
Maybe I'm becoming one note on this, but it's on my mind and I've got to try to work this shit out. You, my dwindling audience, are vital for this; even the possibility that there is a reader makes writing possible and potentially useful.
I think of my family as small people. Not physically small (though they are short, notably shorter than me, all of them), but small in the perspectives they inhabit, the choices they see, and the decisions they make. Their world is smaller, safer, less challenging and more comfortable than mine. Actually, comfort is key with them; they strive for comfort above all else. Sharp edges, surprises that might be unpleasant, change: these are generally avoided.
I started outgrowing my family early, or at least it seems early looking back from my current perspective. Around seven or eight I began to be dissatisfied with the explanations I got to questions; they seemed insufficient, but not to be challenged, and my continuing questioning got dismissed as endearing examples of my stubborn curiosity. It's about this time that I started being noticeably moody and withdrawn, with eruptions of bad temper. It seems probable that there is a connection.
I have a sister, younger by three years. I'm sure from her perspective I was probably the favored child, and that's probably more true than not, but I seriously doubt she's ever considered why I was favored, and what it meant. I was marginally competent, and could be cast in the role of loco parentis, or at least loco adultus. By the age of ten, I was cooking dinner and watching over my sister after school, as both of my parents worked and commuted from the scary city to our exurb (now suburb). I could do more on my own, so I was left on my own. My parents liked that they didn't have to "worry about" me, which means they didn't pay much attention to me. I was drafted as a little adult in the service of family, but was pretty well emotionally abandoned, while still physically present.
My sister, on the other hand, played up neediness (almost certainly the origin for her borderline hypochondria). She needed help, attention, care, and she got it: from my dad, from my mom, and after a series of divorces and remarriages, my step parents. I'm not saying it was healthy; it wasn't. But she was lavished with attention (some of it negative), and I was the paragon of "self sufficiency". It was lonely as hell, infuriating, and heart breaking.
For a lot of reasons, the above among them, as I've aged I've cut more and more ties with my family. I haven't talked to my father in probably five years. I talk to my mother a couple of times a year, and maybe see her once. I avoid my sister whenever possible. Since the death of my last grandparent, I haven't seen or spoken to my extended family at all. My ex-stepfather (my mom's second husband) is the best parental figure I've known, and I exchange emails with him a few times a year. A case could be made that I have, in practice, orphaned myself, though I'd maintain that I only externalized what my family set in motion long ago. If I'm so damned self sufficient, I sure as hell don't need them, right?
But, it's come to my attention recently that I have serious abandonment issues. I've been with fairyhead for ten and a half years now, and still worry about what will be the final straw that drives her to leave. My friends are some of the best people in the world, and the best I've ever met, but I expect them to leave when I become inconvenient, or make even the slightest of demands. I discount or dismiss any mention of unconditionality, sometimes aggressively so, and have stated repeatedly that concepts like unconditional love or acceptance don't make sense to me. I am bitterly envious of those who appear to have even marginally rewarding relationships with their family, all the while fully expecting to be thrown over for family of birth without question if there was ever a conflict (while working very hard to make sure I never appear in that kind of conflict). I am very slow to make new friends, and distrust friendly overtures because I assume it's just a matter of time until people lose interest, or that if certain "truths" about me came out (not just gender), I'd be dropped like a hot rock.
So now, after pretty much severing ties with my family, which felt like an act of self protection, I find that they still have an ongoing, damaging effect on me, and I'm both furious and confused. How can these distant, small, soft people still be causing me so much difficulty? How can they be fucking up my relationships with people I love when I almost never see them? Aren't I old/strong/big/smart enough for this shit not to matter any more? Fuck, damage like this is supposed to come from prolonged contact and exposure; trust me to turn absence into just as much of a problem.
And it feels pointless to confront this. My family, my mom in particular, is very, very taken with the idea that she's such a good mother, and my "successes" (yes, she knows some about the depression, less about the stress, has known about the gender issues when convenient for her, but those are all easily dismissed) are, in her view, exemplars of her parental worthiness. In a rare moment of honesty several years back, when she was trying to tell me how proud of me she was, I said, "I don't think you get to be proud of me". I still think that's true, but I almost instantly started backpedalling, because the old habits of trying to maintain facades took precedence over any real communication.
I still think this is true. I'm grateful for being allowed to live, for being clothed and fed and given access to books, but I think that's not the baseline of human interaction, particularly familial interactions. It was at home that I learned to hide, to suppress and compartmentalize, learned that even the most meager examples of love and/or attention were highly conditional. I was a defacto adult when I should have been allowed to be a kid, and a confessor and confidant at twelve when my parents divorced (I didn't cry at all the night they announced the divorce; I didn't feel much of anything. Of course, my sister played the wounded diva for all she was worth. I think she still gets a little mileage out of that today). I was basically abandoned, and turned into a precocious roommate who had to work for room and board, with no outlets. And it pisses me off to an incredible degree that I'm still fucking paying for this.
I think of my family as small people. Not physically small (though they are short, notably shorter than me, all of them), but small in the perspectives they inhabit, the choices they see, and the decisions they make. Their world is smaller, safer, less challenging and more comfortable than mine. Actually, comfort is key with them; they strive for comfort above all else. Sharp edges, surprises that might be unpleasant, change: these are generally avoided.
I started outgrowing my family early, or at least it seems early looking back from my current perspective. Around seven or eight I began to be dissatisfied with the explanations I got to questions; they seemed insufficient, but not to be challenged, and my continuing questioning got dismissed as endearing examples of my stubborn curiosity. It's about this time that I started being noticeably moody and withdrawn, with eruptions of bad temper. It seems probable that there is a connection.
I have a sister, younger by three years. I'm sure from her perspective I was probably the favored child, and that's probably more true than not, but I seriously doubt she's ever considered why I was favored, and what it meant. I was marginally competent, and could be cast in the role of loco parentis, or at least loco adultus. By the age of ten, I was cooking dinner and watching over my sister after school, as both of my parents worked and commuted from the scary city to our exurb (now suburb). I could do more on my own, so I was left on my own. My parents liked that they didn't have to "worry about" me, which means they didn't pay much attention to me. I was drafted as a little adult in the service of family, but was pretty well emotionally abandoned, while still physically present.
My sister, on the other hand, played up neediness (almost certainly the origin for her borderline hypochondria). She needed help, attention, care, and she got it: from my dad, from my mom, and after a series of divorces and remarriages, my step parents. I'm not saying it was healthy; it wasn't. But she was lavished with attention (some of it negative), and I was the paragon of "self sufficiency". It was lonely as hell, infuriating, and heart breaking.
For a lot of reasons, the above among them, as I've aged I've cut more and more ties with my family. I haven't talked to my father in probably five years. I talk to my mother a couple of times a year, and maybe see her once. I avoid my sister whenever possible. Since the death of my last grandparent, I haven't seen or spoken to my extended family at all. My ex-stepfather (my mom's second husband) is the best parental figure I've known, and I exchange emails with him a few times a year. A case could be made that I have, in practice, orphaned myself, though I'd maintain that I only externalized what my family set in motion long ago. If I'm so damned self sufficient, I sure as hell don't need them, right?
But, it's come to my attention recently that I have serious abandonment issues. I've been with fairyhead for ten and a half years now, and still worry about what will be the final straw that drives her to leave. My friends are some of the best people in the world, and the best I've ever met, but I expect them to leave when I become inconvenient, or make even the slightest of demands. I discount or dismiss any mention of unconditionality, sometimes aggressively so, and have stated repeatedly that concepts like unconditional love or acceptance don't make sense to me. I am bitterly envious of those who appear to have even marginally rewarding relationships with their family, all the while fully expecting to be thrown over for family of birth without question if there was ever a conflict (while working very hard to make sure I never appear in that kind of conflict). I am very slow to make new friends, and distrust friendly overtures because I assume it's just a matter of time until people lose interest, or that if certain "truths" about me came out (not just gender), I'd be dropped like a hot rock.
So now, after pretty much severing ties with my family, which felt like an act of self protection, I find that they still have an ongoing, damaging effect on me, and I'm both furious and confused. How can these distant, small, soft people still be causing me so much difficulty? How can they be fucking up my relationships with people I love when I almost never see them? Aren't I old/strong/big/smart enough for this shit not to matter any more? Fuck, damage like this is supposed to come from prolonged contact and exposure; trust me to turn absence into just as much of a problem.
And it feels pointless to confront this. My family, my mom in particular, is very, very taken with the idea that she's such a good mother, and my "successes" (yes, she knows some about the depression, less about the stress, has known about the gender issues when convenient for her, but those are all easily dismissed) are, in her view, exemplars of her parental worthiness. In a rare moment of honesty several years back, when she was trying to tell me how proud of me she was, I said, "I don't think you get to be proud of me". I still think that's true, but I almost instantly started backpedalling, because the old habits of trying to maintain facades took precedence over any real communication.
I still think this is true. I'm grateful for being allowed to live, for being clothed and fed and given access to books, but I think that's not the baseline of human interaction, particularly familial interactions. It was at home that I learned to hide, to suppress and compartmentalize, learned that even the most meager examples of love and/or attention were highly conditional. I was a defacto adult when I should have been allowed to be a kid, and a confessor and confidant at twelve when my parents divorced (I didn't cry at all the night they announced the divorce; I didn't feel much of anything. Of course, my sister played the wounded diva for all she was worth. I think she still gets a little mileage out of that today). I was basically abandoned, and turned into a precocious roommate who had to work for room and board, with no outlets. And it pisses me off to an incredible degree that I'm still fucking paying for this.