Family.
Are you hit with compelling
connotatively packed feelings with this word? You may find this
surprising, but I am. They only happened as I got to know more of my
family, but I feel/felt something and, holy shit, I think there is
something to say about what I experience.
As a relative sociopath, stress
relative, if and when I feel something, I take notice. My disposition
is learned, informed, and often calculated. It takes something truly
novel to “shake me up” and leave me exploring the various
attitudes and avenues my mind decides to take. I’m more floored by
the concept of family than I am in having one to begin with. I find
myself separating my rationality from my feelings.
I think family should be a choice. It’s
positively why I get so hung up on who I choose to be friends with. I
like decisions, not happenstance. Our relationship shouldn't be an
accident. Our allegiance shouldn’t be circumstantial. My family
needs to be principled, fought for, worthy of envy and fear because
others don’t think they can live up to what it symbolizes.
My family members sure can pee; all
over my floor in fact. I honestly thought there was a weird noise
coming from my plumbing for the first few minutes, then I ascend the
stairs to find my cousin post up against my bar, picking what I’m
assuming was a worthy and respectable spot on my living room carpet,
to piss on. It’s truly a stream meant for Ripley’s. What it says
about me not even being angry we’ll leave for another day.
This is a person who, along with his
wife, had a host of things to say about our family throughout the
day. Whether it’s about the petty shit that gets fought about or
disrespecting the ideas my grandma lived for, it wasn’t all stuff I
disagreed with. The funny, sad, ironic, WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK part
about it all was his insistence that it’s about us to keep the
Serbian traditions alive and be the mature ones.
The thing you can’t feel, or might in
different ways, but certainly aren't right now, is my compulsion,
at least initially to want to defend and stick up for family. The
idea that, beyond all rational observation, there are these beings,
that for lack of a better description, are kind of copies of “you.”
Lying, defending, and justifying are not only fashioned as reasonable
and assumed, but supposed to be the pinnacle of your responsibility
and love. Forgive me? I’m not there.
It’s hard to hear every pipe
dream-esc phrase and pronouncement of the future. He’s only an
electrician so he can strike it rich with his other endeavors you
know. And please, I don’t write this to make fun, I really EVER SO
fucking really just want to give you an example to hear and learn
from. I can’t be the only one with a relative who has all this
dreamy wild-eyed naïve teenager talk somehow making its way past the
lips of an alcoholic 30 year old.
It’s impossibly sad. It’s the most
depressing thing I can think of for someone. The ONE idea, granted
it’s usually centered around a god for most, but when your “faith
waivers” people fall to their parents or family when things get
really hairy…but the ONE THING you’re supposed to cherish and
respect and protect, can make you feel like all those things while
being the worst thing in the world for you. Explain that to someone…
I’d turn you in. If you had a bomb
planted somewhere in a city and only I knew where to find it or where
to get your launch codes, there are going to be a number of lives
saved that day. I’d do this because I’d expect the same from you.
If I lose my shit or being anything less than the kind of person you
expect me to be, I don’t deserve an irrational and detrimental
level of protection. That isn’t love or devotion. That’s
brainwashed.
I can feel the pull of my genes
wanting me to respect and look out for my linage above all else. I
can also listen to my brain to recognize what’s fucked and what
isn’t.
