metanoia's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Family I have been thinking of family lately. What kind I have and how many of them there are. A kind of mental inventory of family members. It causes me to ask the question, "What is a family?". As a child, family means parents and siblings, if you have any siblings. Then maybe aunts and uncles, but they are peripheral and depend alot on the relationship your parents have with THEIR siblings. So, parents would be most what you would call family at this point in your life. However, children, for the most part, love family - and the more the merrier! I always liked it when other people would come over who I didn't know and my mom would say, "That's your cousin, Benito." I would look at this person I never saw before in my whole life (or since), and because he was introduced as family, I accepted him. Hey, you're my family! So, I guess, if you ask a child who their family is, their answers will vary greatly and there goes that theory. So I'll just stick with my own experience, which is where I began this, anyway. As a child, my family was my parents. I was born late in my mothers life, 42 yrs old, and my brothers were already grown and out of the house. (Both were in the air force and stationed in Japan). I was born during the Korean War, or Korean Conflict, or whatever they called it back then. Probably war. Mostly it was just mom and dad and me. As I grew, I felt so isolated from my family because I did not feel anything like them. At one point I imagined they were aliens and were coming into my room at night while I slept and injecting me with some drug to make me like them. (I had a very healthy imagination, and I guess I watched too many sci fi movies). This mind set brought me to the teenage years, when I completely renounced my family, as all teenagers do at one point or another. But now, both my parents are dead. One of my brothers is dead and the other is 72 yrs old, and not well. So who is my family now? My husband is my family. My son is my family. His bride to be is my family. My brother is my family. My neice and nephews and their children are my family. That's about it. So how many is that? Nine. I have nine family members. None lives close to me, except son and fiance. They live 70 mi away. Others are thousands of miles away. Partly my fault for moving so far away, I guess. I have this "thing" with my family. I miss having them around, but after I am with them (any of them except my husband, son and his fiance, because they are a source of joy) for about 10 minutes, I want to escape and get away. Funny. Family is good because they knew me when. When I was little. Before life tweaked me and changed me and layered me, hiding the full of wonder soul I am from the outside world. Although, come to think of it, they continue to see e as the selfish, wretched mean as a snake teenager. I am fixed in their mind in that period of my life. Fuck them for that. I always see people as the child they were. That is my problem. I know who they are, on a soul level, and relate to them that way. But they react on a different level and it all goes to shit. I believe we are always that child we once were. We just spend our lives denying it's existence. But, just because we deny it, does not make it nonexistent. What a rambling, disjointed thing I just wrote. But I am feeling disjointed and rambling. It's part of what happens to me when I think about family. Family is like being in love with typhoid. Wanting to embrace it, but knowing it will infect and kill me. Family. Sneh. 9:11 a.m. - 2003-09-05 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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