Family. A word with so many different meanings for so many different people. For me, it means love and many burdens.
When you have become an independent individual from your family, especially from your parents, their rituals and manners of communication can seem very foreign. I know this because have I unlearned their language so much that I forgot even how to say “Hello” and “Goodbye.” Sometimes I wonder how this all happened. How I became me and they continued to become them. I lump them all together: “Them.” Sometimes it feels like Me versus Them. But who really wants that?
So I try to be compassionate to their situations and needs. I try to be patient – you’d be surprised how far I’ve come. But somehow, no matter how old you get or how far away you move, it never stops being sucky. It never stops being painful. It never stops affecting you, which is one thing I think I may have been hoping for a few years ago when I decided to go across the country to Lee University – 2,000 miles from home. Even here, 2,000 miles away… it finds me.
And I keep finding them. Because they are my family. And what can you do? Deny that they fed you and raised you and sang to you and bought you clothes and kept a roof over your head your whole life? What can you do but love them for what they are, in spite of what you think they aren’t. What else can you really do?
I a sitting here wishing, just like I did when I was 15, that I had anyone’s parents but mine.
But I am also thinking that I would be perfectly content if they would just be better versions of themselves – not different people, but rather, the people they could be. I would like that, I think.
None of us are the people we could be. But some are farther along then others. I don’t know – after these years of finding new possibilities for myself outside the realm of my family and their dysfunctions – I am cautious of jumping back in full force to be involved in their lives. And that’s the choice I am facing right now. How involved can I be without losing part of the new, healthy person I have grown into? How much can I help them while also accepting that I don’t have control over their situations; only they do. Where is that line?
