The point of a reflection is to seek truth. Loving creative non-fiction the way that I do, I think reflections are essential to a healthy lifestyle. I love reading other reflections and writing my own. Reflections are supposed to help us question ourselves--our motives, our behaviors, our feelings, how we impact the people and world around us, and in return, how we are impacted by them.
That being said, I was slightly offended by my brother's reflection on our family dynamics. He is entitled to write reflections on his blog. If I felt that his blog entry contained more depth, maturity, and wisdom, I would not be offended by how he perceives things. I would respect his honesty, even if it made me look bad and hurt my feelings a little. I, of all people, understand the importance of truth in writing. In fact, I fear how my family and friends will respond to my own reflections in my eventual memoir. The difference between the plan for my book and my brother's reflection is that mine will not be written out of anger. I know he wrote what he believed to be true, but that's not enough. He was blinded by anger and approached things from a very simplistic perspective.
He criticized our family's boring, surface-level conversations. Most families that I know, or friends of mine who talk about their family dynamics, have simplistic dialogue. Family is not the same as friends. You do not choose these people. The truth is, a family consists of a lot of people of all ages with too many different interests to mention. It is often a challenge to connect with family in a deeper way for this reason. If this is the case, why do we return to our families so regularly? It's about staying grounded. Being reminded where you come from. My sister and I probably would not have hung around each other in High School. We approached high school very differently ( her way being much healthier). Yet, seeing her reminds me of certain traits we share. My cousin and I grew up as best friends. We eventually drifted apart. She has a kid, works for a living, and I went the college route. We have little to talk about anymore, but I still love seeing her and her son. It helps me reflect on some of the experiences I shared with her that helped make me who I am. Family is also a bit of a reality check. A friend of mine once told me that despite having a professional job, her family treated her like a child. She wanted to say, "Hey, do you know that people actually take me seriously?!"
All jokes aside, it is hard for family members to adjust to changes. My family still wants to see me as the always smiling over-achieving adolescent that I was. I want to see my parents as all-knowing, my sister as little and my brother as wiser. That's not reality. Being a member of a family is about accepting truth--throwing aside delusions of how things should be, and embracing for a moment what they are.
My brother says our family has shared delusions of what makes a family, but what kind of delusion is he under? Does he expect our parents to be college professors and his sisters to be strictly intellectuals? The truth is, families like that are not even as good as they sound. Just like they say psychologists can be some of the worst parents. I still am working to readjust the way I view my childhood and my family members. It's tricky not to get stuck in my childhood ways and look to my parents for advice, even though in a lot of situations they can't give me a right or wrong answer. I still seek validation from them. That is unhealthy, and I am working to grow up and take responsibility for my own thoughts. Should I blame them for making me insecure and needing their assurance for everything? Sometimes I felt put down or embarrassed of mistakes, so I learned quickly how to give them responsibility and control of my life. I think that sort of pain and resentment can be approached with dignity. I understand that we are not the kind of family where we can talk about errors of the past. It is incredibly hard for me to stay healthy in an environment where anxiety rules the house and anger is uncontrolled at times.
My brother is right; we are all self-absorbed, but that's the nature of being human. We evolved to take care of ourselves. This returns to his argument from years ago that volunteers are greedy because they make themselves feel better by using people who need help. That IS why people volunteer, but guess what? Everyone wins: the volunteers and the people receiving the services. I have been helped by volunteers on many occasions and I have helped others as a volunteer on just as many. I think self-absorption is normal. It is only the wise who seek to listen better, care more about other people, be less self-absorbed.
Sure, depression is a type of self-absorption, but it is a sickness as well. I was disappointed in the way that my brother said I "have been crippled in more ways than [I] know," called our entire family self-absorbed, and referred to me as a patient that he "failed." I have never and will never be a patient to him. I will always be his sister who saw him grow up, experienced a similar childhood, and watched him struggle and rebound many times. I do not look for him to save me. I don't really ask anything of him except for him to listen and maybe sometimes validate things from our childhood. I have a therapist. I don't need his biased psycho-analyzation of me.
Spending limited time with him over the holidays and reading his blog has reminded me that he does not listen objectively. He asserts many things about me, like he knows me better than I know myself because I am so repressed. For years, he has told me that he believes my depression is because I am a repressed lesbian. I am not against this idea. In fact, I have spent the last couple of years trying to be really open to such an idea. The truth: I connect best with women, but the idea of being sexual with one is not appealing to me in this moment. I am not closed off to the idea that maybe one day I will meet a woman I fall in love with. I don't ever want this to be an "I told you so" sort of thing. I am just saying, as of now, I like guys. I have a problem being emotionally connected with them, which is why I have a lot of flings instead of relationships. The truth is he knows next to nothing about my dating experiences. Whatever, maybe one day, I will decide to date a woman. Until then, I'm going to continue dating guys and trying to make sex and relationship stability coexist.
Lastly, I want to address the fact that he claimed he had the worst experiences growing up (out of my siblings) and handled them best. Maybe he is right, but both are subjective. He had a rough time, but at least he had the fact that he was male and anger was an acceptable form of rebelling for him. He was able to use his anger to hurt those hurting him and protect himself in ways that I did not. Plus, we all experience things differently. Who is he to pretend to understand or compare his hardships with anyone else? Being a child is to be vulnerable. Everyone experiences being wronged as a child and not having the skills to understand that they are not being treated properly. Growing up has a sort of jadedness and pain to it. As of now, I am not going to publicly address how I feel about events in my childhood. I will say that it was not perfect and that it sometimes reacts with my chemical imbalance to cause even more severe depression. However, I am not downright blaming my parents and I believe they did and always will love me. I am thankful for that.
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