RouletteWeekend

Families fight. If they didn’t, would they even really be family? Sometimes, you can get over it. And other times, it breaks something.

I’ve gotten into more than one fight with more than one family member. I have two aunts who I don’t talk to and probably never will. Most recently, it was a fight with a sibling…over this blog. They think my truth is a lie and that’s ok, because their truth is their truth and my truth is my truth.

Whenever I start writing, it seems like people get nervous, anxious, or angry about what I’m saying.

When I talk about my childhood, people immediately think I’m bashing my mom. And when I started this blog more than 800 posts ago, I was probably still pretty angry. I was angry because she took us away from our dad. I was angry because we were so poor and we were sent to a school of rich kids and we didn’t have a “community” of people like us. I was angry because after all the crap that was talked about my dad, after he died, my mom said, “the biggest mistake I ever made was leaving your dad.” I was mad because something happened that made me lose all of my memories of my childhood. Or at least all of the happy parts and I know they exist because I have pictures. I was mad because my mom was in a car accident and stopped being the mom I knew when I was 15 and became someone else. Someone who needed taken care of. I was mad because she wasn’t the independent woman that I saw growing up. I was mad because she had a brain injury. And that’s just the short list. From the time I was 15, it seemed like I was perpetually mad. A revolving door of anger that never stopped.

But over the years, as I became a parent, as I tried to do right by my kids, as I worked on myself and trying to find some inner peace, I realized that my mom was just doing the best she could with the tools she had. I’ve said this over and over again, yet people want to pick and choose which parts they read and where to stop reading so they can throw their stones from their glass houses and stand on their soapboxes pointing a finger at me for not being afraid to share my truth.

When I started talking about publishing The Nora Tree, my first full length work of fiction, my whole family was worried about what was in the book. “You didn’t write about this did you? You didn’t mention that, did you? You should let us read it before you publish it.” All worry. Do you know what nobody said? “You wrote a fucking book!! That’s amazing! Even if it never gets published that’s a huge accomplishment. I’m so proud of you!”

That has always been what’s missing in my life. People to be proud of me. I tried so hard to do the right thing, to be someone my mom would be proud of or my dad would be proud of, or maybe even an aunt would be proud of until I made a decision to finally be someone that I am proud of and someone that my kids are proud of.

And if they were sitting around writing about their fucked up childhood, and maybe they will one day, I hope they have the strength to write their truth without regard to my feelings. Because I did the best I could raising them. I read parenting book after parenting book to find new tools to put in my toolbox. Tools that maybe my mom wasn’t given. Tools that maybe her mom wasn’t given. I searched for tools to pass down to them, if for no other reason that to give my kids more tools to do better than I did, to be better than I ever was, and most importantly, to deal with whatever traumas I put them through that I didn’t acknowledge at the time and / or don’t remember now.

So, yes, there have been plenty of fights with family. And there is no “who was right” or “who was wrong.” We all get to stand in our truth and in our feelings. I believe for the most part, deep down, we know when we did something wrong to another person so when I say that I have two aunts that I don’t talk to, am I willing to take responsibility in that? Of course, but not in the way you think. I take responsibility in setting boundaries and cutting myself off from toxic people and narcissists. I used to have a bad habit of dating those same kinds of people and my therapist asked me one day, “do you know what all those relationships have in common?” and I was so perplexed. I couldn’t wait for him to drop this golden nugget of wisdom on me that would solve all my relationship woes.

“What?” I said, on the edge of my seat.

“You,” was his simple answer. “You keep picking to be around these people.”

Well fuck. That landed harder than I wanted it to. But he was right. And that’s when I realized: the resolution to every quarrel starts with me.

I was accepting what I thought I deserved. I had put so much judgment on myself for so many of my life choices that I thought I didn’t deserve good. I thought I didn’t deserve to be treated kindly.

I thought kindness was a one-way street, and I had enough to throw at everyone around me. I had so much still sitting inside waiting to be let out that I didn’t care if the people around me were selfish assholes, compulsive liars, narcissists, or sociopaths. I would have their baby. I would work for them. I would forgive them over and over because they were “family.”

And that’s all bullshit.

Family isn’t just people who you are related to by blood. Family are the people you meet along the way who just “get you.” They are the people you can call after not talking for a year and things are always good. They have no expectations of you other than for you to take care of yourself, do what makes you happy, and be kind to others. And I’ve found quite a few of those people over the years, people who I would call if I was in a jam because no questions asked, I could get help and not judgment.

So yes, there have been plenty of significant quarrels with family members. Some were resolved. Others were the end of a relationship. I’m ok with every outcome. We all lose people we love, whether its to death, alcohol and drugs, or just a crater in the relationship that is too big to patch.

We heal. We move on. We don’t forget—we learn to live with it.

And maybe that’s the only way family ever really works: by letting everyone carry their own truth, and deciding who we want to carry it with.

Prompt from The Autobiography Box by Brian Bouldrey: “Describe a significant quarrel between yourself and a family member.”