I already started this post once, lost what I’d typed, considered just leaving it lost.We&rsqu
I already started this post once, lost what I’d typed, considered just leaving it lost.We’ll see if I actually post this.Earlier this week I got home from a trip to visit my family in the house where I grew up, followed by a mini-vacation with everyone at the beach. I like seeing my family. I feel guilty and detached and kind of lonely if I go to long without getting to see them. But it’s never easy. As atheist feminist daughter of Mormon Republicans whose four other children have so far followed the plan that was set out for them while I’ve… well, become a feminist and an atheist. It’s stressful. The above picture was found on my mother’s nightstand. If features my mother standing with a relative she’d gone to visit recently. I’ve blurred their faces, but if you could see them you’d see they are both smiling. It’s a good picture of my mother, I think, which would be nice because we don’t actually have that many pictures of my mom. On it my mother has written “Too fat. :(” with an arrow pointing to herself. “BE GOOD!” with a star dotting the exclamation mark has been written to the side. My mother sees this as inspirational, and funny. Towards the end of the vacation I overheard her proudly telling one of my siblings she’d done this, with a smile on her face. She makes money selling a diet plan she’s already lost a lot of weight on. But some of that weight is coming back, so she’s doubling down. Hence the self-critical thinspo on her nightstand. I suppose I could go on for ages about how this makes me feel, which is unsurprisingly upset. But I think most people who follow this blog can guess already how something like this would make me feel. This post isn’t about this photo, at least not really. This photo is just a really good example of what every single interaction can feel like going home. It’s about the whole feeling of going home when you are the black sheep. Can you call things microaggressions when they don’t target you? Even if I’m not gay, if my family says something homophobic, how hurt am I allowed to feel by that? How do I even begin to interact with them when I disagree with the basic premises behind so many of the little things they do that really have nothing to do with me?What do I say when my sister-in-law asks if her four-month-old’s onesie looks too girly? When my brother-in-law says at least my little brother is flirting with girls, not boys, har har? When the five hour drive to the beach consists almost entirely of my parents and my grandmother making jokes about those interfering government safety regulations? My family loves me. They are kind, intelligent, loving people. That’s what makes it hard. Not a one of them is seeking to make me uncomfortable or hurt. I’m incredibly hesitant to call anything that goes on emotional abuse, especially not intentional. Calling out culture becomes more difficult when these moments are so constant, and coming from an entire group who you’re fairly certain wouldn’t listen to you. It doesn’t help when you love them and you’re already known as that one that ruins the fun by bringing up unnecessary drama. It doesn’t help when you want to stand up for your values, but you also want to protect yourself because you’re alone here while they all have each other. It doesn’t help when you also want to be wanted around, accepted, loved.My family is good people. Wrong about almost everything, with so much unexamined privilege it’s suffocating, but no malice for all of that. And yet, every time I go to be with them I make a goal: I will get through this visit without getting into any religious or political arguments, especially any that end with me in tears. And every time I fail in that goal. I wind up gaping at my brother at nearly midnight as he tries to explain to me that the poor wouldn’t be poor if they’d only worked harder. As he fails to acknowledge the combination of white privilege and damn luck that allowed my incredibly hardworking mother to move from being a poor single mom to the position she’s in now. As he fails to acknowledge that both he and I have benefitted immensely from our parents financial security (Does he really think he could have switched colleges and majors so often and so easily, taking a break for mental health needs, without it? Does he really think that without insurance I would have gotten therapy? Has he considered where either of us would be without that support?)The poor people taking my parents hard-earned money are scorned, while I ashamedly feel my EBT card burning through my pocket. My brother thinks crime would go down in Chicago if they loosened their gun regulations. “Well, that’s a man thing,” I hear as my brothers and father leave for one activity or another. “Women have to keep those things in mind,” my mother idly advises a brother inquiring about food or something in the kitchen. Constant affirmations, “This is what a woman is”, “This is what a man is.” Both my mother and my father make comments about the inherent violent nature of pit bulls that make me want to release all the bile in my throat.I take frequent breaks, something I would do even if the interactions were easier, because I have four siblings, three of whom are married with kids. There are a lot of people and I’m a serious introvert and group social interactions with multiple conversations at once are the hardest for me. I get accused of being antisocial. I consider explaining introversion to my parents, but then remember that time I tried to explain dyspraxia to them (how I had to learn to a bike twice because I forgot how, how I failed my drivers test five times, how I was given special lessons in holding my pencil) and remember them saying “It’s interesting how they have names for everything now! Well you shouldn’t make excuses,” and so I decide it’s not worth the effort. Up late arguing with my brother about some issue of politics or another, I bring up Norway. My brother says, “Yeah, but who would want to live in NORWAY?” My mother laughs and turns to me. When I don’t laugh, she says, “Oh come on. That’s funny.”My brother tries to argue guns are for protecting against the state. When I bring up the fact that there is a social class, black men, who is already regularly violently harassed and sometimes even killed, by members of state employ, and how guns have done the opposite of help them because they just give the police a reason to think they are justified, he says that’s a city-by-city issue and isn’t relevant. When the discussion turns into one about class, and I mention the decreasing upward mobility, I’m told upward mobility is better than ever. I ask them why they think it is that so many people who are black remain poor, then, and my mother tells me a story about two black employees she had and how they were “awful”. When I gape at her, my brother says, “You’re the one who brought race into this.”When I try to end the discussion after I realise I’ve hit a block and there is a place where my brother can absolutely not be reasoned past, he tells me that I can’t just walk away without hearing his side. I didn’t even let him finish, he cries! He acts like I owe it to him to hear him speak. He just looks perturbed while I am crying and having a hard time keeping my voice down. I hold my three new nephews, all under six-months old, in turn. And with every one I find myself thinking, “You are so beautiful. I hope for your sake that you are not gay,” and then I hate myself for thinking it, and then I start making plans for how to offer them resources behind their parents backs, behind the backs of my dearest siblings, if that ends up being the case. I feel like a bad person for showing up at all to ruin their fun with my inconvenient worldview. I feel like a bad person for showing up at all instead of disowning them all for wanting to deny rights to so many people I love. I can’t figure out who I am betraying more when I’m around them.The incessant beauty tips and diet talk make me feel uglier than I do anywhere else. I spend an inordinate amount of time holding my tongue with a tight throat. I don’t mean to make it sound like my family just goes around being hateful all of the time. They don’t They chase their kids and make nerdy jokes and play an absurd amount of board games. They are just incurious. My parents know how much I disagree with them, and keep helping me out financially. My mother gave me a huge load of expensive vitamins, telling me she wants me to look after my health. She respects that I don’t want to lose weight, and doesn’t suggest it. Before I leave for home, she slips $100 into my pocket while giving me a hug. My sister makes a point to take a bit of an afternoon out for the two of us to be alone and chat, smiling. My oldest brother and I make jokes about road signs and cinnamon bears. But when my parents suggest me moving home for more financial security and I blanch, I can never properly explain to them how much that would drain every ounce of self-worth from me in a constant slow drip. How do you tell the people you love most that prolonged exposure to them drains you of hope or motivation? That they are an obstacle to so many of your values and goals in life? I tried once, years ago. Gently and kindly. But there really is no kind way to say that sort of thing is there? Needless to say, it didn’t go over well. This isn’t meant to be an “Oh, poor me!” sort of thing. While occasional support is helpful (I wouldn’t have made it through the week without the roommate for a texting buddy), I’m doing fine. I hope this post didn’t come across as whiny, because it wasn’t meant to be.I’m a privileged person, from a privileged family. I am immensely aware of this, and how unfair it is. It makes me angry to think of it. So I don’t mean to complaining, poor me, about my white privilege or anything. I realise how unbelievably fortunate I am.I guess I’m just pretty sure that I’m not the only person who stuggles to find this kind of balance with their family. I’m sure there are plenty of people on tumblr who still have to live with parents and families with whom the smallest interactions can be tiny minefields. Who struggles with the question of how to love their family without betraying themselves or losing their integrity. And I know people for whom that isn’t so much of a problem, and so I wanted to kind of try to explain what it’s like. Explain why I am such an emotional mess both before and after going to see my family, where I can’t decide if I’m soo happy or soo stressed. Why for the two or three days after I get back I keep bringing them up in exhausted tones. I just think sometimes it helps people to understand me when they know where I come from. I might delete this later. -- source link