Family: It’s As Simple As Watching A Tree Grow

When I'm writing this, tomorrow will be Thanksgiving and we are making our way to where I grew up, a town that is quite literally in the center of Missouri.  Now we haven’t done the whole Thanksgiving thing with my family in years.  In fact, I think G has only really ever gone with me one year on this particular day.  We usually escape to Puerto Aventuras, bake on the beach for a while, or Mexico City to go to a wrestling event or two or twelve of them, drink beer and eat our weight in tacos or perhaps it's the other way around.  But my grandfather died a few months ago and I wanted to spend some time with my grandmother, not to mention I have an aunt who I would really like to visit.  So, here we are with my anxiety mounting the longer I think about the logistics of our visit.  Something about going home makes me relive the past me’s self doubt; all the times I was bullied for looking a certain way, being a certain way, and then the plethora of times I was rejected by some sub par male specimen.

I could of course go into detail about how I’m not the only one who goes into a panicked frenzy whenever going back home. I could have even researched a bit further to only discover how suicide rates potentially increase, relationships potentially end this time of year specifically. But I’m not going to regurgitate what many of you perhaps can already guess if you yourself have survived such a time.  And it’s quite possible that I’m lazy this week because we did go on an excursion of our own before all of that family funness.  

We found ourself in New Orleans until Thursday.  I find that I have always quite enjoyed the grittiness of this city and I will write about it next week, but for now this post is dedicated to family, the ones who you are born into and the ones who you create for yourself either by including your fur babies or the souls who you meet along life's way.  I think for me it is the people who don’t judge me for what I say, there will always be a mispronounced word somewhere, and what I enjoy, books, tattoos and cats, lots and lots of them.  

I find it odd sometimes and I actually had this exact conversation with one of our Springdale moved to New Orleans and soon to be Costa Rica friends quite recently.  Why is it that we so often feel that family judges us, doesn’t like what they see and either choose to ignore the person who we are or try to manipulate the last few shreds of what they recognize into something that they can actually enjoy being around.  But aren’t we a product of them to begin with? I think.  And isn’t that so very ironic that they refuse to see what their genetics, scientifically merged, created for better or worse, or maybe I’m overthinking the whole thing, which wouldn’t be the first time.  I may in fact be the judgemental one in all of this if I'm being completely honest with myself.  I judge others for not getting what I need in a friend; I judge others for their nonacceptance of me; I judge others for judging me to begin with, when maybe they really aren’t doing all of that judging in the first place, but are just playing catch up to the person who I've now become, which is very different to the person I once was.  But that’s why you create your own family, isn’t it?  And that might prove to be almost better for these people choose the person who you've become from the very beginning.

On this Thanksgiving weekend I do expect to spend time with my born into family and I hope to enjoy them for who they are and wish that one day they will accept me for who I am, with all of my mistakes, all of my idiosyncrasies, all of what makes me, me and I am happy to report I did do this and the following is what I learned. Generations are becoming older, my grandmother, my aunt, my parents and it may not be all that important for them to accept the new version of me because all that they really want to do is remember the old version of the person I once was for perhaps that takes them back to when they themselves were younger. I began to ponder what it is we need at the end of our life? Do we want to suddenly be bombarded by a world that we no longer understands, wants us to disappear or worse treats us like we are no longer someone who has any value? I for one refuse to do that to them. If that means sitting pleasantly enough, recounting past stories and glamorizing my current ones, so be it. Life is too hard for the people who have little time to live within it and what they need at the end of the day is your time; even if that means to sit and stare at a tree or a blank wall, your time makes their existance relevant. I really hope someone does that for me when the time comes because to be relevant in your own story is all that anyone can ever really ask for at the end of their life.