Maquinna's Poop du Jour

More Alike Than Not

My sister is coming to visit tomorrow. She lives back on Vancouver Island, with all the rest of my family, a good 4000 miles from here. This will be the furthest trip she has ever taken. Last year we flew my mother out to visit - she'd never even been on a plane. The rest of my family has yet to visit. My dad stopped in once a few years ago for an overnighter but that didn't really count. Most visits from my dad don't.

I have all these mixed feelings about my sister, and my family in general. We are none of us close (even when I lived closer to them), and we don't speak to one another as much as it seems a lot of families do. It's not that we hate each other, but for some reason that desire for one another's company was just never adequately fostered.

I've spoken to several people, professionals and non-professionals, over the years, and family relationships is frequently at the core of my concerns - whether I realize it or not. The kinds of relationships I pursue now - with women and men, work relationships, friendships, etc. - all are coloured by the difficult, and frequently distant, associations I had growing up with my family.

Dad rarely spent time with us - even when we were actually physically with him. This continues today. Even when we visit one another, he goes off and does something else in another part of the house, or spends most of his time on the phone to others (in front of us), or when he does talk, talks about the other people he spends time with, rather than us. It's very complicated. And we haven't even talked about how he ran off and married our babysitter.

Mom has spent most of her life in denial, unable to emotionally connect to much around her, probably because she doesn't imagine it will last or she will get to keep it. She's a real mystery. I think inside she is in a lot of pain, but years of having her heart trampled by one man or another, and being the only child of a psychologically aloof mother, have made her play her cards very close to her chest. She is not particularly forthcoming about anything.

Older brother and younger brother: neither places much importance on relationships with their own families. Contact is intermittent.

And then there's my sister...who's pretty much everything I'm not. Maternally oriented, unambitious except where her material comfort is concerned, has never read a book that didn't have a lavender and gilt paperback cover, and whose interest in world events starts and ends with People Magazine...we have very little in common other than our dubious genetic heritage.

I've always felt that not only were they emotionally unconnected and intellectually uninspiring, but that they went to no lengths to get to know me or to have any kind of real relationship with me. My most effective therapist, however, highlighted all too well how my contempt of their values and lifestyles has made me as much a culprit for the distance between us all. That therapist sits in the back of my head like a little mouse making a nest from all my neglected brain matter, a constant and unshakeable voice. I'm the one pushing them away. I've been the one pushing them away since I was a child, because I could think of no worse fate that to be one of them.

Damn. You mean that's it?

Well, I guess it's true.

And what does that say about me? That I think I'm so much better than them all? That my life is more interesting and worthwhile? That they should try to be more like me if they want my notice?

I guess it does.

I have no idea if my family thinks this is how I am, and if that's why they react to me as they do. I suspect that is only a small part of it, given that they treat everyone else the same way as well. But I can't change the way they are or how they behave. I'll admit to some culpability here, now, but I also know that as much as I would like THEIR notice, I'm unlikely to get it any more than I have. And that's because they're all damaged in their own ways too. We're all these little people in our pods, occasionally bouncing up next to one another but never breaking through. In that respect, we're more alike than I care to admit.

I look at other families that enjoy tight relationships and I am envious. I sometimes worry that my own psychological baggage will make it difficult for me to foster that kind of atmosphere with the family I hope to create. Awareness of all of it helps, and my husband's family at the very least presents an alternative model, but will I be the weak link in the chain?

posted by Maquinna @ 9:31 a.m.