My father is moving in today. My once broken family has sealed itself in again. And I'm miserable over it.
I live in what must be, circumstantially anyway, one of the world’s weirdest families. I won't go into the gruesome details of it. But suffice it to say that, since I was eleven-years old, my parents have been separated. But in practice, they've hardly been separated at all. Though we haven't all lived together since the separation, we've all seen each other, even eaten dinner together, every day without fail. Come hell, high water, taxes, sickness and death, we simply wouldn't be separated by separation. And now we’re being thrown back into the thick of it. Now we're all going to live together again.
The trouble with it all is that we don't get along with each other. You can't blame any one individual for it. We’re all a bunch of messed up bastards. I think we all realize it, but some sense of duty or honor has kept us together in spite of it. It isn't that we’re not fond of each other; we are. In general, very much more than most families I think. It's just that, one of the side effects of being socially retarded, with a good tendency toward loving anyone, is that you end up having idiotic relationships. And our relationships are chiefly idiotic, to the detriment of every last one of us.
So I've been sitting around since I found out the old man was moving back in, mentally squirming under the slowly swinging pendulum. I’m waiting for the first flare up of temper. I'm worried that, like some skittish archer in Lord of the Rings, I might be the first to lose his nerve, firing the arrow which starts the war too soon. I don't want it to be me.
It's a bitter-sweet start to a new year. It's the ultimate test of my resolve to love dispassionately. And conversely, it might just be the fates signaling me through my discomfort, that it's time to move on.
posted by Sarie @
1:30 PM
>Comments: 0
