Family and sadness
I woke up sad this morning. Lying in bed with two adorable muppet dogs cuddled up against my back, staring out a huge window at a beautifully foggy sunrise, I wondered why I was so sad. Was it because I was up at sunrise after not getting to sleep till 2am? Maybe. But that creates cranky, not sadness.
I watched funny videos on facebook, and found myself with tears streaking down my cheeks as I laughed. "What the fuck, self. It's too early to be having an angsty, existential crisis'", I self deprecated, uncomfortable with tears over nothing, even lying alone in bed with a cell phone in front of my face.
And then I started going through my memory of last night. I cried with my sister last night. We cried together when we saw each other a couple of weeks ago, too. We actually cry a lot when we're around each other. And we don't really cry together. We cry on two separate sides of a gaping chasm. And while we are crying for the same reason, the cause of that reason is different for both of us.
Loving someone who needs you to change is always toxic. But the person you love isn't always toxic. The relationship itself isn't always toxic. Sometimes it's just the need to change you that's toxic. And those are the worst times. Because it is so fucking confusing to love someone who loves you back but who can't understand why you aren't the person they need you to be. Underlying every happy moment, every simple and satisfying interaction that has told you you are loved since your childhood is this terrible, overarching knowledge that something is not right, something is waiting in the wings.
It's a different monster waiting in the wings for everyone who has this relationship in their life. For some people, it's the fear that anything related to their sexuality will be raised. For some, it's their weight, or their partners, or their schooling, or their friends, or their... whatever. There are so many intrinsic to us choices that we make which are vulnerable to judgment by those we love because we have to.
For my sister and I, that choice is and always will be religion. My sister calls it spirituality. She cries because we no longer share this beautiful sense of God in our lives together, because we no longer believe the same things and so can't share them. She cries because she can't open her own spirituality to me without fear of being judged or pushed away. She cries because she is afraid for me, on the surface because I chose the wrong path, but underneath because she has been told to be.
And I cry, at first, because I can't help it. Because when her face crumples in on itself, her brow furrowing like it's trying to protect her watering eyes, a switch gets hit and tears start streaming from my own eyes. It's always been this way. I can't watch my sister cry without crying myself. Which has always sucked, because she's a crier, and I'm not, and she leads so I follow and get to cry more than I ever wanted to.
But eventually I'm not crying because she's crying, I'm crying out of sheer undiluted frustration.
The conversation varies in words, but never intent. It rarely gets angry, we are both so careful to keep our words kind and loving. The judgment stays hidden in the depths, roiling down there with confusion and anger and fear and, underneath them all, hope. The specific words don't matter. The intent is always to change. That strong kernel of hope lurking below and not spoken of is always that this time, with these tears and these hugs and these words, this time the other one will actually listen. And in listening, will change their mind. Never mind that we are both actually listening. Since we aren't changing our minds, we can't actually have heard each other. And so the conversation will be had again and again. And it will stay confusing, and heartbreaking.
She's not the villain of my story. I wish she was, sometimes. If she were the villain of my piece, I could be the villain of hers. It could be black and white for both of us. We are both the kind of person to walk the fuck away from toxic bullshit. But since we are not each others villains, because we love each other, we can't walk away from the confusing and terrible desperate need to make each other change. So we stare at each other across a great, gaping divide created by religion but sustained by both of us, still strongly tethered by aging and thinning ropes of love and family.
I have never told her that one of my greatest fears is that one day she'll be able to walk away, ignore the ropes. I've never told her that every moment I've held on too long to a terrible relationship, every time I've been incapable of letting someone go, it's because I fear how easy it would be for her to let me go, for all of them to let me go. That the threat of these ropes being snapped has helped push me into creating bonds with people who would never let me go, no matter how unhealthy that holding onto can be. You don't give that kind of ammunition to someone who wants you to change. I'm sure she has ammunition she holds back from me, doubts and fears and joy about her own sense of self that she would love to share but can't because in the desire to change each other we have to be enemies about these certain things.
This kind of relationship sucks. Everyone who has this kind of relationship in their life, you have my sympathy and support.
I watched funny videos on facebook, and found myself with tears streaking down my cheeks as I laughed. "What the fuck, self. It's too early to be having an angsty, existential crisis'", I self deprecated, uncomfortable with tears over nothing, even lying alone in bed with a cell phone in front of my face.
And then I started going through my memory of last night. I cried with my sister last night. We cried together when we saw each other a couple of weeks ago, too. We actually cry a lot when we're around each other. And we don't really cry together. We cry on two separate sides of a gaping chasm. And while we are crying for the same reason, the cause of that reason is different for both of us.
Loving someone who needs you to change is always toxic. But the person you love isn't always toxic. The relationship itself isn't always toxic. Sometimes it's just the need to change you that's toxic. And those are the worst times. Because it is so fucking confusing to love someone who loves you back but who can't understand why you aren't the person they need you to be. Underlying every happy moment, every simple and satisfying interaction that has told you you are loved since your childhood is this terrible, overarching knowledge that something is not right, something is waiting in the wings.
It's a different monster waiting in the wings for everyone who has this relationship in their life. For some people, it's the fear that anything related to their sexuality will be raised. For some, it's their weight, or their partners, or their schooling, or their friends, or their... whatever. There are so many intrinsic to us choices that we make which are vulnerable to judgment by those we love because we have to.
For my sister and I, that choice is and always will be religion. My sister calls it spirituality. She cries because we no longer share this beautiful sense of God in our lives together, because we no longer believe the same things and so can't share them. She cries because she can't open her own spirituality to me without fear of being judged or pushed away. She cries because she is afraid for me, on the surface because I chose the wrong path, but underneath because she has been told to be.
And I cry, at first, because I can't help it. Because when her face crumples in on itself, her brow furrowing like it's trying to protect her watering eyes, a switch gets hit and tears start streaming from my own eyes. It's always been this way. I can't watch my sister cry without crying myself. Which has always sucked, because she's a crier, and I'm not, and she leads so I follow and get to cry more than I ever wanted to.
But eventually I'm not crying because she's crying, I'm crying out of sheer undiluted frustration.
The conversation varies in words, but never intent. It rarely gets angry, we are both so careful to keep our words kind and loving. The judgment stays hidden in the depths, roiling down there with confusion and anger and fear and, underneath them all, hope. The specific words don't matter. The intent is always to change. That strong kernel of hope lurking below and not spoken of is always that this time, with these tears and these hugs and these words, this time the other one will actually listen. And in listening, will change their mind. Never mind that we are both actually listening. Since we aren't changing our minds, we can't actually have heard each other. And so the conversation will be had again and again. And it will stay confusing, and heartbreaking.
She's not the villain of my story. I wish she was, sometimes. If she were the villain of my piece, I could be the villain of hers. It could be black and white for both of us. We are both the kind of person to walk the fuck away from toxic bullshit. But since we are not each others villains, because we love each other, we can't walk away from the confusing and terrible desperate need to make each other change. So we stare at each other across a great, gaping divide created by religion but sustained by both of us, still strongly tethered by aging and thinning ropes of love and family.
I have never told her that one of my greatest fears is that one day she'll be able to walk away, ignore the ropes. I've never told her that every moment I've held on too long to a terrible relationship, every time I've been incapable of letting someone go, it's because I fear how easy it would be for her to let me go, for all of them to let me go. That the threat of these ropes being snapped has helped push me into creating bonds with people who would never let me go, no matter how unhealthy that holding onto can be. You don't give that kind of ammunition to someone who wants you to change. I'm sure she has ammunition she holds back from me, doubts and fears and joy about her own sense of self that she would love to share but can't because in the desire to change each other we have to be enemies about these certain things.
This kind of relationship sucks. Everyone who has this kind of relationship in their life, you have my sympathy and support.
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