Family

My therapist told me (unnecessarily) that you can choose your friends, not your family. He did this I imagine to suggest to me that by getting out more into the world, I will meet more people who have interests in common with me and that while you are born into a family with no choice as to who that family is, your friendships are largely of your own choosing, and reflect strongly on who you truly are.

Well, duh.


I am very satisfied with the family I was given, with a couple of notable exceptions. They aren't or weren't perfect, but neither am I. I am proud of the things my parents passed on to me; honesty, dignity, generosity, kindness, a sense of self. I have no complaints there.

But I do understand what my therapist was trying to say. My niece recently came out and was gifted my late mother's car. I love my niece; she is mixed up in a lot of ways, but again, who isn't? We have our share of disagreements, but in general we get along well and I am pretty sure that we each know we love each other.

The problem is that I may never see her again. She lives many states away, and her poor finances prevent her from coming out very often. I could of course go visit her, but it's different in that her home was never my home, while my home was hers. There is little to do in her area, and she wouldn't have much time to play host, as she is watching her young sons pretty much all day long and when she's not she's being a housewife to her husband.

I do love her. She was like my little sister for a long time and I guess I always foolishly harbored the thought that someday she might come out here and add to my sense of family sometime. I always knew instinctively that would never happen. She would not be happy here; her friends and now her family are no longer here, and her life is now completely centered around her new home. It is so easy to be angry at her for that; but it is not rational. She is just living her life the best she can and isn't trying to hurt me.

But now that my mom is gone, and my niece has her car, there seems to be less and less reason for her ever to make the trip again. She can only come when she receives financial help, and her husband is never able to take off enough work to make the trip worthwhile. And she would never travel alone or without her kids.

Family is special, wonderful. But there has to be more. People leave you, they die or they move away. It's the way things work. There's no fault to be placed, no blame to be assigned. It's just people following their destiny. But when you base so much of your life on your family, you kind of secretly hope they will stick around. You assume there's an implicit agreement that someone will always be around to care about you and help take care of you. It's a foolish assumption, of course, but it's comforting to delude yourself sometimes.

Only at some point you need to cast off the delusion. People need to make connections, not just because your family will more than likely leave you at some point, but because even while they are around it's not fair to them to place so much of your emotional investment in so narrow a space. I guess that''s what I did with my family; I did it without even thinking, and I think maybe they did the same so I may have come by it honestly.

The world can be a cold hard place without family. It is even colder and harder without friends. I guess the fact that I have almost none of the former shouldn't stop me from trying to generate some of the latter. I really don't have any choice, if I want to live a happy life, or even survive.

I miss my family.