Family

Warning - down beat - woe is me - gonna eat worms blog to follow.

Stop reading now unless you take great interest in train wrecks and freeway accidents.

I'm warning you for the last time...

Somehow I have managed to become one of those people almost nobody cares about.

My son is an exception to this sad sack statement. I have a few good friends and I am not in any way belittling their love and kindness, I do feel it and I do appreciate it, but friends are not partners, and friends are not family.  My friends have spouses and kids and busy busy lives and I am not integral to their existence.

It's Saturday night and I am sitting alone with my computer on my lap watching/listening to a terrible little TV, with a "rabbits ears" aerial.  There is an Agatha Christie mystery showing (I think that is what it is) but there is so much snow that I can't really see the features of any of the actors.  I don't care 'cause I don't want to watch it anyway although I the soundtrack in the background fills the void in my room somewhat.  My knees are burning (they've been hurting all day) and my left foot is cramping and in spasm, my left hip is throbbing as usual (there is other crap hurting but I'll only bore you with the more extreme issues).  I'm worried about Christmas.

My family isn't close.  I have two brothers both wrapped up in their own lives/families - my parents are dead.  My relationship with my step-mother and step-sister has always been problematic.  My sister-in-law, for a reason I have never known, has not spoken a single word to me since 1992 (I think it was because I was pregnant too).  My other brother's male partner is a great guy and he and I get along pretty well.  Not one of them is in any way interested in what matters to me. how I feel, what I think, what I blog about or anything else.  They don't seem to place any value on my intelligence, wit, or insight.  You know how you get labeled as a child in a family - "the naughty one", "the clever one", "the sensible one" -- somehow I was tagged as "the serious one" or perhaps "the boring one".  On the rare occasions when a member of my family actually "hears" when I say something funny or witty they look at me like I have suddenly explained the physics of a black hole or sung an aria in Italian, because I am NOT "the funny one".  (Strangely my friends and former coworkers have never had this same perception.)  But I digress...

Recently I returned to Australia after living for 12 years in the US.  Aside from my mother's death and my father's funeral I have pretty much managed to avoid all family gatherings.  Mum and my gay brother used to visit the US and see me pretty often but mum has been dead now three years.

My step-mother is hosting Christmas.  The email invitation came out inviting us all.  Everyone's name was mentioned, in-laws and kids too, except mine but I know that was just an oversight - Freudian maybe, but not deliberate.  My son was named though!  So this motley crew is assembling at her house on Christmas eve, cause everyone except me has lots of other places to be on the actual day.  It will be the first time I have been in the same building as my sister-in-law for over 19 years, the first time I have seen my niece and two nephews in at least 10 years, the first time I have seen my straight brother since my dad died 21/2 years ago, and I think it will be the first time we have ever ALL been in the same place.

None of these people have any idea how much FMS is bothering me, even my son doesn't really know, cause I always push so much harder when he is around, I always want him to see the best of me.  I don't think either of my brothers even knows I have fibro, though I know I have told them somehow I don't think they really heard me.  To be honest I don't think anyone in my family ever hears me.  Except to chastise me for my failures, to dictate to me with advice that is not open to discussion, or to patronize me with superficial interaction I don't think they are interested in me at all.  I am superfluous.

If I wandered off and none of them ever heard from me again would anyone give a shit?  Would anyone look for me if I were kidnapped or wandering lost with amnesia?  Would anyone visit me if I was sick in hospital?  Aside from my son, the answer is no.  I have not fostered or built these relationships, I carry the lions share of the blame,  I have created my own irrelevancy.   My mother was the glue that bound my brothers and I together, she was so happy when she was dying to see the three of us together getting along, but after she died we just went back to our corners of the world.

I feel unloved and unlovable and I don't know how I will endure this gathering and yet I could never bring myself to not go.  I could not deprive myself of even this twisted a gathering of magnified dysfunction. Is it like playing with a sore tooth?  Am I drawn to poke at this bruise that exists where family should be?  Or is it like most things a mixture of good and bad, happy and sad, healthy and sick, understood and misunderstood, happiness and sorrow, pleasure and pain, love and hate...

I guess I will know more on Christmas Day when it is all over and I am sitting alone the same way I am now...