So Done

Seriously, life would go a lot smoother if people would just do what I tell them. If everyone just listened to me, we would be in much better shape.

Lucy, you egotistical bitch, you're thinking.

Yes, yes, I am. So suck it.

I'm just tired. I'm tired of running around like a maniac doing wedding stuff, I'm tired of going to counseling sessions with a priest who's never been married but feels like he's qualified to lecture me about marriage, I'm tired of work, I'm tired of dealing with my family's shit. I'm fucking tired.

I wish in a lot of ways that things could be different. I wish Baby Sis felt better about her life, I wish she had some enthusiasm for something. I wish my mother wasn't neurotic, I wish she would stop reminding me of all the things I have to do to get ready for my wedding. I wish my dad had some peace and that he wasn't so closed off sometimes. We all get so exasperated with each other about such trivial things, and yet we don't discuss the trivial things because we don't want to hurt each other's feelings, or because we don't want to deal with the inevitable shitstorm bringing up these things will cause. So it builds and it builds and it builds and suddenly we're having an even more horrific reaction to something not even related to these things because we need to explode but even in the explosion we don't talk about the things truly bothering us.

Omar and I aren't like that, thank God. But it's also just the two of us. Silence in this apartment is too overwhelming. We shout at each other, cry, throw something (well, I throw something), slam doors, and continue to thrash at each other until it's done. We don't let anything fester because that's not who we are. Me because I'd prefer to let him know exactly how irritated I am with him so he'll stop being irritating. Him because he's genuinely not like that. Something bothers him and he, for the most part, tells you. It's why I'm continually afraid he's going to get fired: he tells people at work all the time that they're stupid. They are, but Jesus, babe, have some tact.

When I was a junior in high school I suffered from some nasty depression. But I never told anyone until it was just too much to handle. I honestly thought I'd learned some lessons from bottling it up, but I guess not. I still don't talk to my family about what's truly bothering me. Part of it is for the sake of keeping family harmony. No one wants to bring up all the bad shit on the few visits I get to make there. So we smile and we laugh and we drink (which, admittedly, probably doesn't help), and we don't talk about the things that just sort of sit there.

I will be the first to admit I'm not willing to bring those things up. I don't like to fight with my parents or with my sister (at least not anymore. Sometime after seventeen that gets old). So I sit on my hands or I bite my tongue or I suck it up and there a thousand reasons why. I've never been the person in my family who anyone would call the peacemaker. More like instigator. I never had an off button or knew what it was to keep my mouth shut. Baby Sis being a brat? Tell her. Mom being a bitch? Scream at her that she's unfair and that I hate her. Dad being uncommunicative and silent? Do something to irritate him so much he starts to scream. That's just the way it was. But now I find myself keeping quiet about stuff I never would have ten years ago. Maturity and wisdom with age? Possibly. Not wanting to deal with the aftermath of letting loose on the people I love? More likely. A combination of both? Probably.

Everyone has family shit. No one has a normal family. Dysfunction is normal. Anyone who says his or her family is not in some way, shape, or form dysfunctional is either a liar or so deeply in denial there's not even an analogy or simile for it. We all have crazy families. I spent most of Thanksgiving informing my younger cousins that everyone in our family was in fact a fucking lunatic. Or loon. I forget which, but same basic concept. And while my cousins laughed, they also didn't disagree with me. They are lunatics. But we're all bound together which is why we don't talk about the stuff that we need to. We don't want to rock the boat. We don't want to hurt each other's delicate feelings.

It doesn't stop us from genuinely enjoying each other's company. It doesn't stop us from having a good time together. When we're all in a room together, we get along pretty well. Sure, those issues sometimes sit in the room with us and we ignore them. But for the most part, we just hang out and let them drift around and over us without confronting them. It's not worth the little time we spend together to spend it bitching at one another.

This is not to say that these issues don't come up. They do, every now and then. But we don't usually see them until someone explodes. Mom gets mad at Dad and takes it out on Baby Sis. Baby Sis is mad at herself, takes it out on Mom. Dad gets mad at Mom or Baby Sis and doesn't speak to anyone. For days. I get pissed at my mother and screen my calls for three days. It is what it is. We live that cycle for awhile and we move on. And the issues continue to be unresolved and we dance around them until there's no more room to move and we let loose with primal screams, tears, and accusations that have nothing to do with why we're really stuck in one spot.

It would be easier if we could just say, "You know what? I hate that you're disengaged or neurotic or selfish or whatever." But we don't. For one thing, you don't talk to your family like that. You find more diplomatic ways to say it. "You know what? I've noticed you've been irritable or sad or quiet or whatever. What's up?" Even when you want to say, "Lucy, get over it. You're not the first person to simultaneously be getting married and hating their job. Stop being a whiny fucking brat."

See? I'm aware I'm just as much at fault as they are!

It is a difficult balance. On the one hand, they are your family. If you can't tell them when they're being assholes, youo can't tell anyone. On the other hand, they are your family. And there is no more bizarre dynamic than that. They are simultaneously the people whom you love and hate the most, the people you rely on and wish to be independent from the most, the people you always come back to and the people you sometimes never want to see again. They make you cry, make you laugh and make you absolutely freaking crazy. They are the only people who understand you while claiming at the same time to have no idea where you came from. They are the only people in the world who are glad to see you at three o'clock in the morning when you wake them from a sound sleep. They are also the only people who can put such rage into saying your first name.

They're also the people who have the naked baby pictures and aren't afraid to use them.

They may make you want to scream, to cry, to laugh. They make you homicidal, nostalgic, happy, and neurotic. They know you and they love you anyway. But it is always a balance. There will always be things you can't say. There will be arguments where the subject of the argument is not actually what you want to be fighting about. There will be moments where you will desperately wish you'd been stolen from a millionaire's family and that these people are not actually related to you. But in the end, no matter how many times you bite your tongue, rant on the phone to someone not in your family about your family, or even screen your calls, you will always know that this is where you belong, that they do love you even when they don't like you much, that you love them even when they're embarrassing or maddening, and that no matter how done you think you are, you wake up the next day ready to start over.