Family: Right or Privilege?
Someone told me recently that no matter how close your friends are, no matter how much you trust them, that your family is really the only people whom you can completely count on. They say that your family should always be the people who you lean on most when you need them. That you can confess anything to them, have any degree of break down regardless of the low you fall too they should always be the ones who help build you up and nurse you back to health. Now that is to say if you are lucky to have at least one person you have known your whole life who understands you like no one else could. Clearly this is not something every last person has because of one condition or another. Family is not completely a matter of blood or completely a matter of faith or loyalty. Some of us are adopted, only children, widowed, estranged, abandoned, or completely blind. Someone who may have grown up with you, say a sister, should understand you on levels no one else could. They should know all the scars, all the crowns, all the thing that went into shaping who you are. They should be a person who has your back, who defends you when the rest of the world ignorantly turns its back on you and leaves you to be forgotten. But given all of that they still choose to look you in the face and hurt you.
I guess the point I am trying to make here is that no matter how much we want to believe that the people who have been closest too us the longest will be our fiercest allies, this sadly is not true sometimes. They say love is giving someone the power to destroy you and trusting them not to. While this can be a rewarding thing to do when your feelings are reciprocated, it is however, the most devastating thing when instead you get a knife in your back. But how many times does that knife get plunged into your heart before you start drawing lines? Is family a right? Can you.. No, should you expect that just because someone is your family that they will help you? Should you automatically assume they will be there for you? Forgive you? I do not think so. I do not agree that your family is your right. Your family, however yours is made up, is a divine privilege. There is no law anywhere that says you have to offer yourself up to the abuse of the jealous, bitter, angry, or self entitled. And if any text of any faith in any language says you have to do something like this to be a good person, then I guess "good" just isn't what I thought it was.
The truth is simply that when you abuse someone you love and you hurt them they will probably forgive you, but they are not required to, and you have no right to expect that they should. A decent person does not steam role your emotions and expect you to just be cool about it because they had a bad life. Especially when you have been their pillar of emotional, mental, financial, and spiritual support for YEARS. You don't get an unlimited supply of "forgive and forget" simply because you were spawned out of the same dis-functional womb. There comes a point when you have poured enough of your poison out onto everything that they have to break away and let you go. Any kid in time out will tell you that when you break the rules you lose privileges. A person of sound mind and spirit has every right to create boundaries that may eventually become walls when you continuously slap them with every kind undeserved moment of their love they have wasted on you. You reap what you sow. You get what you deserve. I believe in Karma and you will not have as many chances to hurt me.
My mother gave. She gave and gave. And when she was exhausted from getting up before the sun to wake two little girls up for day care so she could work a full day and then take them home to feed, clean, and love them to get 6 hours of sleep so she could do it again, she makes time to go and buy calamine lotion to ease the misery of the chicken pox she didn't need you to get. When she was going to school full time and pulling down PERFECT grades in addition to further growing and minding those little girls, she had to find a way to contain and control damage being done by those she trusted to help take care of them. When she buried her mother she had hoped to also bury the woman's legacy of hateful pain inducing control tactics which even with her last living action was designed to do nothing but hurt because that was the kind of person her mother was, she took it in stride and worked ever harder to achieve, to save and create. When she worked long hours in jobs that at times were down right heart breakingly discouraging, she did it day by day working toward something more, something better for those little girls. When she could have dated men and tried to find a companion she never let a single day end where she did not put first and foremost, the needs and as many of the wants as she could manage of those two little girls. There was never a better mother. From day one she always found a way no matter what. She sacrificed, and worked, and earned everything and owes no thanks or credit to anyone.
The very idea that there are those who would carry on the legacy of bitter hatred and insecurity of Maggot and use it to try and drag her down is despicable. You who have a 30 year old almost college graduate who would sooner down a fifth of jack and play halo all night than pay you any respect. You who have never had a single bit of control of your children since the day they stepped out of you. You who stayed home with mom all your life and now spend your days trying to see how fast you can kill yourself with food. Let me make myself very clear here. Not a single one of you has worked as hard, earned near as much, or sacrificed as deeply. If you are unable to cope with or overcome your scars and inequities then that is really sad for you and I have pity. But maybe stop the crusade to reach skyward and drag everyone else into your self loathing swamp of a pathetic existence.
You have made your choices and your beds. Please, lay quietly in them and leave everyone else in peace.