Warning: This way be ghosts
This post is here for Noa and for Vani. This is an indepth look at my family and life. Why? Because it's bothering me a lot lately and I have never really gotten it all out before.
It is incredibly personal and long winded. I don't care who reads it. If you take the time to read this long view on why I am the way I am and why I believe that the family unit should go to hell, go for it.
As stated before: This is here for Noa and Vani. Mostly for Vani because I want her to realize she is not alone in this and that she needs to realize her own potential.
You are and always will be better than your family and you're a million times more capable than they or anyone else could ever lead you to believe. The only way to realize this is to take that first step and find out for yourself.
Family- my long awaited rant:
A lot of things recently have made me reflect back on my family as a whole and as small groups. And a lot of things have made me realize just how angry I am about a lot of things and how lucky I am to be leading a good life I have right now. As bad as it gets here, it could be utter hell back in Texas.
Reminder #1: Watching Vanessa struggle with her family is bringing back a lot of the feelings I had with my own family.
Reminder #2: My cousin called. She does that every now and then. She is the self designated person that feels it is important to keep in touch with everyone and keep the family together. And remind everyone just how crappy our family is.
Reminder #3: "House" The episode where his father died. That struck a hard cord with me for a lot of reasons.
Warning: This gets personal.
A little history that is key to understanding my family and it's dynamics: (This goes way back)
My Great Grandmother was a very formal proper woman from the old days. Children were seen and not heard, and you had to always be mindful of what the neighbors were thinking of you. Women had their place to be the strong silent nail in the bored holding everything together while you put on social gatherings and hosted parties for the big names of your town. She was also mentally and physically abusive towards her children. My Grandmother once said, in the only time she has ever been straightforward and outspoken about her own personal past, Her mother should have never had children.
Keeping with tradition, she married young and had children that she too abused. My grandfather died early of Cancer, and I know next to nothing about him. No one in the family talks about him. I have mixed images of the man really. Some say he was cheating on my grandmother and it left her bitter, others say he was distant and quiet. Never talked personally and was just there to bring in the money and enforce my Grandma's rules. What ever the case, My Grandma said she once regretted getting married and having a family.
My family has a strong sense of you keep your opinions to yourself, you don't complain, and you put on a show. You make nice and you obey the family rules. Grandma is the Matriarch of the family and everything is done for her.
Eventually, for whatever reason, all four of Grandma's kids moved to Houston, Texas (where the jobs were at the time). My Aunt Sam and Uncle Todd live one block away from my Grandma. Uncle Kevin lives across town and Mom lives five minutes away from Grandma.
Todd joined a Cult and follows Reverend Moon. He married a Korean woman and they are ONLY together out of religious following. She is a very angry woman. Most of my early memories are of her screaming hysterically and hitting at her own children. She has mellowed out over the years, but they are still in an unhappy marriage. She developed Lou Gehrig's Disease and my mom, for whatever reason is the one driving her to doctor appointments and taking care of her when her own children ignore her and run off. Her children are considered the favorites because they are smart, graduated at the tops of their classes, are musically talented, go to West Point and seem to have a good future. Everyone else seems to be compared to them for whatever reason. If you get an A, they got an A plus and why didn't you study harder?
Kevin is distant and pretty much no one in the family likes his family. They are highly intelligent and think they are better than everyone else. And will tell you to your face why he is better than you and why you are an idiot in the most condescending tongue in cheek way possible to where you can't retort back without you coming off as the jack ass.
Aunt Sam, considered my favorite relative because I lack anyone else to like. She married a man that comes from a family owned dairy farm. As anyone that comes from that sort of environment can tell you, it is not a happy life. You are expected to work the farm every second of your life. You do not leave the farm and you certainly don't bring in outsiders who are not willing to run a farm. She was not aware of this till the day she moved in with him. Over all, she is a very unhappy woman who is highly depressed and resents her mother for everything that is wrong with her life. (And there is a lot wrong). When she eventually forced her family away from the farm, she became hated by her in-laws because, god forbid, they left the farm. Her children are my closest cousins as we grew up together, and her family has the most impact on my life. I was born just a few months after her own daughter and so we were always compared to each other.
Andrea was the beautiful blond little girl who, I kid you not, was asked to pose in a news paper picture while I was asked to step out of the way. She is very girly, likes to date, dress up, play dolls, shop, and all the very typical expectant girl things. Pretty much my exact opposite. Which always made me feel like I didn't measure up. Of course my Aunt always said these things to me as well. I was slow, stupid, prissy and snooty because I didn't like or want to do those things. And my mom, being submissive, would never take my side or help. Because of them, and a very stupid incident, I was labeled a blabber mouth and couldn't be trusted by anyone in my family to keep quiet. It's hard when a whole family suddenly turns on you.
So I decided that I wouldn't talk. And to this day, I still refuse to talk about anything with anyone in my family. I would never complain, stand up for myself, and would simply shrug and accept any criticism and insults that were sent my way. And there was a lot.
This brings me to Grandma. She is an intelligent, strong willed, and talented woman. I will always stand by this. But she is the single cruelest person I have ever met. Mental abuse is the worst kind anyone could ever give. You are always too fat. Too lazy. Too slow. Too stupid. You are never perfect and can never do anything well enough or correct enough for her. If you build a master piece, she will go out of her way to point out the one little flaw that no one else saw. She has her favorites and it's perfectly clear who those are. For graduation, most of my cousins either got cars or college money or something nice. I got a card with ten bucks.
Now for my own personal family. Mom admits that with my two brothers, she was unhappy. Very angry all the time. By the time I came around, I only have one memory of her losing it and screaming at me. She learned to mellow out and over the years, she has even started to realize what is going on in the family. She has done her best by us and I will always love and thank her for that. I consider her to be the best out of her family because she is not angry, depressed, and never compared us to the others. My oldest brother Vernon is so vastly different from Daryl and I that we never connected. Though if pressed, Daryl and I will always stand up for him. He is successful and leads a good life that I will always admire him for. Though it never mattered with me, Daryl and Vernon are my half brothers.
Vernon is an outdoorsman that fishes, hunts, and runs his own company while raising and training Border collies, angora goats, horses, and lord knows what else. He is also 14 years older than I am. By the time I am old enough to have memories of him, he had moved out and I saw him once every five years or so.
Daryl is considered the failure by just about everyone in the family. He struggled in school and continues to struggle with finding work. He has high potential and is intelligent, but he lacks the ability to push himself or apply himself. He holds himself back. He is ten years older than I am and recently had to move back in with my parents because he lost his job. People tend to use him. He is too kind and leaves himself open for the wrong kind of people who drag him down and hurt him. He lacks the ability to see this till it's too late. Because of this, he has a huge debt that should not even rightfully be his. Right now, he is in need of surgery that he can't afford. My Grandmother has always been the hardest on him and extremely unmerciful towards him. At times, I am thankful for him. He would often take the attention away from myself and take all of the abuse from her. Intentionally or not, he has helped me the most.
Oddly enough, the hardest and most painful subject for me is my father. I'm his only blood child and so I was his little princess. And I know that he treated me better above my brothers. One of my earliest memories is actually of a night in which Daryl got suspended from school. I woke up to my father beating up Daryl while mom screamed in the background.
His own family has its own painful history that I've had to piece together throughout the years. My Grandfather was in the army and ran the typical army house. My Grandma is from Mexico. How she married him (a very racists man) I will never know. From what I understand, my Grandfather was abusive. He refused to let my Grandma speak any Spanish or carry out her Mexican traditions of heritage. Because of this, my dad considers himself a white man and is insulted if you consider him of the Spanish heritage. My Grandma was not a woman to be messed with. She could hit as hard as he could yell and there is actually a story of when she was so mad, she beat the man up. They divorced, why or when I'll never know. But it left my dad's family divided. My dad would not see his father until I was born. My mom insisted that I needed to know my only surviving Grandpa. To me, he was a very old fashioned man that was in very poor health with a very narrow view on the world.
My dad is very passive aggressive. If you argue with him, he leaves the room. If you try to speak to him, he turns up the TV and slams the door in your face. If you ask for his opinion he could care less. He is very selfish and will hide things from you. His motto was that everything in the house belonged "to the family", which translated out to it was his and you were lucky to have it when he didn't want it. He put our family in a huge amount of debt and continues to hide credit cards and bills and things from my mother. I can honestly say that I have no memories of my parents hugging, kissing, or saying I Love you to each other. These things are incredibly foreign to me and I had to learn any form of what a real relationship and love was from Noa. Even now, I only remember to do these things when he does them first.
Mom was often afraid to go on vacation. If she went somewhere and dad didn't go, she would come home to find that her animals had been given away to a shelter. He actually tried to have her favorite cat put down once. We were lucky because my brother worked at the shelter and one of the people recognized our animals and kept them safe for us. Needless to say that was the last time we ever went on vacation.
At one point in my life, mom considered getting a divorce. I believe that she didn't because she could not financially handle raising me and the debts without moving back in with my Grandma. A mistake she was not willing to make twice. No one in my family likes my father. And during this time, they especially hated him. I look more like my father than I do my mother and because I was not the perfect little child everyone else expected, everyone would openly shun me. Saying I was too much like my father.
I remember one day my father took me aside and told me that my mom and family would never love me because all they saw was him in me and I was no good.
I hate my father for that. And I can never forgive him for the games he played.
What hurt the most was that when we would go out in public, people would tell me I was luck to have such a nice friendly man as a father. And I couldn't understand why he couldn't be like that with me.
When I was a teenager, he declared me my mothers and stopped caring. I haven't had a decent conversation with him since then. I often wished my mom had divorced him. Why she didn't, and why she still doesn't, is a mystery to me.
Currently, he has Type 2 Diabetes, soft plaque in his arteries, and refuses to take care of himself. It angers me that he has no respect for himself or others.
I honestly do not know what I will do when he dies. I accepted a long time ago that he would die before mom and he would probably die early. Am I a horrible person for accepting that my dad will die? Am I horrible for having gotten over that years ago? This is why that episode of House really got to me. How to you properly grieve for a man that you hate, that you once loved and are still supposed to love?
I still hope that my father dies before my mother. He would do so much damage to everything if left alone. Her animals, my brother, her house and yard and everything she worked hard to do for us. And I am so angry at him for making me afraid that he won't go first.
My father has not spoken to me since I came out as being transgendered. He probably still does not know about the surgery. According to mom, he believes I am mentally ill and deserve to be in a mental ward on drugs. They argue a lot about me and I know it hurts mom that she feels she has to be the go between and that I can't talk to him. They argue a lot about Daryl living with them and apparently he is treating Daryl like crap. This upsets and angers me quite a bit.
My family is a show. You smile for the cameras and you make nice when someone's looking. You stay quiet and you don't talk openly with each other. Instead you go behind their backs and tear them down in order to cause the most pain.
It wasn't till I moved away from them and became independent that I really learned what my own worth was. And that I am by far better than they made me believe I ever was.
It is incredibly personal and long winded. I don't care who reads it. If you take the time to read this long view on why I am the way I am and why I believe that the family unit should go to hell, go for it.
As stated before: This is here for Noa and Vani. Mostly for Vani because I want her to realize she is not alone in this and that she needs to realize her own potential.
You are and always will be better than your family and you're a million times more capable than they or anyone else could ever lead you to believe. The only way to realize this is to take that first step and find out for yourself.
Family- my long awaited rant:
A lot of things recently have made me reflect back on my family as a whole and as small groups. And a lot of things have made me realize just how angry I am about a lot of things and how lucky I am to be leading a good life I have right now. As bad as it gets here, it could be utter hell back in Texas.
Reminder #1: Watching Vanessa struggle with her family is bringing back a lot of the feelings I had with my own family.
Reminder #2: My cousin called. She does that every now and then. She is the self designated person that feels it is important to keep in touch with everyone and keep the family together. And remind everyone just how crappy our family is.
Reminder #3: "House" The episode where his father died. That struck a hard cord with me for a lot of reasons.
Warning: This gets personal.
A little history that is key to understanding my family and it's dynamics: (This goes way back)
My Great Grandmother was a very formal proper woman from the old days. Children were seen and not heard, and you had to always be mindful of what the neighbors were thinking of you. Women had their place to be the strong silent nail in the bored holding everything together while you put on social gatherings and hosted parties for the big names of your town. She was also mentally and physically abusive towards her children. My Grandmother once said, in the only time she has ever been straightforward and outspoken about her own personal past, Her mother should have never had children.
Keeping with tradition, she married young and had children that she too abused. My grandfather died early of Cancer, and I know next to nothing about him. No one in the family talks about him. I have mixed images of the man really. Some say he was cheating on my grandmother and it left her bitter, others say he was distant and quiet. Never talked personally and was just there to bring in the money and enforce my Grandma's rules. What ever the case, My Grandma said she once regretted getting married and having a family.
My family has a strong sense of you keep your opinions to yourself, you don't complain, and you put on a show. You make nice and you obey the family rules. Grandma is the Matriarch of the family and everything is done for her.
Eventually, for whatever reason, all four of Grandma's kids moved to Houston, Texas (where the jobs were at the time). My Aunt Sam and Uncle Todd live one block away from my Grandma. Uncle Kevin lives across town and Mom lives five minutes away from Grandma.
Todd joined a Cult and follows Reverend Moon. He married a Korean woman and they are ONLY together out of religious following. She is a very angry woman. Most of my early memories are of her screaming hysterically and hitting at her own children. She has mellowed out over the years, but they are still in an unhappy marriage. She developed Lou Gehrig's Disease and my mom, for whatever reason is the one driving her to doctor appointments and taking care of her when her own children ignore her and run off. Her children are considered the favorites because they are smart, graduated at the tops of their classes, are musically talented, go to West Point and seem to have a good future. Everyone else seems to be compared to them for whatever reason. If you get an A, they got an A plus and why didn't you study harder?
Kevin is distant and pretty much no one in the family likes his family. They are highly intelligent and think they are better than everyone else. And will tell you to your face why he is better than you and why you are an idiot in the most condescending tongue in cheek way possible to where you can't retort back without you coming off as the jack ass.
Aunt Sam, considered my favorite relative because I lack anyone else to like. She married a man that comes from a family owned dairy farm. As anyone that comes from that sort of environment can tell you, it is not a happy life. You are expected to work the farm every second of your life. You do not leave the farm and you certainly don't bring in outsiders who are not willing to run a farm. She was not aware of this till the day she moved in with him. Over all, she is a very unhappy woman who is highly depressed and resents her mother for everything that is wrong with her life. (And there is a lot wrong). When she eventually forced her family away from the farm, she became hated by her in-laws because, god forbid, they left the farm. Her children are my closest cousins as we grew up together, and her family has the most impact on my life. I was born just a few months after her own daughter and so we were always compared to each other.
Andrea was the beautiful blond little girl who, I kid you not, was asked to pose in a news paper picture while I was asked to step out of the way. She is very girly, likes to date, dress up, play dolls, shop, and all the very typical expectant girl things. Pretty much my exact opposite. Which always made me feel like I didn't measure up. Of course my Aunt always said these things to me as well. I was slow, stupid, prissy and snooty because I didn't like or want to do those things. And my mom, being submissive, would never take my side or help. Because of them, and a very stupid incident, I was labeled a blabber mouth and couldn't be trusted by anyone in my family to keep quiet. It's hard when a whole family suddenly turns on you.
So I decided that I wouldn't talk. And to this day, I still refuse to talk about anything with anyone in my family. I would never complain, stand up for myself, and would simply shrug and accept any criticism and insults that were sent my way. And there was a lot.
This brings me to Grandma. She is an intelligent, strong willed, and talented woman. I will always stand by this. But she is the single cruelest person I have ever met. Mental abuse is the worst kind anyone could ever give. You are always too fat. Too lazy. Too slow. Too stupid. You are never perfect and can never do anything well enough or correct enough for her. If you build a master piece, she will go out of her way to point out the one little flaw that no one else saw. She has her favorites and it's perfectly clear who those are. For graduation, most of my cousins either got cars or college money or something nice. I got a card with ten bucks.
Now for my own personal family. Mom admits that with my two brothers, she was unhappy. Very angry all the time. By the time I came around, I only have one memory of her losing it and screaming at me. She learned to mellow out and over the years, she has even started to realize what is going on in the family. She has done her best by us and I will always love and thank her for that. I consider her to be the best out of her family because she is not angry, depressed, and never compared us to the others. My oldest brother Vernon is so vastly different from Daryl and I that we never connected. Though if pressed, Daryl and I will always stand up for him. He is successful and leads a good life that I will always admire him for. Though it never mattered with me, Daryl and Vernon are my half brothers.
Vernon is an outdoorsman that fishes, hunts, and runs his own company while raising and training Border collies, angora goats, horses, and lord knows what else. He is also 14 years older than I am. By the time I am old enough to have memories of him, he had moved out and I saw him once every five years or so.
Daryl is considered the failure by just about everyone in the family. He struggled in school and continues to struggle with finding work. He has high potential and is intelligent, but he lacks the ability to push himself or apply himself. He holds himself back. He is ten years older than I am and recently had to move back in with my parents because he lost his job. People tend to use him. He is too kind and leaves himself open for the wrong kind of people who drag him down and hurt him. He lacks the ability to see this till it's too late. Because of this, he has a huge debt that should not even rightfully be his. Right now, he is in need of surgery that he can't afford. My Grandmother has always been the hardest on him and extremely unmerciful towards him. At times, I am thankful for him. He would often take the attention away from myself and take all of the abuse from her. Intentionally or not, he has helped me the most.
Oddly enough, the hardest and most painful subject for me is my father. I'm his only blood child and so I was his little princess. And I know that he treated me better above my brothers. One of my earliest memories is actually of a night in which Daryl got suspended from school. I woke up to my father beating up Daryl while mom screamed in the background.
His own family has its own painful history that I've had to piece together throughout the years. My Grandfather was in the army and ran the typical army house. My Grandma is from Mexico. How she married him (a very racists man) I will never know. From what I understand, my Grandfather was abusive. He refused to let my Grandma speak any Spanish or carry out her Mexican traditions of heritage. Because of this, my dad considers himself a white man and is insulted if you consider him of the Spanish heritage. My Grandma was not a woman to be messed with. She could hit as hard as he could yell and there is actually a story of when she was so mad, she beat the man up. They divorced, why or when I'll never know. But it left my dad's family divided. My dad would not see his father until I was born. My mom insisted that I needed to know my only surviving Grandpa. To me, he was a very old fashioned man that was in very poor health with a very narrow view on the world.
My dad is very passive aggressive. If you argue with him, he leaves the room. If you try to speak to him, he turns up the TV and slams the door in your face. If you ask for his opinion he could care less. He is very selfish and will hide things from you. His motto was that everything in the house belonged "to the family", which translated out to it was his and you were lucky to have it when he didn't want it. He put our family in a huge amount of debt and continues to hide credit cards and bills and things from my mother. I can honestly say that I have no memories of my parents hugging, kissing, or saying I Love you to each other. These things are incredibly foreign to me and I had to learn any form of what a real relationship and love was from Noa. Even now, I only remember to do these things when he does them first.
Mom was often afraid to go on vacation. If she went somewhere and dad didn't go, she would come home to find that her animals had been given away to a shelter. He actually tried to have her favorite cat put down once. We were lucky because my brother worked at the shelter and one of the people recognized our animals and kept them safe for us. Needless to say that was the last time we ever went on vacation.
At one point in my life, mom considered getting a divorce. I believe that she didn't because she could not financially handle raising me and the debts without moving back in with my Grandma. A mistake she was not willing to make twice. No one in my family likes my father. And during this time, they especially hated him. I look more like my father than I do my mother and because I was not the perfect little child everyone else expected, everyone would openly shun me. Saying I was too much like my father.
I remember one day my father took me aside and told me that my mom and family would never love me because all they saw was him in me and I was no good.
I hate my father for that. And I can never forgive him for the games he played.
What hurt the most was that when we would go out in public, people would tell me I was luck to have such a nice friendly man as a father. And I couldn't understand why he couldn't be like that with me.
When I was a teenager, he declared me my mothers and stopped caring. I haven't had a decent conversation with him since then. I often wished my mom had divorced him. Why she didn't, and why she still doesn't, is a mystery to me.
Currently, he has Type 2 Diabetes, soft plaque in his arteries, and refuses to take care of himself. It angers me that he has no respect for himself or others.
I honestly do not know what I will do when he dies. I accepted a long time ago that he would die before mom and he would probably die early. Am I a horrible person for accepting that my dad will die? Am I horrible for having gotten over that years ago? This is why that episode of House really got to me. How to you properly grieve for a man that you hate, that you once loved and are still supposed to love?
I still hope that my father dies before my mother. He would do so much damage to everything if left alone. Her animals, my brother, her house and yard and everything she worked hard to do for us. And I am so angry at him for making me afraid that he won't go first.
My father has not spoken to me since I came out as being transgendered. He probably still does not know about the surgery. According to mom, he believes I am mentally ill and deserve to be in a mental ward on drugs. They argue a lot about me and I know it hurts mom that she feels she has to be the go between and that I can't talk to him. They argue a lot about Daryl living with them and apparently he is treating Daryl like crap. This upsets and angers me quite a bit.
My family is a show. You smile for the cameras and you make nice when someone's looking. You stay quiet and you don't talk openly with each other. Instead you go behind their backs and tear them down in order to cause the most pain.
It wasn't till I moved away from them and became independent that I really learned what my own worth was. And that I am by far better than they made me believe I ever was.