Family Thoughts

It took me until my mid twenties to see my parents as people and not the deities of my childhood who had power over me and could tell me what I could and could not do. It's taken some getting used to to the personality quarks, both good and bad, of both my parents. My mother's inability to think she's wrong about anything. My father's inability to revolve anything around something other than money. My mom's talent of being sympathetic and yet still bring perspective from another point of view. My dad's grace of patience in conversation and life.

Relatives are a funny breed. For most of us our relatives, our blood family have been in our lives since we were born. Most of the time I don't feel like belong in my family. Aside from my parents, most of my relatives make me feel like an outsider. Unintentionally but an outsider nonetheless. My sister has an influence over me like an underclassman trying to impress the prom queen in high school. I put all my energy into trying to make her like me. Others make me feel like what I have to say is stupid, childish, asinine or simply irrelevant. These personal attributes are harder to get around.

Each of my family members have personality quarks that can be easily worked around. But what happens when there are too many zig zags to get by? What if the people you were born into simply aren't people you get along with? Just because a group of people have the same blood line doesn't make their relationship stronger. Too often I think that family relationships are taken for granted. We don't think we have to work at our relationships with our sisters, or brothers, or cousins because they will always be our sisters, or brothers or cousins. They will always be around.

I once told my cousin that I was glad I knew her. She laughed and said "but we're cousins." I tried to explain that if we weren't cousins, we weren't related, how much less my life would feel without her. "But we're cousins."

But what if we weren't, would we be friends? Somehow I don't think so...