family
An important person in my life said to me a couple of weeks ago “you don’t get to choose your family”.
It has resonated with me since our conversation because of the current life events that surround my Wicked existence. It has been on repeat in my head because that is not how I was raised. Many of you will probably disagree with me to the core of your moral codes, and that is okay. I am pretty sure that my husband does too, and that has been cause for many heated discussions in the recent months.
If that is the case, let us shake hands and agree to disagree. Or, you can fuck right off. Your choice.
I was raised not really knowing a larger portion of my mom’s side of the family. With the exception of my moms mom and her sister, the rest of the family were absent from my childhood. I have met them a couple of times, but for the most part there wasn’t really any sort of effort on either side of the coin to have anything to do with me or my brother for that matter. I couldn’t tell you half of their names. I honestly could give less than a fuck if I ever had any sort of connection with them. It is nothing against them personally, it is more that I am on the cusp of 34 years old, and I am honestly uninterested in making the effort. As callous as that may sound, my childhood memories reside with my dads side of the family. As many of you know, my grandparents were my heroes. It wasn’t a very big family dynamic – but the love was enough to pass through 100 second cousins.
This is different than the way my husband was raised. He grew up with a copious amount of family members on both his moms and his dads side. Every reunion I have been to overwhelms me a great deal. They all just kind of deal with the amount of drama that comes with all of the personalities. I have found myself thinking that I simply just would not deal with it, if it were me – and I find myself wondering why anyone ever would …
“you can’t choose your family.”
I call bullshit. I say that you absolutely CAN choose your family and I DO choose my family. No one is perfect. We all have things that annoy the people who we interact with on a daily basis. Those are not the things I am talking about in choosing family.
I am talking about selfish, manipulative, inconsiderate, assholish things. Just because you are “family”, doesn’t mean you get to be disrespectful. Just because you are “family”, you don’t get to take advantage. I don’t give a fuck if you are my sister, or my 12th cousin thrice removed – if you blatantly try and manipulate me or mine – I choose not to fuck with you any longer. End of discussion.
I refuse to allow people to use the excuse of “oh that is just my cousin so’n'so – she is just like that.” I could give a prostitute fuck if you are related by blood. You don’t get to treat people that way. Family or Foe. I have acquaintances who treat me better than that!
As this statement has repeated in my thoughts eleventy times a day for the past few weeks, and as D and I have discussed our differences in opinion on the statement and the circumstances surrounding it, the more I stand behind the fact that I not only disagree wholeheartedly with the statement, but I will never alter my beliefs to conform to such bullshit – and, in the end I HAVE chosen my family.
Mine consists of people who are not related by anything other than commonalities in how to love, respect and regard each other. Some are blood – but the majority are not. I am perfectly happy with the choices I have made in the people I refer to as my awesomely dysfunctional family.
What say you on the statement?
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