The Ties that Bind you up

I am getting ready to write a letter that I have meant to write for some time. I won't go into great detail about the situation that made the need for the letter, but I will tell you that the contents of it have me reflecting a lot on family relationships.

Everyone agrees that family is important. Most people want to maintain a good relationship with their family members but it is often hard. From my experience the idea that your family grows with you and your siblings grow to be some of your best friends and your parents learn to support you as an fully capable adult is less than normal. Parents and their children always seem to have at least a smidge of a power struggle at the heart of their relationship. Siblings, even as adults, don't always understand each other and feel the need to compete. For most of us, we find a way to love one another even as we build our own families with friends and loved one's that we choose. Adding people we find along the way to supplement or sometimes even supplant our imperfect relationships built by birthright.

But at what point do you decide that a familial relationship is too toxic to even withstand the occasional call or visit? What if you find that someone related to you, by no choice of your own, makes you feel awful every time they come around. It is a hard decision to make, one that is not supported by most. Everyone says, "OH but it's your mom/uncle/cousin/whatever. You can't just give up." And so often people suck it up longer than they ever would for a stranger or a friend. Smiling politely when they really want to tell the other person to shut up, stop being so self-rightegeous or to stuff it. Of course, you can never actually do that, because that story would be added to the "bad/funny" family stories list.....like when your aunt's husband got drunk at Christmas and made a scene telling off your Grandpa.

And what of the opposite? Through time or distance you find yourself estranged from someone who is related to you, but seems pretty cool. How do you reach across a divide to someone whose blood you share and offer friendship when you have been nothing but a familial afterthought for a long time? When you have been relegated to holiday small talk and Christmas Card exchanges is it possible to build something more without the framework of the remainder of the family pushing you back into your normal boxes? Especially if you don't have much to do except gossip about the rest of the family.

If you are lucky, and I am, your immediate family is mostly normal, sane and supportive. Even though your mother drives you crazy, you don't really understand some of your siblings' decisions and you really wish the one would stop that REALLY annoying habit every time you see him, you enjoy each other's company. If you are REALLY REALLY lucky, you find extended family members that care about you for who you are, not just because you are the blood of their blood, or because you make them look good by comparison. And maybe with enough of them you find a secret wink and a handshake that allows you to let the neigh sayers barbs and digs roll off of you, like water off a duck.

Or maybe you find your family reunion should just be sponsored by a major brewing company.