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egoistetx is 34% HeteroHow hetero are you? How hetero is Martha Stewart? Try out any Twitter name and get the real picture. Are we really the words we use? Hope to see you at Stockholm Pride!
My oldest nephew is graduating and having a bbq. Patricia refused to invite my mother's family because she says they have not made themselves part of his life, so why should she? In a practical sense, I completely agree with her.
When I pressed her on this about myself, after having told me that it would mean a lot to her personally that I be there, she did the math in her head. I told her son, hey, I don't really know you. I have not really been a part of your life. Do you care if I am at your bbq? He said no not really. He's 18. He doesnt really care if anyone but his closest friends are there.
So she agreed, okay, maybe I don't really need to be there. But I know she's like any parent, quietly proud of him and wants to share that with her family. There's the rub. She has a ....well gay people understand this a bit more...different definition of family. For her, it's not so much like the gays, families are not something you are born into, they are something you form. She insists that if our grandmother were to run into Javi in the grocery store, she would have no clue who he is.
Compounding the issue is the fact that Steve is getting married. We are invited to a reception after his JP nuptials are performed. I was not present during this argument, but when he was asked if HE was inviting those same family members and replied no, not a word was said. Patricia was infuriated. This may have sent her over the edge and she has now vowed that she will never make any obligatory family visits to my parents' home. You know, Mother's Day, etc.
I don't know. I was kind of raised with the old school ethic that there are just some things you just DO for and with family. It's diplomacy. It's decorum. It's considerate. These things are just custom, and for kids like us who have said screw custom, nobody likes me for what I truly am, I'm living life for me now, custom can be overbearing or downright useless (speaking for my sister). She may not care for my grandmother and her aunts, but my mother does. It's a family bbq and she thinks her mother and sisters should be invited, even if she knows they won't go, because that's protocol.
For my brother's reception, it's simple math. 100 guests at X dollars a head. We alone are 7 with the inlaws and outlaws and not including my jailbird brother. However, he too is of the quiet opinion that he doesnt really care about other family beyond a howdy. I am older and have had different experiences with most of my extended family. I am eldest so I was ingrained with a deeper sense of family and for nurturing of family. I struggle with my sense of obligation and my sense of individuality just the same. I told my family this weekend that I am not the kind of person who needs things or asks for them. They were the ones who insisted to me that one day I just might need them and it is not right for me to feel that I shouldnt.
As for the bbq, I'm just not going. I was just there last weekend. I hate to drive and I hate to travel. Mom is now refusing to go partly because of my sister and partly because Javi popped off at her and said "good" when she said she wasn't going, whether in jest or not I dont know. Dad says mom has gotten sensitive in her older age (and we have only gotten more INsensitive), but I don't know if he's kidding or not. I guess he wasnt. I don't need to be in the middle of a family squabble either because that's just a waste of my time.
They are both very strong and strongly opinionated women. They just need to realize that the only reason they fight is because they love each other so much.
Perhaps I don't bother fighting with them anymore is because I don't?

Everybody's twittering or facebooking these days and LJ has fallen off the wayside all around. When you start to embellish on the minutia, I think you lose focus of the bigger picture or the..I guess I'll call it the "landscape of our lives". We no longer seem to have a story to tell. Instead what we have is lots of little raindrops but no pool. For me, though, I just don't LJ, and never have, because nothing of significance happens to me.
But there was that one thing. My longtime drinking buddy, Paisano2K killed himself. If you're a longtime diabetic and you skip 4 days of insulin, what else could you call it but suicide? Most of the people I know who've heard about it expressed anger instead of loss. We all hated him as much as we loved him because he was just full of shenanigans. People full of shenanigans piss us off but when they're not pissing us off, we can have a lot of fun around them. Until you've had enough.
The weirdest thing, and I don't know about you, or if it's just cuz I'm an egotist, is that I found myself wondering about MY position at the funeral. Is that crazy? I found myself waiting to see if anyone would pay special notice to ME. I guess what we, or I, want to know is, did we have some kind of impact on this person's life? Did we have enough of an impact that after 8 years, his mother would remember us? Of course I'd be most closest to lesbican sister, swimming in the same circles and all. What we, what I, want to know is, Did we waste all that time together? What we, what I, want to know is, can I validate myself?
I never revealed myself to mother and stepfather til that final moment where you pass the family and express your sympathies on your way out of the cemetary. I said I dont know if you remember me but my name is Felipe. She cleared her eyes of her sadness to actually focus on my face, as did her husband, and she said yes yes of course she remembered me, and she held me tight and close as her husband held my hand. She offered ME comfort.
Things like this happen and I wind up hating myself, or at the very least doubting. I walk away thinking why am I such a shitty person? When Jeb passed away I choked up some but I was fully prepared for his death at least a full year, year and a half, because he TOLD me he was dying. The slow walk, the lesions he refused to show people, well, he was a zombie already.
Paisano died and I just wished I could feel more than I did. Some folks said oh you just don't have a public grieving face. They're like that too, they just bottle up their feelings. I've been an out of sight out of mind character for a while because I just move on, you know, and Paisano had been away for most of my sobriety, which will be 9 years in June. I chalked it up to that. Better that than to admit what I've been telling myself for a very long time. I have trouble grieving because 9 years ago, I died, And that was the week Paisano died for me too.
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