Family Life
I enjoy the holiday season, but it’s also very stressful. This year I’m doing the family thing as I do most Christmases. The holiday season brings about contradictory feelings. We’re marketed, via the media, the idea that if we don’t have tons of presents, a huge family, snow on the ground, and happiness galore, we’re out of step with most other people. Yet for most I know, trying to achieve that TV image is nearly impossible, or if you actually can achieve it, you find you’re not happy when you get there.
Isn’t that odd? Especially because many people I know are ‘orphans’ who don't live near, or communicate well with their families. Like me, many feel that they miss their birth families, and yet when they’re with them, they can’t wait to get away from them again. For me, after about 24 hours, I’ve had enough. For others it’s the 48 hour rule – no more, no less.
I think that’s the struggle of the holidays. You’re told that you’ll be happier if you’re with your family and yet if you choose to do that, it can be hard on the heart, the brain, or both. You’re told that if you just buy a few more gifts that everyone will be happier. If you entertain more, that’ll be better. Buy more, get more, do more, and it’ll all be better and happy, happy, happy. The media is only too happy to cram that fake happiness right down your throat and it’s enough to choke most people.
My birth family is a nice family. They are fabulous individuals, but when we’re together it’s a little bit like starving lions chasing antelopes. Imagine if you will, lions, allegedly wanting to work together to kill for the greater good of the pride, but all competing for anything that remotely resembles an antelope so that they can claim the tenderest portion and declare themselves the winner. Tension builds, and typically somebody is squabbling about how to make the gravy, or what type of wine to serve guests, or why in 1980 you ran away with the guy down the street, or why you were always Dad’s favorite. I come from a family of dominants...there are no submissives! That makes the going hard. At the end of the day you’re just exhausted and feel emotionally beaten. You know they love you, but there’s a steep cost that comes with that type of love.
Birth families typically see you with all the baggage and clutter you’ve had since the day you were born. There have been a few times in my life when that’s been a source of comfort, as at times in my life needed to be with people that know me that well, but mostly it’s downright annoying. When my Mother was still living, I was always permanently age 14 and on the verge of committing heinous crimes. I miss her greatly, but I don’t miss feeling the way I used to feel when treated like a child.
This season I’ve talked to many people about their feelings about Christmas. Most feel that they don’t fit that mold from TV or radio. They don’t buy more, do more, try to achieve more. They’ve tried that and even tried pretending to be more and they just can’t/won’t/refuse to do that again. People say that they love their birth families, but like me can handle them only in very small doses.
The family I’ll be with for New Years is my family of choice. The ages range, the experience levels differ, the numbers swell and dwindle now and then, the personalities are all different, and yet somehow when we’re together it’s a truly wonderful experience. We aren’t together because we must be together, because we are family, or because someone chose a date on the calendar and said all families are together on this date every year. We’re together by choice, to have a laugh and raise a glass or two together, to console and consult with each other, to tease and to play. Sometimes there are troubles, and problems and arguments, but mostly it's just very comfortable.
My chosen family doesn’t have all that leftover baggage. They have newer baggage, or perhaps different baggage, but somehow it seems to all work. With my family of choice, you don’t have to meld at the hip, you don’t have to agree on everything, you don’t have to spend the next 5 days together at every moment. You can be exactly as and what you are.
And to you dear readers – if your birth family drives you nuts – find friends that you truly love and trust and invest your time and energy appropriately. The best way to find friends is to be a friend.
I’ll return again sometime in January.
Very truly yours,
Isabelle Channing