Shit Family

Family can be a difficult social obligation for some, a construct that suffocates, confuses, angers, saddens, and mysteriously uplifts you. You may have broken away from your family unit and sprouted a little boring menagerie of humans to call your very own, your own family, so why would you need your extendedish one anymore? I guess you don’t. You didn’t need them before you laid those flesh-eggs either, but you didn’t have much else to do so no point fixing what ain’t broken.

Families are hard work, no one ever speaks their mind, except for the eccentric members, and no one listens to those ones anyway, so you’re left guessing what people think of you — what they really think of you. Are they proud, do they like you, does it matter that you are the love-child and none of those other people are properly related to you, does your partner’s family actually like you, why are they being nice, why are they being insufferable troglodytes. They’re far from straight forward, each family has its own way, it’s own shitness.

Your experience will depend on what your hierarchy in the family unit is, the dad, the cousin, the aunt, the brother, the seeing-what-being-gay-is-like-for-a-bit niece. My family is easy on both sides, but my dad’s side is the one I’ll refer to. I have absolutely zero obligation to anyone in my family unit, (except I owe my sister $500, that’s for another time). I am the aloof aunt to about 10 kids, floating about on the breeze of youth, doling out cool advice and never worrying about anything. I am the daughter you never have to worry about, everything always works out for me, you were pretty much done parenting by the time I appeared so by way of nature I turned out to be the most functional, I work hard and you don’t need to worry about me putting you in a home. I am the love-child sibling, the one that was the physical manifestation of the breakdown of your parents’ marriage, the outsider you assume got a better deal than you did, the one who sees you for what you actually are, without obligation to love you. But I love you anyway, like a dopey dog that only ever wanted to be friends.

I don’t have kids of my own yet, I’ve been with my husband for over a decade now and despite the morbid curiosity of wondering how superior my loin-fruit would be, I haven’t given up on everything else just yet. The only downside to this is I know if I did have an infant human, family members would come from far and wide to visit it and also me, they currently don’t. Yes, I have pondered birthing a tiny meat sack just so I saw more of my family. I am of no interest. I am a 27 year old who has no problems and everyone else is busy with their own lives. I’d like it if my family wanted to come and see me and engage with me in conversation, get to know me a little better, like me even maybe. But they don’t. And I’m totally fine with this.

I’ve come to the understanding and conclusion that I am not glued to the inside of my house, I can go visit my family if I so wish, and I do — not as much as I’d like, but no one ever does. My family is full of weirdos just like every other family is, and I don’t agree with everything they say or do, but I don’t have to. I’m not obligated. They are just other humans I know, and share some little amounts of DNA with — not as much as I would normally, considering my love-child status. I actually like them, they’re interesting. I get my tiny feet from my dad’s side and most of my siblings have little hobbit feet too. Thank fuck I got mum’s legs though, not those hobbit legs they have.

Also, how good is Facebook for being just the right amount of involved in your family’s life? So good. If you manage it properly, of course. Your racist uncle is always going to be racist, the beauty of Facebook is you can literally unsubscribe from his moronic opinions about ‘boat-people’! Can’t do that if he visits your house. Hooray! Technology! Unfortunately some people think Facebook is lazy and somehow stops people from visiting your house or actually formally interacting with you and therefore don’t make themselves available — this is 100% true if you’re more vanilla than a tub of Peter’s icecream, no one will want anything to do with you regardless of their level of connectivity or availability if you’re plainer than a box of Weetbix or you’ve alienated the fuck out of everyone you know.

Your family is human (I assume), they’re a mash of good friends and people you don’t even need a reason to forgive if they do something real dumb. I could go years without seeing half of mine and when I saw them again I’d be making fun of their hobbit legs straight away. Regardless of what type of family you have, whether it’s a close one, a mafia one, an emotionally bankrupt British one, one where everyone is your aunty or uncle regardless of DNA; no one owes you anything, you’re not obligated to them (maybe in the mafia one). You get to make a choice to pull away and see them for what they are and appreciate them, or you can feel trapped by them or try and control them and fail and end up resenting them, you can do whatever you want. I suppose my only advice is try not being a dick I guess, to your family, or anyone you’ve taken in to be your family. Life is too busy to be punishing others for something your insecurities have imagined they’ve done, or something they’ve actually done. And anyway, if they really have done something shitty, then forgiveness and being kind to them will be the worst punishment you could ever deliver — that goes for just about everyone, not just family.

So go forth, make plans to catch up, cancel them if you have to, but make them again. Just show up, it doesn’t matter if you’re annoying, take a cake to their house, doesn’t even matter if they don’t like cake, take the cake and eat it and make them make you a cup of tea. Swap recipes, argue politics, be reasonable, suggest a book, leave before there’s time to run out of things to talk about, be good to them.