In which I sell out the family members I like

The biggest conflict with blogging for me is always when it involves other people. I can lay my soul bare, and it’s my choice, but there are times when other people are a part of my story, and then I have to decide. Sometimes this leads to leaving some details vague, or using code names, and sometimes that doesn’t work. What I’ll do in this case is load it up with lots of caveats.

First of all, I believe I love all of my family, but my home unit, Mom, Julie, and Maria, are special to me. Maybe it is the bond of the shared religion, (yes, technically the rest are members too, but not that you can tell), or the long years of living together and mutual support, but I remember even back in my early teens that my family felt like the four of us. I love them, I am fiercely loyal to them, and will go to great lengths for them.

Since I do feel this depth of affection for them, that should indicate that they are not that terrible, and also, in a situation where I am living with them and dealing with them every day and am generally happy doing so, this should also indicate that they are not that terrible. I am saying right now that they are not terrible. Let’s be clear on that.

That being said, there are two weak areas for me where they are not particularly helpful. These areas come up every time I have a low spot, and so I can’t really fully address my issues without covering them, but this should not be read as an indictment of my family. After all, these two areas are part of my everyday life, and yet they really only matter when something else is out of whack. Shall I stop beating around the bush now?

Remember I mentioned The Five Love Languages? The main point to that is that each person has one of five ways in which receiving love is most important for feeling loved. Mine is physical touch. I am the only Physical in my family. The rest would rather not touch at all. Mentally I know they love me, and they do things in their own way. Julie taking over with the dog that night was an important one, and they will sometimes buy me clothes (something I neglect to do a lot) and other things. (I would say Gift-giving is Julie and Maria’s primary love language.) Julie has recently taken over mowing the lawn, which she says is for the exercise, but I think part of it is so I don’t have to do it. They give me rides. They are not a bad family, but there is a definite lack of touch.

In addition, while they are not completely free of nerdiness, they are not geeks, and a lot of the stuff that I geek out over they think is completely stupid. Of course, I can obsess on the blog, and a lot of the music writing was stuff that I might have gotten out in conversation if anyone was interested in hearing me talk about that. If I were a more secure person, it’s not necessarily that it would feel good, but since I am coming from a point of always feeling unworthy –“bad”—it reinforces the dark place. I want them to find me interesting, and cool. They do like when I know the answers to questions they have, and I like that too, but it’s not my wildest dream.

The last bad time I had was on the last full day of the cruise, and part of it was being tired. A lot of my vacation responsibility is trying to keep everyone in a good frame of mind and making sure they are having a good time, and with extra family along and certain disappointments with the cruise, that was harder. Also, that particular day had involved me being the only person not to see any dolphins, missing breakfast because I was the only person capable of attending the disembarkation instructions, and getting varnish all over my pants, purse, and arm at some point during a walk on deck.

This might have been enough to make me hate everyone anyway, but one thing I really focused on was that my sisters had not come to watch me do karaoke. I get that they don’t want to do it themselves, and that when I go out they don’t necessarily want to come along, but there was nothing else to do, why not come along? Part of me wants them to see that I am kind of awesome, but then what if they didn’t? What if they thought I sucked? I mean, I am not really a great singer. I’m a committed performer and so I’m a good time in that way, but maybe they would not be impressed. So I was hurt that they had not come, but I had not asked them to come either.

Really there are several issues here, and probably multiple remedies. One the issue of having this emotional wound of shame, and not having a strong ability to trust, that’s just kind of a process, and I have improved some, and I am not done. There are some exercises in the 9 Personality Types book, and I had gone through them before, but I could probably stand to do them again.

I also know that to a large extent you teach people how to treat you, and for a long time I taught people to expect me to take care of them and they did not have to reciprocate. My big area of improvement here is protesting when I get interrupted (which is pretty often). When I think things are interesting and can’t NOT talk about it, I am trying to reduce it to a sound bite of the most interesting aspect, and only say that. This is not as satisfying as having someone listen to me and be amazed, but it’s workable, which the other may not be.

The touching is more complicated. I have had times where I have done pretty well. When I was in college, there was a lot of hugging at church, and there have been phases in the singles ward where hugging was big. That does not seem to be the case now, but also, I’m not sure that I want it that way. There are specific people that I don’t want to touch me. I worked with a guy once who was a big toucher—always putting hands on shoulders and things like that—and it creeped me out. He was kind of a bad person though, and I did not like him. I said I was the only physical in my family, but actually, I think my other sister is too, and I don’t want her touching me. People whom I like who may read this, but I don’t necessarily want them to touch me if it is like pity touching, or if it feels weird for them.

Actually, I’m afraid I’ve gone a bit feral on this one. I’m not sure what to do about it. Esteemed scientist and autistic savant Temple Grandin built a hugging machine, but I think that might be a little extreme.