On family and life debt

Maryland is cold and slightly frosty today. My morning walks with the dogs feel more solitary. It isn't a bad thing. Less encounters make for a smoother walk.

A month has past since I last wrote in the morning. I tried doing nanowrimo this year. Despite not finishing it, it was the furthest I've ever taken it. It feels good. Yet, I have been missing this kind of reflective writing as well. The two flavors of writing are entirely different. I now think I should have been mixing both.

My meetings with my cousin continue. Though they've shifted from a late friday meeting to a pre-dawn saturday one. It is sometimes difficult to be out so early. Now, in the dark winter mornings, especially. But does it remains to be worth it?

After reading Four Thousand Weeks, I've pushed myself to be intentional on where my attention goes. Rethinking time as chunks of your life, is a small but powerful change. It helps reprioritize your tasks tremendously. Doing so, surprisingly, helps one become more of a self-advocate.

In one of our meetings we spoke about our responsibility to our elders. This is something that has been on my mind a lot in 2022. The more I learn about boundaries, the more it becomes clear that proper ones were not modeled to me. Therefore the lessons on what we owe elders and the larger family as a whole, is muddled. If it isn't clearly defined, then it becomes an area of constant negotiation and frustration. This naturally seeps into a misunderstanding or dispersing of boundaries. Because the elders promote an illusionary truth of them holding more power in the dynamic. Filial peity. Combine this with a drop of the "we gave birth to you" debt , and it feels irrefutable. How do you ever pay off this life debt? It's simple - you don't. That's by design. Nothing you ever do will ever satisfy this behemoth of a debt. How could it? Your very existence depends on it.

I brought this up in a therapy session, and my therapist, Anne, responded in ways I never would. "So what? Did you consent to being born?" My brain fired off variations of "you can't say that" But why not? We didn't consent to being born? How could we? If I recall correctly, I said something to the tune of "But then they'll say - i can't believe I gave birth to such a son! So ungrateful" etc. Anne responded "But you did! OH WELL" Again my brain goes "you can't say that!" She questioned why not? The very same people who tell you that you must respect your elders also without missing a beat will tell you that respect must be earned. It's a loophole in their rule that maintains power on their side. You do all the emotional labor. You do all the work. They reap the respect. Anne was demonstrating to me responses that ignored this illusory truth. This wasn't a special relationship that transgressed the expectations of relationship dynamics. It required the same kind of effort from both sides to be healthy. To be healthy.

Now to go back to the question of what is owed in a family relationship. My actions must feel like a continued dismissal of their expectations. Continued denial of something that they had such free access to. Suddenly they're being haranged with rules and boundaries that never encumbered them in years prior. To folks who have had privileged access to your life, boundaries seem like oppression. They have been living the high life, enmeshed with all the control and juicy secrets they can take. To be put on an "Info Diet" or worse - cut off completely, must feel like sheer discrimination! My experience is that once this is put in place, the illusion breaks. They will kick and scream until the their manipulation works and you give up. Or if you hold off long enough, they do.

Well, they do, if they care enough to maintain a relationship. They may never do so. Anne calls these "Recovery fantasies". I have a fantasy of a healthy relationship with my parents. And it has burned me many times. Every now and then, they appear to have grown respectful of boundaries. But inevitably, they return to their own machinations. They have plans, and must justifiably assert power to enact it.

And it was during one of these sessions that I realized i was walking along another recovery fantasy, but unaware of it. A fantasy of a functional, individual respecting, boundary respecting family. Not just my parents. This is why it had been so important for me to continue being available for my family - for my cousin. So much so, that I felt obligated to go to family dinners that I would never have gone to otherwise. Family dinners in which my spouse and I were basically there for show - to be established in the bottom of this totem pole. Several folks just felt entitled to tussle my beard and comment exhaustively on it - some bs show of power. Incidentally, it was only the youngest person there that actually asked for my consent (which was given, because thank you polite nephew). Somehow I found myself in a setting full of people I didn't care about - who likewise didn't care about me. What's more? I was complicit because I had begged my spouse to come with me. It has all been a series of rather upsetting realizations.

Including learning that these coffee meets came with attachments from my past. I still want a relationship with my cousin, but am afraid that at the moment the boundaries are sitll not clear. But he comes attached with a whole lot of memorires and obligations. Two things that ultimately lead me back to the problematic dynamics with the rest of the family.

The more I read books and try to improve myself, the less I want to continue associating with these folks. Folks who so easily claim a stake in "making me who I am". Which may be true, but not in the way they think. As I learn the depths of the dysfunction, I realize I'm not who I am because of them, I'm who I am in spite of it.

A book I'm readng right now "How to talk so kids will listen and how to listen so kids will talk" has been particularly eye opening. It isn't a book that I expected would make these realizations arise. In fact, the book is pretty much geared towards teaching parents more productive ways to talk and communicate with their kids sans punishment. But the magic happens in how simple that shift could have been. The shift from this guilt and power driven relationship to one highlighted by empathy. And a part of me wants to consider that my parents were a product of a different generation. They didn't have access to these products, and nor did their parents (or their parent's parents). And therefore, my mind, wants to gravitate towards forgiveness and letting them be- because who doesn't have blind spots. But this is where Anne chimes in- "But they have access to it now". And they do. This book doesn't lose its relevance when you switch the target demographic. In fact, the lessons inscribed are even more fundamental in the way we relate to each other as adults (especially if such behavior were never modeled).

This brings me back to the illusory truth. It became clear to me how self serving it was to the older generations. My parents managed to both get dengue fever recenty. And while it was concerning and critical - they both recieved health care as well as they could. Folks from abroad were coordinating their care (some of the top in the field too). But when they arrived back in the states, they languished about how emotional care was missing. How although they had been taken care of medically and logistically, they had needed emotional care as well. And I was floored. Emotional care? How are people who you have never modeled emotional care to supposed to flip a switch and provide that to you? Bizzare. Their expectations seemed justified. Yet, I couldn't help but feel a sense of disgust. If you had asked me then, I probably wouldn't have been able to pinpoint its origin. The hypocrisy. I wanted to scream that it didn't occur to you that emotional care was important when your son was suicidal? Or when your nephew succumbed to it? My frustration in my inability to express this continues to grow.

The thing with these soft-manipulations, is that they always seem very justified. It isn't until later, under different lens that they reveal themselves. That sentiment lived in my head, rent free, for weeks. Until I asked my spouse whether I hadn't done enough, or whether she should also reach out. Thankfully, she was having none of that. It was jarring, but it snapped me back into reality. It revealed the snake in the darkness to be the rope that it is. But the problem is that even with the knowledge of it being a rope, you aren't fully cured of the dormant fears. You may know it is a rope, but still hesitate to put it out of your path because your instincts (honed through decades of "experience") tell you it is a snake.

I've hit the pause button on these Saturday morning meetings for the time being. And for all intents and purposes, I mean to make myself scarce to most family. I thought I was ready to test these boundaries and try developing healthy dynamics, but it is too soon. I don't know when , if ever, I will be ready.