I get the distinct impression that my family either doesn’t care where I go or how long I stay, or they feel like I’m abandoning them because I just feel like my home life is so awful and I can’t stand to be around them because I’m such a horrible person.
Who knows?
They’re going to take it personally regardless, and that’s not my problem. I tried to reason with them (my parents, anyway). I did. I tried to make it abundantly clear that my issue is not with them as people, individually or as a whole. I tried to paint a picture of the horribly dysfunctional interactions they have, through some skewed logic, collectively accepted as the “norm,” at least for them, to no avail.
So that’s it, then. I’m not even going to bother anymore.
Most recently, I left because my parents decided to be insulted by my reflection on my (much) younger, more conflicted self. Insulted that I had felt uncomfortable or unsafe coming out six years ago, such that I didn’t tell them at all (my mom guessed about five years ago). Insulted that I was afraid of telling them, because I shouldn’t have been afraid of anything, especially not being kicked out (despite the fact they still use that threat all the time for any reason they feel like). How ignorant and insulting of me to assume that just because they made offhand homophobic comments that they were somehow intolerant of queers! I shouldn’t be so thin-skinned, after all. That’s the problem! I’m too easily offended, naturally. I always have been and always will be, so there’s no hope regardless.
My mother even claims she wouldn’t be offended by misogynistic remarks. She claims it doesn’t matter that “the worst thing you can call a man is a woman.” That’s just joking, right? It’s harmless.
But then she flips at my dad when he makes disparaging comments about her. “What women’s magazine did you read that in?” he asks when she talks about some interesting science tidbit or whatnot. That doesn’t even make sense, but it doesn’t stop him. She doesn’t have an M.D - only a Ph.D - so she clearly doesn’t know anything close to what he does!
It doesn’t make any sense. If she’s the one under attack, it’s unacceptable, but if it’s me - regardless of who’s berating me, be it her, my dad, or my belligerently intolerant younger brother - I’m overreacting, being far too sensitive and effeminate and who knows what else.
I can’t WAIT for the day they slip and say something even remotely rude or disparaging about one of my friends. If I snap at them for that, it would be justified. I know it would be. Always has been.
But heaven fucking forbid I stand up for myself. I’m a failure, an unemployed college dropout who’s fucked up every chance he’s gotten and can’t take care of himself or anything or responsibilities or anything and just fails and fails and takes and leeches and doesn’t contribute anything ever and has no loyalty or sense of duty and doesn’t care about his family at all, only himself, me me me, all about Jaska and nobody else is allowed to be upset or have emotions ever.
I’m just a failure and I should learn my place, no?
Well, at this juncture, I somehow feel like my place is here in relatively-middle-of-nowhere New Jersey.
Go figure!
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