Sometimes, You Feel Like an Ass, Sometimes You Don't

I don't know...

Sometimes, I feel like I'm complaining too much about Eric's brothers. And I feel badly, because I keep forgetting that I'm putting him in an awkward situation by bitching about the people he's lived his whole life with. I just...I never stop and think, "Oh, he might be hurt since it's his family," since, well...I've never thought that way about MY family. And it's just how I've grown up around them. I'm constantly slamming my family, left and right, talking about them behind their backs, and wishing they would disappear.

It's really complicated, too, because I love my family but I sure as hell don't LIKE them and probably never will. And it makes it difficult, and honestly most of the time I wish I could somehow just make the connection between me and my family vanish. Like poof, no more ties, family? What's that?

But...I don't know, it's really, really hard for me to live like this. I want to live with Eric, but I want his brothers to recognize our room as our room, as a bedroom, not a living room, and Eric's so used to this and he says it doesn't bother him, but it bothers me, but I don't want to upset him because it bothers me. I just wish he'd look at it from my point of view...I'm not one of his brothers, and although he's infinitely comfortable with them - I'm NOT! I like them, but that doesn't mean I'm comfortable with one of the young ones coming into the room and lying on the bed with us while we're watching a movie. That's just...it makes me really uncomfortable.

I'm not normally a touchy-feely person, even with my own family. Hell, my mom practically has to YELL at my brother and I for us to every even shake hands. The only person I'm really comfortable with being that familiar with is Eric. And like I said, I LIKE his family, but when they just walk into the room without asking or lie on the bed, etc., it makes me really, really uncomfortable and feeling awkward. Like I just want to clam up.

And I feel badly, because for instance, Joel thinks of me as another big brother, but I'm really not ready for that. I don't want that. At least, not yet.

My own family...I'm just hurt so much by the past that I have a really difficult time with a totally different group of people wanting to make me part of their family. I don't want that. I know I have to accept them, b/c they're Eric's family, but I'm not ready to be their family yet, and I'm not sure if I will...I can't explain it, it just...hurts too much.

It does. It hurts more than I can explain, them wanting to make me family. I mean, my God, I'm sitting at work right now typing about this and I'm getting kind of teared-up about it. The word "family" just throws a knife right into my chest. I see brothers sharing common interests, being familiar, giving each other shit...I see parents who've known each other so long that they know how a conversation or a day is going to go, in detail...people going to colleges to help their kids move out their stuff for summer break...the whole family planning a small vacation to visit relatives in another state.......

And it all just tears me to pieces.

It hurts.

I don't want it to, but it does. That part of me, the part that can function with a family unit, that can love in a group...........I think it's dead. Or broken, at least. It was broken a long time ago.

When my mother would wreck the entire house because she'd been drinking. When my dad would snap at us viciously over misunderstandings because he'd been drinking. When my parents would stay out all night and not return home until after noon the next day, when my brother and I were both not even teenagers yet. When, at the age of three, I watched my grandfather grab my mom by the hair and threaten to kill her. When I watch my grandmother make bitter, acid, subtle comments that break my mom's heart when she does nothing but try to reach out to her.

(I'm sorry, I HAVE to get this stuff out, that's what this is for, I need to use it or it'll explode inside me...)

Or when I was two years old and alone with my mom, watching her wrists bleed as she panicked and called my dad's parents to come take her to the hospital because she had slashed her wrists and was now regretting it. Or my dad's brother practically forcing himself onto her when my dad was away. Or the extended relatives, even the aunts who pretended to dote on me, talking about my mom behind her back and talking about me behind my back, how I never did any sports and didn't act masculine enough.

Or listening to my drunken mom call me "Fucking faggot" more times than I can count the summer after I came out to them. Or how she fucked over my finances time and time again.

I just.....hate that word so fucking much.

Family.

I'm sorry, this is in no way what you'd call a chipper post. This just came now, and I need to get these thoughts out.