----- Original Message -----
From: Delphine
To: K
Sent: Thursday, May 29, 2003 8:20 PM
Subject: Re: brave combo june 20th

I think you'd like to think that you've achieved total indifference to your family. Sometimes I just wish you admitted how true that isn't. Don't ever write off your family like that; you will see maybe not sooner but later that burying everything 2000 feet under isn't gonna solve any problems for you; they will surface in some way shape or form in the most important ways that seem completely unrelated when you get older and have your own family. You just watch... Sorry to be so harsh, but it's true, and I have this secret yearning to "save" you and show you the light because I've been there to some extent. You don't have to embrace them with warm fuzzy sunshine (the way I embrace my mom...and my bear) but just admit the truth about things, even if it means saying that you have really been hurt by your family and are living in its aftermath. You just have this huge wall and I really shake my head at it. Sorry to be so narrow-minded, but I guess I'm so the opposite that anything I hate that much, I confront (not very much to the liking of whatever is being confronted), and you run away? Would that be fair to say? I don't know. I just don't understand I guess. And I also believe that we are very much to blame for how we interpret things; we choose our own bitterness and denial of it.

Delfinator

----- Original Message -----
From: K
To: Delphine
Sent: Friday, May 30, 2003 12:59 AM
Subject: Getting here from there #5

Delfita!
No reason to be sorry about being "narrow-minded", not that I think that you are, we all have different experiences and come from different places, especially regarding touchy issues like family. But it is indifference. Lack of positive or negative; I'm not happy my brother's getting married, nor would I care if he told me not to come to the wedding. All my family's interactions are about "good form", and with our family's history, the only way to reach that dynamic is by rendering the whole shebang irrelevant. I honestly don't think my brother cares whether or not I'm at the wedding either, but it's "good form" for him not to say that, and it's "good form" for me to assume I go. It's unspoken.

When I was considering driving across the country to the wedding, I was thinking of taking my spare acoustic guitar that's at Sadie's apartment for my father, who had mentioned interest in taking up guitar to complement his mad karaoke-way. Sadie went, "Aw, you do love your family" (overly sweet, semi-sarcastic, ever-joking-as-everything-between-us-is). And me, knowing my history with my family, recognized a huge range of possible responses to Sadie, albeit innocently, saying that. In worse years I might have blanket rejected her complete misunderstanding of the situation and left immediately without a word. I would have been offended. In looser times, I might have tried to explain how it had nothing to do with "loving my family" and let her continue to joke about it. But as it was, I think I blinked a couple times, smirked, and that was that.

It's also interesting to me that my reaction didn't impress Sadie as much as someone who knew me years ago; another by-product of recycling friends every few years. Years ago, I don't think my friends could get the words "Aw, you love your parents" out of their mouths at me, even in jest. I don't mind the way it is now or that people I know now don't know this foundation of my identity. I've actually already dealt with people who tried to "save" me, pushing me to plummet for more substance in the relationship, and I went along with it; it was uncharted territory and I don't consider myself closed-minded. One woman got me to get a Fiction CD to my parents, which at first was so unthinkable I couldn't even consider it. Considering it would have been like thinking about playing an 8-track tape in a cassette player. Months later, I did and they were supportive (good form), but in the end there was no point or meaning in that act. I wouldn't do anything like that again, but not as closing them out as it once was, but it's a 'there's simply no point'. They got what they got out of the act and I got what I got. And flatter myself not, I can't think of anything as exposing or brave as doing what I did. As for the person who urged me to give the CD to my parents, if I ever saw her again, I'd probably just walk away.

Of course you and Sadie don't know what happened in the past, and, not having any facts, don't have a template of what things are like in the present. That's fair, and bring it on, it keeps the issues turning in my hand. But it would be wrong to think that there is something there, when there isn't. I'm not proud of it, if people feel sorry for me, I understand that, I consider attaining indifference one of my character flaws. Indifference is arguably as low as it can get (although people who watch daytime court TV might disagree), it's empty, and the ocean of hate is so wide to cross to get to indifference that it's alright by me when people assume I couldn't have possibly crossed it. After all, most people drown in their hate first. Personally, I prefer being indifferent to them than hating them, where "loving" them isn't a possible or conceivable reality.
Really, the suckiest part of being indifferent is that I can't even blame them for anything anymore, and I don't. There's no more attention to why I'm like this. It's just finding yourself in your skin and dealing with 'I am this'. But it's also refreshing and liberating to know that my personal growth no longer has anything to do with them.

k