Impasse

The word "impasse" means "stalemate, standoff, deadlock, gridlock." Indicating a situation with no foreseeable exit. I choose to be more optimistic, I suppose, but I think surrender is an exit.


I have several fronts in my life on which a decision is necessary. I'm great at decisions once I wallow around in the "undecided" part for a while. Pretty much the only part of my life that doesn't require decision making right now is my friendships, and thank God for that. I might be insane if that weren't the case.

These are all going to be slow decisions. I find I make better decisions when I take my time.

But on the family front, the losses experienced by someone close to me this week reminded me of the closeness of family that I long for. My heart broke for him. It does as I write this line. I find myself fighting tears.

And I wished again for the kind of family connection that would bring on that depth of emotion with it's loss. It seems a strange thing to wish for, but it's a beautiful thing to have, these close knit family connections. But I never had many. Except with my mother, but that is a one-to-one kind of relationship, not a part of many. Maybe that's why I rushed into marriage at so young an age, maybe I was looking for that family connection. I was looking for something. Obviously I didn't find it then.

I consider my friends family now, and I think in a lot of ways I have that kind of connection with a lot of them. But blood is blood, and I've always wanted to feel those roots.

Sometimes I hate Facebook (she types, knowing this will go on Facebook later). My brother has a Facebook profile. So does his wife. When I figured out my brother had a Facebook profile a while back, I blocked him immediately, without even peeking at the profile. Those little "Friend suggestions" are hilarious ("Hi Jenny, we thought maybe you'd like to add your abuser today, you have one friend in common. Your mom." Come on, it's kind of funny).

But today, I looked, extensively, at both his wife's and his profile. Curiosity maybe? My moms swears he's changed into an actual non-crazy adult. She swears I'd love his wife. And looking at her profile, y'know she looks like a cool chick. She sews, she works with kids. She's smart. My brother was always pretty genius level intelligent. He almost flunked out of high school because he was so messed up, but it wasn't his IQ that did that to him. So of course she's smart.

And to look at his profile I had to unblock him. This is the message you get when you do that:

You are about to remove this person from your Block List.
Once removed from your Block List, this person may be able to view your profile and contact you, depending on your privacy settings. It won't be possible to add this person back to your Block List for 48 hours.
Are you sure you want to remove this person from your Block List?

How many of you have NO ONE on your block list? He was the only one on mine, and as soon as 48 hours are up, he'll be back on it. For now. I would like to have no one in my life who has hurt me so badly I have had to make them invisible to me. But I guess that's what I did by cutting him completely out of my life. My privacy settings won't let him view my profile anyway. But I got a little anxious when I read that warning.

I was pretty stunted when I had him in my life. Emotionally anyway, if the eating disorder was any indication. I couldn't control my emotions so I had to CONTROL my EMOTIONS. By making them kind of...disappear. Until they came back without asking. Totally not cool, emotions. Rude.

But that was years ago. They're pretty stable now. I still have a bad temper. I fly off the handle sometimes. But y'know, considering I stood by for years and said nothing while I was in agony, I think a short fuse is the healthiest remnant I could have ended up with.

There are wedding pictures on my brother and his wife's profiles. Of course there are, right? I didn't go to his wedding. How many of you were not a giant part of your siblings' weddings, much less didn't even go? I have an extra issue with going home for family functions. He might be there. That alienates me from my ENTIRE family. I have to ask myself "Is this function worth me possibly running into him there, possibly being triggered, possibly getting emotional, and possibly having to either a) make up some bullshit about PMS to explain to my cousin James why I'm crying into my noodle salad, or b) "Hey, guys, so none of you know this, but my brother physically and sexually abused me when we were kids. That's why I don't come home much. Awesome. Pass the peas, yeah?"

My brother has acknowledged the abuse. My parents have acknowledged the abuse. The rest of my family is blissfully uninformed.

Anyway, point. I have friends now who fill my sibling roles pretty squarely. I have my Yeg sisters who have my back on the regular, who call me on my shit when it's necessary, who recognize my awesome qualities, and accept my less-than-awesome ones, and I to them, the same. I have the one I call my little brother, who actually acts more like a big brother, but he's younger, and I used to have to scold him sometimes, so little it is. He regulates for me, like a brother should. And I have friends who I can talk about the crazy and the mundane with, without rejection. The people that will tell me they're pissed at me, and that they love me with the same amount of honesty. These are the people who's weddings I'll be a part of, and who's lives I want to be in forever, the people I'll fight with sometimes and we'll still be madly in love with each other.

I never want to lose that. They ARE my family. But I hear about other people attending their actual blood family functions because it's...a family function, like you go to those, right? And I have begun to wonder. I wonder if there's a way to fix this, so I can feel a part of the whole. So I can go home without having to coordinate, without asking if he's going to be there, and without switching off holidays with him every year. Or if that's just what you do when you grow up like I did. I wonder...

Surrender is an exit.


To be continued...