Home?
I’m not sure I have a home anymore. Yet that’s where we went for Christmas: an artificial construct labeled “Home.” Also labeled, “Gradma’s,” “Rockford,” and, for the uninitiate, “North of Chi-caaah-goe.”
Land where U of I shirts with the Chief Illiniwek logo are freely available at your local discount store. Land where there is snow on the ground for Christmas at least 75% of the time, and where it is typically cold enough that you actually need your hat and gloves. Land where the supply of Christmas cookies and coffee never runs out.
Land where it is considered perfectly sane for five grown adults, of which I am the smallest, to cram themselves into a four-door sedan and drive for eight hours, one way. Land where, for the duration of our visit, seven or eight people will co-exist in a three-bedroom house, guaranteeing that there is no privacy except when you are in the bathroom. Land where I will be made to feel guilty no matter how good, considerate, and nice I am about the lack of opportunity for this little introvert to process things through “alone time.”
Land I love to go to. Land I hate to go to.
The strange thing about this mythical land called home is that my extended family loves me– they really do love me– and yet they know nothing about me. Nothing. They ask me questions and I answer them, but the questions never break the surface. And when I try to ask them questions that get past that lovely well-painted fence, the answers are always the same. “Fine. I’m fine. Work is going well.” They want to know that I am doing alright. But “doing alright” to them means having a job, having benefits, having a car that works well, having a nice and safe place to live, hopefully having a boyfriend sometime soon, and hopefully not having a baby with him before I get married (the last remnants of Catholic morality, I think, more than any strong convictions based on a recent relationship with God).
Basically, they want to know that I am “succeeding”…whatever that means. There’s a certain amount of pressure that goes along with that, too; because if I do well then their friends and siblings and parents will think they did a good job raising me. It’s unspoken, and probably unintentional, but it’s there all the same. The thing is, I have to have success on my own terms. If other people get to define success, it may not make me happy in the long run. So my successful life probably looks different from what a lot of other peoples’ lives look like.
For me, at any rate, my family members–even my immediate family members– function off a different set of suppositions– the construct of the girl I used to be. But I’ve changed since then and it’s been a few years since they thought maybe they should get to know me. I wonder if it’s the same with them; if I don’t really know them as well as I used to, any more. It can be stifling. And yet I don’t want my family to get the impression that I don’t love them and need them…that they are bad for me or hurt me or hold me back in some way. Because it’s not like that at all. I haven’t out-grown them; I am not better than them. And I never will. I’m just…different. It’s all very complicated. :-\ All I want for Christmas is to understand my family…and for them to understand me. LOL.
