must remember that "vacations" at family homestead are neither stress-free or restful. must remember that visiting parents at home means being smacked in face with bad habits i am *constantly* trying to shed. that coming back here means coming face to face with a bunch of people too much like me...who are stressed and overtired and still trying to do everything for everyone else. i am sick and bickerish. it is not pretty.
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it's just that...every time i come back i feel like i don't belong anymore. and it's alright for the most part because i belong somewhere else. but how do you reconcile spending christmas where you don't belong instead of where you do? and how do i remember that i still belong here, that i come from this? how do i just relax and think about the good stuff surrounding me instead of the argentinian food i'm missing out on. why can't i stop whining about it?
thank god for my sister. she's priceless and beautiful in every way.
Family is nice because everyone in it is stuck with everyone else in it forever and ever. There's no breaking up, there's no divorce, there's no forced separation brought about by fights or grudges. I routinely spend time with people in my family that, were we friends, I would have written off a long time ago. Family is never having to worry about being alone.
The corollary to this is: "everything that is not family means always having to worry about being alone." If where you belong is with friends or lovers, you have to accept the possibility that, at some point, you may not be able to keep these friends or you may separate with your lovers. Belonging someplace outside of family means that you belong someplace rare and fragile. It's very hard (for me, anyway) to admit that happiness can be so fleeting without worrying, stressing, over-analizing, and scheming ways to keep it together.
Here's a little advice, though. Try to keep an even keel about it and trust that, in the fullness of time, the years are going to stack up naturally where you're supposed to be. I expect that you'll find, without being too active about it, that you will naturally gravitate to where your heart wants to be. And after you've been there a while, it will probably start to feel enough like family that you won't fear for it anymore. The alternative is over-thinking, sabotaging, and ultimately spending christmas alone and realizing there's no place else you'd rather be.