Release

I am guilty of holding onto a grudge that has no place in my life anymore.  I have been hurt and mad at family, and I've allowed it to fester inside of me instead of just releasing my feelings and being done with it all.  I'm having a hard time putting the first steps into motion on how to approach the situation.  How do I bring up an old issue without causing new ones?  Why do I even care so much?  The one way I know how to relieve this aching is to just write about it.  Eventually, some of this may be what I say to them if I ever get a chance.

I've written about family before, and I feel like this is just an extension to that post.  It is easy to want to fix our family drama, but actually doing it is very complicated.  You think that just because you are a family then they will love you, include you, and hear your feelings.  Wrong.  I now understand that there are politics to family also.  Sometimes you get caught in the crossfire of bullshit that doesn't have anything to do with you, even if you are trying to be neutral.  Being neutral usually gets you nowhere but outcast quickly.  I can literally talk to someone in my family, and that is deemed as taking a side in a fight I had no part of, or knew was occurring.  Immaturity at its finest, but that's here nor there at the moment.

Getting married and becoming a parent were huge eye-openers.  I learned how important my life and my family are to other people.  I saw who was really there and who didn't really want to be.  I could tell the difference easily.  There were those that were active participants in our lives regularly, and then there were those that only saw us once a year.  This made me feel like I wasn't trying hard enough to be in their lives either.  I know life gets busy, and we all have things we need to accomplish.  Sometimes it is hard to be there for each other, especially when you have as large a family as mine.  I gave the benefit of the doubt and kept trying to include people that I thought would want to be there.  Then there came a dose of reality.  Some of those people really do not care, and they aren't afraid of showing it.  I can recognize tension for what it is.  I've been called a lot of things, but dense isn't one of them.  If you don't like me, then I am well aware of it; you can't bullshit a bullshitter.

Some of the family that I looked up to as a child were not anywhere near as close to me as I had thought they would be and were non-existent in my daughter's life.  They didn't call to invite us to things anymore.  If they did, it was simply a formality.  It was clear we weren't really welcome.  I thought that I could ignore the insults of not being invited to certain things, but then I realized it hurt a lot more than I thought.  Why?  Why do I even care?  They clearly do not miss me or my family, so I should just let it go.  Yet I am still overwhelmed with how sad all of it made me feel.  Maybe they would notice and understand if I started excluding them from my life?  Then I realized how ridiculous I was being.  They would never notice I was gone since I had already been removed.  Acting like them only made it worse.  Now they had definitive "reason" to treat me like shit.  The only time it was obvious that there was a problem was at family functions neither of us were in control of.  We must sit in the same room, pretend we don't know each other, and heaven forbid we make eye contact because then we must make nice for everyone else's benefit.  I don't like being uncomfortable or fake.  I think this is why this whole thing is such an issue for me.

My first choice would be to fix it.  I love my family or this obviously wouldn't bother me this way.  I still have many fond memories of my childhood and how they used to be towards me.  If there were a conversation and a solution, I would be happy, even if that meant we went our separate ways.  The second option is to stop the antics.  We're adults and should act as such.  I will not sit next to you and be quiet while you talk to everyone else but me.  I will not allow my daughter to be treated less than everyone else at the table because of your petty shit.  We deserve better than that.  Being strangers is fine by me.  They could avoid making things awkward for everyone around us by not sitting in my immediate vicinity, then trying to desperately avoid me.  You don't like me anymore, fine, move along.

I know I am not guiltless either.  I fully accept that I have played the game and reacted childish.  I am also the younger party to all of it.  If I truly am wrong, I see no reason they couldn't call me out on it as my elder.  They never had a problem correcting me as a child.  I always want to be open to hearing someone's feelings and even apologizing for things I clearly wasn't right on.  Just because I'm a bitch, doesn't mean I lack decency.  If the relationship is open and built on love, there shouldn't be any reason to be uncomfortable doing that.  Yet that is another reason I don't think I will ever have a chance to mend things.  I don't think if I started a conversation that it would even be acknowledged.  I am willing to try, but it is disheartening nonetheless.  Why did the fallout get so far along that we can't talk?  I guess only time will tell if things can get better before they get worse.

Lessons Learned: 

If you aren't treated the way you deserve, then you are allowed to walk away.  Respecting yourself does not mean you are disrespecting your elders.

Family doesn't automatically mean you will like each other.  In fact, I think it is mostly the opposite unless you work at it just like any other relationship.

Reasoning with those that are usually not open to accepting fault, will not work.  Accept the failure of that relationship.

The things that are said about you are irrelevant if they are not said to you.  Let that shit go.

There are people that love you and want to be a part of your life.  Eventually, you will notice who and what are a priority.  Love those people with all that you have and always put them first.   Your energy and efforts should always be put towards them.

Bringing Out The Big Guns

I'm getting really fucking tired of hearing about gun bans.  There is no way in hell you are going to convince me that we are all safer if we lose the right to bear arms.  Do you really think you will be safe out in this fucked up world if we take guns away from the sane, rational people that followed the LAW to get a gun for safety in the first place?  Will you be happy if a gun ban is in place, and a criminal breaks into your home with a gun, so now you and your family are completely helpless?  If you really feel that the answer to either of those questions is yes, then I think you are being naive.  I think you are being dishonest with yourself about how corrupt our world really is.  You are going to have a very small percentage of survival against a psychopath if your only plan for defense is your own two hands. You are not fucking Batman, so stop kidding yourself.   

Yes, some of those guns have been misused or improperly handled.  I completely understand that there is a problem there.  I don't approve of gun owners leaving their guns around for just anyone to get a hold of whenever they damn well please.  That in itself is a whole different issue.  How do you keep the guns, needed for safety, away from the crazy people that are quite possibly family members?  There is no good answer for that and there are a lot of issues in our society that will never be fixed.  I hear lots of simple answers, and none of them solve these complex problems.  All I know, is that no amount of laws or restrictions we create, are going to keep the deranged and evil people from finding ways around them.  Taking away my right to feel safe isn't going to help either.

Watch Demolition Man and take notes, especially this part when Simon Phoenix is in The Hall of Violence.

A perfect little world being disrupted by a bad guy who doesn't care about that perfect little world.

So go ahead and ban guns today; tomorrow some asshole will find a different weapon to fuck shit up.  Keep passing over the warning signs of the mentally disturbed and pumping their brains full of chemical fixes.  Let's make ourselves weaker and teach our children not to defend themselves, so that a new breed of monster can swoop in and take us all as prey. 

I know I would feel a whole lot better about sending my daughter to school if her teachers were educated on gun safety and were allowed to protect her like this:

 

 

Call me extreme, but I believe this is what our country has come to need.  America is not so sweet and wholesome that this should be shocking.  I know that arming teachers isn't the one and only solution to school shootings. It is a small step that would temporarily keep SOME of the crazies away from our children.  Yes, there will be a level of innocence lost as they have to see their teachers carry a gun.  They will have to be taught and prepared for the situations that may deem those guns necessary.  Wouldn't it be better to explain the horrors of the world, rather than let them bear witness to it?  At least their lives are protected, and bottom line, that's all I care about.

 

So, go ahead and argue with me that you think a ban is better.  You aren't going to convince me and I bet eventually, you won't be able to convince yourself.  If we keep allowing responsibility to be placed on objects and not people, these motherfuckers will use it as the easy way out. They will keep using the insanity plea because they didn't know right from wrong, their parents didn't love them, they are mentally ill...blah blah blah.  I don't care.  If mental illness is truly the case, then we are failing the families that need our help with their sick children. 

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/16/i-am-adam-lanzas-mother-mental-illness-conversation_n_2311009.html

 

No one seems to care about how mentally ill the individual is once they have committed these crimes.  They monsterize them, then blame the gun they used.  We yell at the government to fix things.  We pretend the issues aren't coming from within our own homes. We lock the killer up, throw away the key, and get comfortable with our lives.  We forget the fear and heartache, and then we forget that there are issues still not being addressed.  Then one morning another person has walked into a school, church, whatever, and done it all over again;  all because we keep blaming guns and inviting assholes into "safe" places that have no plan of defense, so they know, no one is there to shoot back.  Seems logical, right?