..patchwork

This weekend a herd of friends came to my house and experienced the peaks and troughs of 'Valley' life. It was fun, I am tired. There was also a point where my 'SPU friends' were meeting my eclectic family, getting grilled about their vital facts and what college my cousin Spencer should attend. Having so many new eyes peering at my family gave me the chance to re-examine it to, comparing the person I am now with the person that my family raised. I found that I am strange patchwork quilt of my mother's hostessing style of diligent background work and cleanliness, my aunt Lisa's eccentric style and energy (at times..) and my aunt Brenda's flexible extrovertedness and flightiness in conversation. Duh. It would make sense that I would try to piece together parts of each of these influential women's styles into my personhood.

Snag: My family is hella screwed up. I realize 'hella' is a flexible term and that there are plenty of  other stories about families that are more dysfunctional than mine. Tell me them later, but I don't want to compare them to each other.

I found out this weekend,  rather abruptly, that my aunt voluntarily admitted herself to the hospital for alcohol abuse, reinstating the cycle rehab, system navigation, co-dependancy, helplessness, manipulation, and rhetoric. Two day after, another aunt drove my bi-polar uncle  up to the University of  Washington psychiatric ward for him to wait out his first manic episode in ten years. I found out in the middle of a beyond shitty hometown fair but for some reason it hit me harder this time than it usually does. The family gossip usually causes little effect in my life, since I  learned  from an early age that family talk is cheap and worthless and that I have very little influence over  the poor  choices my  family members make. Probably not  a relational position that I would advocate but it's where I am at.

So I  am so much of my family and yet the little part of their personalities that magnetize them to co-dependence, chaos, drama, and addiction are active in my life too.  I can see the splinters  of their struggles in my life and recognize the 'Beachness' of it but have to hope that there is something better than that. I am bored with this post because it is the same hair ball of an idea  that I have been choking out for years. Basically:  I love/admire/desire to emulate portions of my family. I want to reflect upon/respond to/evolve out of the places that my family has historically festered in, not out of spite or fleeing, but just because I want to have hope that resounds in my  body and  life.

Side-note: Exhaustion does not = a mark of success. Relaxing does not = being alone, doing nothing; it might, but it probably will rarely repeat its previous form.