attack_macaque

Okay, I have to get a little something off my chest, so the comedy content of this post will be relatively low, but something really strange has just happened and I feel the need to talk about it. I just got off the phone with my sister. Now, to most of you this might not seem so strange at first glance, and it wouldn't be, except that this was the first conversation we've had in about seven years. And now I'll bet you're feeling the strangeness factor kicking up a few notches.

Well, we actually managed to have a long and surprisingly pleasant conversation. I say surprisingly because of the many times I played this conversation out in my head the last few years, none of them were anywhere near as pleasant. I harbored a lot of anger towards my sister because she fell out of contact with my dad and I several years ago for reasons that are far too complicated to get into here, and did everything in her power to avoid us for all this time. What really pissed me off was that when my mother got sick a few years ago before she died, she knew about my mother's illness and, despite that, didn't even come down to see her. This despite the fact that my mom (who wasn't her mom, because she was from my dad's first marriage) raised her two children, my niece and nephew, as if they were her own for over a decade. So I had resolved in my heart that I really didn't want to have anything to do with her, and that's the way it was until tonight.

Anyway, at first I was kind of shocked that it was her, and that took me off my guard a bit. I didn't even recognize her voice, partly because I've never really known her all that well. She has always been a free spirit (read: irresponsible and unsettled), so she was never really around all that much even when I was younger. But I was really caught by surprise, and she was also very contrite not just for being out of touch with me all these years, but also, more importantly, my dad. He's getting up in his years, and the idea that he has a chance to reconcile with her means a lot to me, especially because she is taking the first step forward (which she needed to do). Anyway, we spent over an hour catching up on things, and we're in preliminary discussions to get together on father's day for dinner. That should be interesting enough in itself, but there's also a plot twist...

My dad and I have also been estranged from my other two brothers, one of whom is... well, let's just be generous and say that he's not exactly playing with a full deck. So he does his own thing, and has been out of contact with pretty much the entire family for some time now, and that's probably for the best. But my oldest brother, who has a full deck, has also been out of touch with both of us, for reasons similar to those that caused our falling out with my sister. I haven't spoken to him in nearly a decade, and my estrangement from him has been more painful because we were pretty close during my childhood. Our problems mostly center on the fact that my brother has huge issues with my dad (long, long story), and I happened to fall into the mix because I was really adamant with my brother about trying to come to terms with his feelings about our dad and talking things out with him, and I guess he come in his mind to lump me in with our dad and shut me out too.

So my sister revealed that she is trying to talk my brother into coming to our get-together on father's day, and said that he told her he would think about it. I have to admit at this point that I have really ambiguous feelings about him being there, partly because I don't know what is going to surface or how things are going to develop if he does show up, and partly because I think I'm still pretty upset with him, and I'm not going to be as off-guard with him as I was with my sister tonight. He knew my mother was sick too, and she was like a second mother to him. And he didn't come down to see her either - his rationale, which I have heard third-hand from my nephew via his mom, is that he didn't want to run into dad if he came down to visit. Pretty petty, no? I mean, it's not like he couldn't have fucking called me or something to see if the coast was clear. And you put stuff like that aside when people are dying, for fuck's sake. Well, you do if your head's on straight, anyway.

So I don't know what to think about how things are going to happen. There are so many variables here, and one of the most volatile ones is how I'm going to react to seeing him if he shows up that night. If he does show, this could be the moment that either reconciles us, or buries any chances we might have for reconciliation. I just don't know what to think. All I know is that there is far too much pain and suffering in the world, and I wish that it could all be done away with and that people could live in union with one another instead of perpetuating the cycle of discord. That there has to be so much bitterness in my own family makes it all the more difficult to bear, and it's been like this for as long as I can remember. My heart and my mind are in constant turmoil, and I would just give anything for peace.