Family Matters

We love 'em, we hate 'em, we can't live with them or without them. No, I'm not talking about men (hehe). I'm talking about family.

I think if I ask anyone above 12 years of age about how many times they've flipped out or almost flipped out because of their mom/dad/brother/sister/other relative, the count would go past the fingers and toes combined. It's as if families were built to drive each other insane, to be one another's cause of ultimate frustration/disappointment/bewilderment. There are times that we feel we can never understand how Mom can be this way, how Dad can expect that of us, how Ate and Kuya can care so little or be so selfish. 

It could be something as mundane as a brother's inability to put the toilet seat down or a sister's ineptitude at returning borrowed stuff, or it could go as far as being unable to control a parent's drinking habits or gambling issues. We wish they would understand us, listen to us, make us feel worthwhile more often. We want them to be proud of us, to love us, to care about what we care about. And how it frustrates and exasperates us that they just always seem to see things a different way, that we actually have to live with them and try to get along with them. We ask ourselves if we were adopted or switched at birth; could this possibly be my family?

And yet. 

For some reason, we cannot seem to let them go. We can't ever turn our backs on them completely. There is always something, whether it's the thinnest of threads, forever connecting us to them.

I don't know why it is. All I know is, no matter how much I hate how they are sometimes, no matter how close my head is to spontaneously combusting around them, I love my family. I will fight with them, argue with them, yell right back at them when I can't take it anymore, but I would drop what I'm doing--even if I was in the middle of making a million dollars--to be there for them when they need me most. Because that's what family does. Family tells each other the truth, even when it hurts; family listens to the truth, even when it hurts. Family holds each other up, especially when it hurts.

That's family, and family matters. My mom always told me that even the closest of friends come and go, but family is there for life. We can't choose family the way we choose friends; we are stuck with them forever. And so we need to treat each other well, more so than we would other people. It is through family that we learn how to forgive and why to forgive, through them that we learn when to hang on and when to let go. 

We love 'em, we hate 'em, we can't live with them or without them. And that's just the way love goes, I guess.