it's awesome how we have a holiday that's supposed to bring families together in joy and love and forgiveness. what sucks is that it ends up being forced time with people we had no choice in associating with in the first place. the arbitrary notion of blood-bonds has always struck me as cruel: just because i sprang from your loins i'm supposed to love you? how does that work? yes, i know that while actively nursing our brains released hormones that were supposed to build bonds, but wtf? that doesn't mean i want to spend the few moments my employers deign to give me leave with you...
but that's what i'm supposed to do. that, or feel guilty about having failed to make that happen. and so my schizo-affective sister in texas, failing to make that happen, compensates for her failings with drugs that just dull the ache inflicted on her for not fitting in. my mother frets from her man's place in germany. my father feels genuine and (genuinely) reluctant guilt from his girlfriend's place in california's temperate rainforests. and i rail at the unfixable unjustness of her plight. if only we lived in other times! other cultures venerated her condition! why can't it be some other way?
so what can be done? how might one make this right? emotionally? justly? legally? i sometimes wish that my sister'd be successful in one of her attempts on her life. her suffering here is unending. there is no cure -- only the submission of (some of) her symptoms to a numbing drug with horrendous side effects. i would feel sad for my brother and parents; they had more time with her then i, but their sadness at her loss is nothing to the everyday horror of her life.
imagine living in a really scary horror movie, one that actually draws you in and makes you feel helpless and knowledgeable at the same time. one that has no cheese to it; no strong hero; no easy way out; no dumb mistakes like going into the basement to follow the monster. the kind where there's really no hope for the protagonist with whom you've identified. but then it doesn't end after two hours. and the protagonist with whom you identify is you. imagine knowing that everyone is actually trying to do you harm or take away some freedom. that's her life. every day, all day. sometimes dulled, but still...
advances in medicine are slow and filled with mis-steps and dead-ends. schizo-affective disorder may be fixed someday, but it won't be ours. my sister sometimes has enough of her wits un-drugged to know that she hates it here. even when she's numbed, she wants further numbing through booze... and i can't fault her for it. she's one, in spite of the blood-bond, for whom i still wish peace.
this season, with its cold and cloudy days, with its requirement of too much time indoors, breeds sullen moods and dark thoughts. adding the obligations of culturally mandated "family time" is just mean. i propose we do away with that and just curl up and find a way to get by until spring. maybe by then there'll be some cure for pain.
No comments:
Post a Comment