"Family" and "Blood Relations" Part 1

I am rather quiet in my beliefs as I have not found the confidence to voice many issues that my heart breaks over on a daily basis, though I hope this will change throughout my journey of self-reflection that will occur within this blog. I am not an asshole. I generally do not push my concerns on another unless I can do it in a cowards way behind an anonymous screen unless it is truly such an injustice that I cannot allow for it to continue in my presence or otherwise. Usually, though, I allow people to get on with their lives as long as they allow me to get on with mine. However, it just boggles my mind as to how many people will NOT allow me to get on with my life, and must insist that their opinion is above my grasp and definitely above any that I hold to myself.

The other week I had the misfortune of encountering an issue that left my jaw wide-open on its hinges.

First of all, a little speculation on the issue at hand is in order. I have always been very good at leaving people behind in my life, shunning and shutting out individuals who have cost me my happiness. I have found this to be a rare strength and I can completely understand how the majority of other people cannot even conceive of this being an option for them, especially when it comes to the thought of estranging family members; after all, your blood runs through their veins. Cutting people out of your life is a defensive mechanism. We all have such mechanisms, and they all differ from one person to the other. This mechanism is a rare one and it is actually one of the few that I possess that actually work for me in bettering my life. The more I have come to understand abuse and my own personal tolerance levels regarding abuse, the more I have found my world becoming a little smaller in my isolation. This is sort of okay by me. I may be a rather lonely person, but I have shaved the riff-raff out of my life so that I can begin my fighting process with positive forces by my side. You would not go to war (and I would describe this battle with my own mind as a war for certain) with a host at your back that has the potential to drive a spear through your bowels, would you? Well, I would hope not.

I digress. What I am getting worked up over is the disrespect I receive for having this ability and the offence that many around me have for observing this ability put into action so many times, and the fear from those same people who believe that it will be applied to them. What I am also discouraged over is the belief that many have that their opinions can change mine, and that what I am doing is wrong, for the major changes that I have made within my life is cutting out certain members of my family. It is popular belief that family can do no permanent harm to one another and that all can be forgiven at the end because, well, you are bound by blood and simply cannot cut such a tie.

Well, I am here to tell you that this belief is quite in the wrong.

Take, for example, my father. Or, as I have come to lately think of him as, the 'sperm donor'. There are reasons for why my relatively level-headed mother divorced this sorry sack of useless cells, and it is for these reasons that I have decided to exclude him from my own life for the last year, and intend on continuing to do so for a quite a number of years more. This man has smoked in the presence of his asthmatic child, making her suffer through the horrible sensation of not being able to breathe; of choking and being unable to draw the life-giving breath. Even when begged to stop, there he would sit, cigarette in hand, without a care for me but only for the care of his own comfort; going outside was simply too much of a bother. In fact, he told me flat-out that he had every right to smoke this cigarette in HIS home. Not mine, he emphasised, but HIS, in the suggestion that I was an expendable object that has no home, like a stray animal that had been allowed in for a bit of warmth and food. Also, he, a man who lives through his own mental illness, told his mentally ill child that she was faking her suffering to gather attention around her. I won't even begin to reiterate on how ignorant such statements coming from him were. He portrayed himself as the embodiment of the mentally sick, the truly suffering, someone who suffers through his career with his own illness and how it bogs him down. No one else was allowed to be a sufferer. To him, he was in the most pain; no one else could dare challenge him or empathise with him. I was not allowed to be 'the esteemed fellow sufferer'.

Anyway, another digression.

I will put it as my dear friend, Emma, has: there is a certain amount of assholery a person is allowed to have before they cross the line into being abusive. Anyone can cross that assholery line. A man such as my father is a son, a boyfriend, a brother, a cousin, an uncle, a father. Just like how the boy who raped me is a son, a cousin, a brother, a boyfriend. These people with abusive mind-set don't just pop out of the bog to roam the earth in search of victims; these are people who have stemmed from families, have families, and, quite possibly, abuse their families first to 'test the waters'. My father is a father, for lack of a better word other than 'sperm donor', but my father is also an ignorant man and an abusive man and a TERRIBLE father. My father/sperm donor crossed the assholery line with me, his own daughter, and is therefore abusive towards his daughter.

Let me reiterate on my use of the word 'abuse' here. There is a difference between the occasional heated arguments/disagreements and, how Emma has also put it, as "a continuous, ongoing, constant state of emotional or physical or psychological battery." The former is being human and having human relations and occasionally being the dumb human being that we will all inevitably be at times. The latter is abuse.
Example number one: My mother. She has inflicted some significant hurts on me, but those all stemmed out of simple ignorance and common human flaws. My mother gave birth to me, but in becoming a mother, was not given a sudden epiphany and enlightenment on life and education and wisdom to impart to me. She remained the same person. So she did some things and said some things that hurt me. But she never really 'crossed the line'. She came pretty close to nearing the line, but it felt very different in those moment, compared to the other relationships I had where it felt intentional, rather than just being blind. My mother was ignorant but has since enlightened herself on my conditions and who I am as a person, and has since apologised and made the effort to rectify her wrongs.
For a truly abusive person, however, such acknowledgement and apologetic nature is beyond them.
Example number two: My sister. My sister has inflicted significant hurts on me, and HAS crossed the line. My sister was fully aware of my conditions and how much effort it took to get where I am now. My sister inflicted hurts on me for her own benefit and used what she perceives as my weaknesses to get that feeling of superiority. Knowing that my social anxiety made me fear being unlikeable, she would put me down as being that unlikeable person, and imply that our family has talked about my being unlikeable behind my back with her, that she was the likeable one of us two sisters. Knowing my struggle with abuse, she would manipulate me into thinking that I was a cruel person, that I was just as much of a monster as the people who have abused me. Knowing my loneliness, she would emphasise my friendlessness and seed doubts within me on my ability to make friends. My sister will likely not apologise for any of these things, for doing so would admit being wrong, and someone who is abusive are under the delusion that they can never be wrong. That they are powerful. They exert that power over their victims to feel power, to fuel this delusion. The more that they successfully fuel their delusion, the less likely they are to admitting they have ever been wrong in it, and my sister has been VERY good at fuelling this delusion. Not only with me, but in bullying others with her sharp words. My sister is an abusive person, my sister is a bully, and I do not have to have abuse and bullying in my life. My sister is those things, it is who she is, and I do not need those things, so I do not need her and who she is. And yet it is looked to me by my family to rectify the situation, because I was the one who cut her out, therefore I'm the only one who can fix it.

My father is the same way. My father has since tried to contact me, but has been ignored by me. I have received no apology or acknowledgement on the wrongs that he has done by me. As far as I am concerned, this means that he does not believe he has done wrong, that he believes that there is no need for apology, that he shares the similar mind-set as my sister that I wronged them by cutting them out. I am not obligated to respond to your single ignorant message that you send on Christmas Eve. I am not even obligated to go to your funeral if you keep this up. You allowed someone to sexually assault me and go unpunished in order to keep the peace between you and your girlfriend. You put your relationship with your girlfriend above your relationship with your daughter and this is not okay with me. You are a selfish and abusive man.

Now for the event that inspired this blog post:
Great-grandmother, GG, your ignorant comment at Christmas, condemning me as a rebellious teenager with no Godly concept of family for blocking out my sperm-donor, was unwelcome. Your firm belief that I should subject myself to abuse because I share this man's blood does not reflect well on your regard and care for me as a person. You have condemned yourself to being the subject of my hostility because you, like my father, believe that I should be okay with abuse so long as it keeps the peace. You have exhibited a disregard for what I have gone through. You have implied that you are okay with me, your great-granddaughter, being hurt. You have taken such little time over my life to know me, else you would know me to be self-sufficient and independent and rather mature. Well, with my father out of my life, and you, my life is quite peaceful, thank you.
Well, I don't even think this woman knows that I live on my own, so her opinion hardly weighs, but my great-grandmother's reaction to my father's lack of presence in my life makes her the embodiment of all the rest of them who have reacted in a similar fashion. The fact that this woman hardly knows me and is making these judgements is precisely the point that I am trying to make. This woman is the example of every other story I have seen on the forums that I frequent, all similar, in the fear of judgement should one block ties with their blood ties.

You do not have to be subjected to any form of abuse, and family most definitely can be abusive. Family is actually a very subjective concept. You make your own family. You make your own support systems and you love who you choose and leave behind who you choose. Your family is who you perceive to be your family. Blood relations, to me, is a very different thing from family. A sperm donor is not family, neither is a bully, so I will not count them as family. Someone else's opinion that differentiates to yours is simply another perception on a very subjective concept. They have no right to press that personal creation of an idea on you. There is no right or wrong way in perceiving family. But I guess that isn't going to stop someone from trying to tell you otherwise, because they believe that their perception on subjective matters is definite and righteous. Oh well.

Just do what is best for you.