Fear and Loathing in Overland Park pt 55

Is your family really a cult? Does the idea of family really exist?

It’s a continuation of the last blog that I wrote, the idea of someone wronged and what it feels like to be on the outside looking in (for once). It’s a continuation of the investigation of the or as well as looking at what a family truly is. And maybe, just maybe, it is a cult.

We’ll get to that here in a minute.

“Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.”

-George Burns

Most writers, most authors in any aspect of the world deal with depression in various shapes and colors and sizes and any other descriptive word you can think of. Most have some strange, under the skin, familial problems that they usually don’t want to discuss with you, your friends, your family, or anyone else.

But you see, this is the internet and this is part of my or. And it might just include looking deeper into my own psyche and figuring out what things mean and why they happened the way they did.

A gonzo had free sneak preview passes to see Hamlet 2. So myself, that gonzo, and the one recently wronged. Long story short: don’t watch this movie. It is pointless, it is stupid, it makes no sense and the funny bits you see on TV: Those are the funniest bits of the movie.

So there, I just saved you ten or more dollars.

But see, that and my wronged gonzo brought up the idea of family and what it means. The movie, just like Hamlet, dealt with being screwed up by your family or your father specifically, and it made me stop and think.

How much have I been fucked up by my family?

“He that raises a large family does, indeed, while he lives to observe them, stands a broader mark for sorrow; but then he stands a broader mark for pleasure, too.”

-Ben Franklin

How much have we all been fucked up by our families and them telling us what is right and what is wrong and not allowing us to do things or see things for ourselves?

This is why I don’t think I want to have children. The idea of ruining someone’s life might seem glamorous and interesting to the villainous portions of my brain, but the actual practice seems inhuman.

So let’s tell a story.

Each and every one of us has a parent that they either despise at some point or fight tooth and nail against throughout their lives. And the reason of the belief in it being a cult will come up soon.

So let’s use the gonzo who has been wronged and now is back with his family after living separate from them for an extended period of time. Being wronged, having what happened to him happen, it leads you down a path that usually involves self-discovery. It usually leads to depression and guilt and feeling really really bad for yourself and for what happened.

It makes you think you did something wrong.

I speak from experience. From the death of my friend and the death of my love life at the time, you look back and see what you did wrong that caused these things to happen. You weren’t a good enough friend. You didn’t love the right way.

You despise everything the world shows you that is beautiful and you damn everyone who says that it is God’s will for these things to happen.

I don’t believe in God’s will obviously, and I think I have my parents to blame for that. But that is not why we’re here. We’re not here to blame someone. I’ve made the choices in my life and that has got me where I am today. Do I regret where I am?

I regret where I work. I regret my weight. I regret a lot of things. But I don’t regret the family that I am working on building.

I do regret the way that I was allowed to deal with the things that were killing me.

“Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper.”

-Friedrich Nietzsche

I regret being forced to “move on” when I wasn’t ready.

When I came home, dripping wet from standing in the pouring rain outside of my job after we found out Justin died, after 2 hours in the rain, I came home and was asked what happened.

I proceeded to tell the folks, and all they said was it’ll be okay.

Granted, they probably didn’t know how to handle things. They probably had never dealt with it personally. But families have simple answers for very not simple events.

They tell you it’ll be okay.

They tell you to move on.

They tell you that it happened for a reason.

They tell you, they force-feed you this bile, and they expect you to believe it, wholeheartedly, without question.

I started questioning things like that when I was old enough to talk. I started asking the difficult questions which put me in the category of hard son to deal with, and I’ve been there ever since. I wouldn’t go back and change that either.

And I know that my gonzo who was wronged is the same. We are both inquisitive. But you see what I mean about the cultish nature of families?

They cling to you. You seemingly leech off each other, whether emotionally, monetarily, or various other things that you can leech off them for. They give you their opinions and they expect you to believe it outright because they are your parents and they know better.

Sounds to me like they are the leaders of the cult and you are the lowly minion getting ready to drink the Kool-Aid.

So why is family so important in this world we live in?

“He that has no fools, knaves, nor beggars in his family, was begot by a flash of lightning.”

-Thomas Fuller

We’re all fools. We all sit and think about the things that are important to us and we all try to push those beliefs on someone else.

Politics and speech writers do it their ways. Cults do it their ways. Writers do it their ways. Hell, I’m trying to get you all to see a way of life and thinking that might be different from yours and open your eyes to the world around you. Does that make me different from anyone else?

It’s all a forum dispute. If you have a forum to speak your mind, it is your right, not God-given, but nation-given right to speak your mind and say your peace. That’s why I’ve never been able to believe in a cult mentality and I never will.

If someone screams fire in a crowded movie theater, I’m going to question where the fire is, what exactly is burning, before I start to run away from the fire.

That probably affects my dealings with families.

My wife has a very close-knit family that enjoys doing things together. I never did. I had a family that was okay being in different rooms and keeping to themselves. So family stuff is difficult for her with my family and me with hers. It’s give and take.

Unlike the idea of family. When you’re growing up, it’s you versus them. It’s a long, drawn-out battle for dominance that you will never win, in your head, or in reality.

There is no way to defeat the cult mentality, especially if you’re not the first-born or only child. There is a lot of work to do to break down the barriers created by your family and break down the walls and ceilings that they put in place. It’s a difficult journey, but would I take it tomorrow if I woke up and was 5 years old again.

You bet your ass.

“The family is the association established by nature for the supply of man’s everyday wants.”

-Aristotle

So while on the subject, my family fucked me up just like your family fucked you up. It’s kind of their job to do that. But in their fucking you up, don’t they put in place little monuments in your brain, little things that tick away as time changes and things happen?

Doesn’t it allow you to open your eyes and realize the cult mentality does not work in your brain? Doesn’t it allow you to stop and say, no more, I can’t deal with this any longer, and just give up?

It seems like I always want to give up. But I can’t. In the face of a cult, I cannot.

So back to the story. The gonzo living with his family again and they are forcing him ideas. Telling him what they think. Telling him what he should do. Giving him the options that work for him in their minds but only would really be in their best interest.

Do they have a right to be upset by what happened? Oh god yes. It’s their son, he was wronged, he is hurting for it.

But shouldn’t a loving family, one that wants their son or daughter to make the best possible decision in his or her own life, step back and start to think about what might be best for that person?

Shouldn’t they play devil’s advocate as opposed to spoon-feeding him propaganda?

I would think that would never get your case settled the way you want it to be. When my parents told me all the horrible things that would happen to me if I stayed with the girl who hurt me, it strengthened my resolve to make my own decision.

Parents hold things back when they think everything is hunky-dory. But once it’s over, the floodgates open and they are free and clear to say all the bad things they want to say to you about that person and what they did to you.

Hindsight is 20/20. You always wish, I know that I did, that your parents and your family would have just said something prior to the breakdown and prior to everything falling all around me.

But they didn’t.

And most won’t. Because they think, while you are in the relationship, they are letting you make your own decisions. But once things break apart and start to fall apart, then they are capable of picking up the pieces and molding you back into what they want to mold you into.

A part of the cult. A wicked little follower like the rest of them.

“All humanity is one undivided and indivisible family, and each one of us is responsible for the misdeeds of all the others. I cannot detach myself from the wickedest soul.”

-Mahatma Gandhi

But no matter what we try, we can never completely sever the ties of the familial bond, no matter how much we want to.

I still feel pain when I think of things I used to do with my old best friend or my ex-girlfriend. Things still flood in when I think about Justin and I think about rainy days. I still feel pain and reel from what occurred in the walls of the home in which I grew up.

And I know that my gonzo will too. You can never completely distance yourself from the people who raised you or the family you gain over time past the ones that you share blood ties with.

Another friend of mine believes that before you are born, you go all throughout the outer realms of reality and you pick the family you are born to. She’s a real starchild, but in her mind, no matter how difficult this family will be, you chose them for a particular reason.

So maybe I chose mine to show me hardship. Maybe I chose mine to allow me to grow and make my own decisions no matter how difficult they were. Maybe my gonzo picked his to allow him to see each side of the argument.

But do I believe that?

No. I am a much firmer believer in the idea that once you are old enough, you choose the family and the cult that you belong to. I’ve had the same friends for 10 years, and my wife and I have been together for almost 4 years (married about 1, together the rest of the time).

I’ve lost members of the family. I’ve gained new ones. I’ve regained old ones that walked away or moved on and have recently come back.

I’ve built ties with these people over this time, ties almost stronger than blood. Would I change that? Do I still struggle every day with the idea of a family?

I do.

I struggle because I can and I always will. I want to include these people in my lunacy, but a lot of times, it’s all for me.

But when one of your family is wronged, you go into crisis mode. You start to look at things from a cult perspective and how will this affect the others in the group. You start to think about tactics on saving this person.

But it’s not up to you.

“A family is a little kingdom, torn with factions and exposed to revolutions.”

-Samuel Johnson

There will be cold wars and civil wars. There will be fights. There will be cheaters and liars and deceivers and snakes in the grass and there will be those who leave you before their time.

But you cannot control that.

And that is what I think makes a family. Once you realize that you can’t control how long someone is with you or what that person thinks, you start to realize in the power of life and just living it as is.

Live with the warts and the scars and the wars and the famine and the disease and the sadness. Live with the heartache. Live with it all.

And move on.

As a family, move on. Grow and change and allow the person who has been hurt to grow and change if they want to. If they want to wallow in self-pity, let them. Try to be the devil’s advocate and ask them the tough questions that they may not want to hear but will need to hear.

Don’t force your opinion on them.

Let them make the decision and change the world on their own.

That is what being a family means to me. It doesn’t mean constantly looking for ways to change the people inside the group or make them better.

It’s looking outside of that. It’s seeing the or in each and every member and allowing that person to flourish as different. As pained. As troubled. As hurt.

It’s allowing the world to work the way that it is supposed to.

It sucks. It really does. You bleed with them. You ache with them. But you don’t force them to see your side.

You don’t come up with a strategy to make the world in your own image, even if that world is just the world of one person.

You accept the things that happen as they happen and you change and grow and develop with them.

The essence of the or is to think outside of things. Not the box, necessarily, but outside of the regular norms held within society. It is thinking outside of everything that surrounds you and finding a way to move forward while all those things are happening.

It is letting the bad things happen, and knowing, that someday, you will die. Everyone you know will die. Your entire family will pass off this plane of existence.

You cannot stop that. But you can embrace it. You can embrace the idea that you will be dead someday and live with that. You can embrace the idea of death and not be scared by it. It is the road to awe, according to Darren Aronofsky’s movie The Fountain (one of my favorites), and I truly believe that death truly is the road to awe.

But in knowing that, I realize that not everyone does. The world does not work the way that it works for me with everyone. It works the way it works for me, only to me.

And my family will know that.

They allow that.

They embrace my or.

We are not a cult. We are a family. Embrace the or all around you and allow yourself to just live. Live today and only today. You may find that things might seem a little sweeter.

There will be more. How much more I don’t know. But this is not over. There is still so much more to say about these topics that it makes me feel like I may never be done. And isn’t that a good thing?

“I believe that more unhappiness comes from this source than from any other – I mean from the attempt to prolong family connections unduly and to make people hang together artificially who would never naturally do so.”

-Samuel Butler