Today I'm feeling rather low. Not in a depressive 'dark place' kind of low, but rather a slight melancholy probably brought on from a sever lack of sleep over the last couple of nights. Being sociable can be a bitch I tell ya. To compound the problem I am preoccupied by a myriad of things today including, but not limited to, the bright sunny fact it's Mothers Day.
I know what you're thinking; he hasn't bothered to send her a card. He's not going to go see her and feels guilty. Well no, my mother happens to be in Egypt on a rather extravagant holiday, so I've been able to slip by the commercial side to the holiday (is it a holiday if it falls on a weekend?) so that's not the issue. My issue was that, on seeing the young men on a platform of Finsbury Park station clutching multicoloured flowers, I realised that I didn't and never really needed to bother with it all.
A lot of my friends have very close families and seem to spend a lot of time preoccupied about their parents and what drama ensues within their respective family units. Until recently I never really had that bond with my mother of father and in fact still don't think it compares to the connection a lot of my peers have with theirs. I recently spent three months with my father (who is located in New York of all places, which makes Fathers Day an ironic bundle of laughs), and realised that the period of time I spend with him was probably the longest I've spent with either of my parents since I was fourteen. Actually, it's probably the longest I've spent with any family member since I was seventeen! That's eight years of sporadic tooing and froing between family members and never really settling down with any of them to find that common ground. My father and I get on and I helped him as much as I could with some situations he's dealing with over there, but even after all that time I still didn't feel he actually knew me (beyond knowing I was biologically related to him). I feel the same of my mother. There's always something else to distract them, something that gets in the way, something that's more pressing to deal with. I've even seen a pattern in their ability to reminisce about every inch of the past and never really confronting the here and now.
I've always been a loner and maybe that's a large part of why I never felt the need to connect to family in that way. I seem to like my own company, get on well with myself and on occasion, have been known to have fulfilling discussions with myself. Usually on crowded tube trains. Oh the larks. I had two maternal figures as I was growing up, my grandmother and my great grandmother with whom I lived with in Notting Hill while I attended college. I felt much more connected to the whole 'family thing' back then and found it faded when they both died within three months of each other in 2003. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger so I guess I became harder and more introvert from then on.
I was always loved. I should make that clear. I am still loved and I know it. I'm not having a go at anyone, nor am I feeling sorry for myself, I realise other people have it far worse than I could ever imagine. It's more of the fact I sometimes feel I'm missing out on that whole familial side to life which I have replaced with writing, friends, business and relationships (and anything food based). All utterly important, possibly because it's all slightly more controlled by myself and not just a matter of dealing with what you're dealt with.
I'm a big boy now, and all the daemons, issues and dilemmas I had about the subject are long since passed (or irretrievably repressed). I suppose that I'm keeping it all on board more for my own reference than out of malice. I want a family of my own one day (soon one hopes), which might be my way of putting my lessons to use. I also have a twelve year old brother who is going through something similar to what I did, so I'll have to make sure I'm there for him. Even if it's just to ask what his favourite colour is. Mine's blue.
No comments:
Post a Comment