there really is no place like home

i can't help but feel small in front of my family.

i don't know but they have a knack for making me feel inadequate. they're not nice like how friends are and won't coddle you into thinking what you've done or haven't done is okay or say something semi-mean then make a joke about it and then laugh it off without mentioning it ever again.

my family is straight-forward, blunt, completely realistic and won't give a second thought about ripping you up and making you regret for the rest of your life that one little mistake you made or that one thing you didn't do.

"if you chose to do it, you better not complain about it later on"

"you don't like to play golf?!"

"you can't drive?!!?"

"hah! of course its not surprising that you didn't get it done."

"you're a film-maker?! i suppose its alright... i mean, when i first started architecture i had to draft sewer pipes. of course, i didn't have to carry sewer pipes around either."

its really not so much what they say, but what they're thinking. all of us in the family have this habit of saying things laden with hidden undertones. its like, "i can't stand you're f**king guts, but just because we're family i'll make it sound just a little nicer... but i'm thinking it! and you know i'm thinking it!"

its a connundrum(?) really:

1) you're family so i care about you
2)because i care about you, i have to tell you off so that you get the message loud and clear so you'll know not to repeat the same mistake again
3)but i can't really tell you off in a mean way because we're family and family members love each other
4)i therefore say part of what i want to say, give you a look of disgust, and you're automatically supposed to know what i mean because we're family and we understand each other
5)because i say things half way in order to be nice, you're not really getting what i say, so you up and do that thing that annoys me again and again without realizing that i already told you off about it the last time
6)i get more annoyed and dissapointed and tell you off again because i love you and really don't want to see you make a fool of yourself

so we go on and on and on and on... hating each other more and more as we move along. i can't even look at my dad without feeling nervous anymore. i can't talk to my brother and not think he's thinking i'm a complete failure. i don't know how to talk to my sister because she's nice enough to make it plain that i'm an asshole. and my mother... well, she's probably the only one in the family that doesn't make things complicated, but she gets angry over almost everything and thats a whole other kind of tension this post won't cover.

when i was younger i watched some show about disfunctional families and i thought to myself,"my family's disfunctional."

i thought about this for a while and mentioned it off hand to my brother because (call me crazy) i really do admire him:

"you know, i think our family is disfunctional"

"yah, of course. what are you talking about? was there ever any doubt?"