A Loving Family

“This time next year, I won’t be here for the holidays!” I shouted as I slammed the heavy, wooden, front door of my sister, Alyssa’s, house behind me on that bitterly cold New Years Eve. The shift had begun. Growing up as the youngest of four, I always looked up to my siblings. Renee was my comfort, and she often referred to me as her ‘mini’. Dylan was my entertainer, spending countless hours playing video games, or watching Kung Fu movies, together. Alyssa was my mentor, always trying to be as cool as her while we imitated the gymnasts in the Olympics, and playing our instruments/music that drove our father crazy. My mom kicked my Abusive, Mentally-ill father out of the house when I was ten years old. She was already a workaholic, but now she took on the role as a single mother. I was a latch-key kid. 

As we grew older, I formed my own opinions about things, and harsh judgments for choices they made, to which I did not agree. I was coming into adulthood in my mid-twenties, and had moved back in with my mother at the age of twenty-five. My mom and I were not always close, but during my college years we made a bond that was more comparable to a friendship than a traditional mother-daughter relationship. 

Just a week before this family gathering to ring in the New Year, my mom and I had been returning from a trip we took together from Hawaii to visit her cousin. The tension between Alyssa and I came to a head when I made a comment about something my nephew, Nathan, said or did. My sister told me that I sounded like our father, which could only be meant as the worst possible insult. My blood began to boil, and deciding I would rather leave than argue in front of Nathan, I yelled those words of contempt while exiting to go cool off, literally and figuratively. My mom tried to console me, saying that Alyssa did not mean it, and that we really shouldn’t drink so much.

Soon after, I was heartbroken to learn that Renee had decided to divorce my brother-in-law, John, and was already on the rebound. That drove a wedge of disapproval between us. I helped her move out of their house, and struggled to understand why they couldn’t work it out. 

Dylan and his wife, Amber, lived on the East Coast and we did not talk very often.

Alyssa and her fiance moved forward with their wedding plans, even with the rockiest of beginnings as an unfaithful couple. 

I moved to Europe. I thought that moving to the other side of the world would help me keep my sanity. I felt like my contributions to help Alyssa with Nathan were going unnoticed, and I was tired from making an effort without any recognition or appreciation. I kept telling myself that my family dynamic was better off with me loving them from a distance. 

That first Holiday Season without them was busy as I traveled to Rome, and I hardly noticed the lack of a loving presence to which I was accustomed. I was caught up in the thrills of visiting a new place, and being welcomed into the traditions of my new friends with their families. 

The second year away was also a blur, as I had just moved to a new city, and was busy with my new boyfriend. I recall making Christmas dinner with him, just the two of us, and trying to make our own traditions. 

The third year, it sunk in. I really missed my family. 

Strange as it may seem, that was the time I actually made the effort to come home for the Holidays. My brother, Dylan, was in the Navy and was leaving for another Tour in January. We wanted to make sure we were all together to show support before his next journey. Anyone who has a loved one in the Military can understand this sentiment. I didn’t care that I had a twelve hour layover in Amsterdam before flying back to the USA. I needed to be a part of that reunion and made the necessary effort. Even though I was only home for five days, I tried my best to put our childhood wounds and past traumas behind us. 

For all the ups and downs we had witnessed through our lives together, realising I was taking them for granted struck me to my core. I moved back to the USA within a year, and thought that things would be better now that I had grown up. 

That first Thanksgiving after my return I had to work. I made the trip to see them for Christmas, but my reverse culture shock made me feel out of place. My oldest sister, Renee, talked about herself the whole time, updating us on her new condo and the puppy she had just bought. I asked my mom if she noticed how little they asked about my life. 

The following year, Alyssa and I got into a fight because she didn’t seem to mind that she hurt my feelings with a snide remark about one of my ex-boyfriends. Because I had found my voice and told her she was being a hypocrite, she blew up and started screaming at me, with Nathan as a witness in the back seat of the car. I questioned why I made an attempt to create peace between us, but all I could say was that we were back where we had been years before on that New Years Eve. I expressed my frustration in a calm tone to balance the shouting, but she said that only made her more upset! I couldn’t win with her. I then said “We have to unlearn these old patterns and build a new way of communicating.” 

What changed? How was I able to find the right words in a moment of rage? 

Maybe I should have paid my Therapist more. 

At the end of the day, no matter how many disagreements existed between all of us for whatever reasons, this fact remained: We are a loving family. The family tension exists purely because we care so much about each other.