I've been thinking of writing again since I stopped my cooking blog last year. I have been putting it off by watching TV, playing Nintendo, surfing the net. Today I can't any longer and I wish it was a better reason than someone dying.
Yesterday my niece and nephew were in a car accident and ultimately, my nephew died this morning as a result of it. The problem that I am having is not that he died. My problem is that I don't feel sad about it. I have not cried over it. I have cried, but only because my heart goes out to my brother and the pain and regret I am sure he is going through. His family, sadly, are strangers to me. I can't cry for a stranger, no matter how hard I am trying.
The history here is complex, so I will simplify it. They are Mormon. I am gay. They have an issue with it (majority, I feel, is my horrible sister in law) so cut me out of their family's life for years. It wasn't until a few years ago my brother and I started talking. It was just a year or maybe two now that I met my nephew in a 30 minute stop over as they were passing through my mom's place. We were "Facebook Friends" and at one point he was going off so ignorantly about gay marriage I unfriended him and the rest of my brother's kids (I never friended my brother). Slowly we friended each other again, but I rarely followed them and I see now my nephew and I never friended each other again.
So some more feelings...I am feeling ANGRY. I am angry that my brother and his wife secluded me from their family so that I don't know their kids. The same this is with one of my sisters. I don't get invites or FYI notifications to baptisms, missionary farewells/homecomings, weddings (although my brother's oldest daughter did send me an invite to her wedding...1-2 weeks before it happened), birthdays. I hear about these things from my mom or my sister. What makes me angry is that I am mad at myself for not feeling bad he died, but have a hard time feeling bad because he is a stranger and he's a stranger because his parents stopped him from getting to know me. I remember my nieces (my sister's daughters who grew up with me around) telling me that my nephew and other nieces would make fun of "gay uncle Stephen" and they would stick up for me telling their cousin (who didn't know me at all) how great Uncle Stephen and Walter were and to stop talking bad about us because they didn't know us. I am ANGRY that they could speak words like that about someone they never met and can only assume they heard such negative things by someone who did know me, my brother and his wife. I am angry the most I know about this nephew is that he was adamantly against gay marriage, had made fun of his gay uncle, and he was friendly (according to people on Facebook commenting about him). When I met him he seemed funny and pretty nice.
That brings me back to more feelings...feelings of regret for not being included or trying harder to be included. I not not one to beg to be in someone's life. You either want me there or not. If you want me there I am there for you always. You don't want me there, no skin off my back. Begging to be there is a waste of my time and energy. So it is not in my personality to try to be in someone's life who clearly doesn't want me there. So I didn't try. I did my small part of sending my brother's family a Christmas card each year...many year with no return card. I wanted to remind them I am still here whether you want me here or not. But my efforts rarely went beyond that; honestly it was more than they were doing so I felt I was at least putting some effort. I don't regret not doing more. I regret they didn't do more until recently.
I feel for my niece who I don't know at all other than the 30 minute meeting where I met me nephew. She was driving the car that ultimately killed her brother. I feel for her and the mental damage it will do to her. I feel bad, not as a family member, but as a human being looking from the outside.
I feel scared and anxious. I plan to go to the funeral. In doing so I am going to have to deal with a lot of things I prefer not to: my sister in law, my dad and his cunt wife, the Mormon church and all the hypocrites I grew up around in that religion. I plan, need, to bring my husband. It will be the first time he meets/sees (since I don't intend on interacting with my dad and his cunt wife) a lot of my family. I know I need to go. I need to support my brother. Times like these are not about me and having to deal, they are about being there for those we love even if it is a mental sacrifice.
So many feelings this morning that I needed to get out. I feel much better now.
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