Late Mid-week Update
The last of the family left this afternoon and I have been left to my own devices.
The holiday went pretty okay, until the family meeting. There was an elephant in the room and what started out as a 30 minute, “here’s what I accomplished this year” report from each of us, turned into a 3 hour long lemon squeeze about the impending nuptials and how it would change our family.
Dr. Sister directly asked Daddy and I how I felt about it.
I went first.
Mostly all stuff I’ve talked about here before, main ideas being :
- Projection/Insecurity – When I’m in my twilight years of fertility, would I settle for a less than ideal situation because I want to have kids and be married?
- Past Behavior – I’ve always had an issue with her communication wise. I’m the baby. She’s the oldest. When she went to college, she’d never call to talk to my sister or I, always just our mom. I’ve always felt left out of her life, and now she has an actual reason to be even more distant…we’re her secondary family now.
- Mistrust of dude – Like I said before, super side eye that you would ask someone to marry you while not knowing what you’re marrying into. Yeah it’s the one person you’re marrying, but it’s a bit like applying to and accepting a job without doing any research on the company values…
- No secular celebrations of Christmas, Halloween, Easter allowed for her future family. Even Harry Potter is “evil”. Those holidays are HUGE institutions for our family…and she was a big fan of Harry Potter. I know marriage is all about compromise, but…
I don’t think the discussion between all of us was productive really…we all just put our thoughts out there for each other to hear.
Everyone else said they’d be okay as long as she was happy. After I directly asked her what she liked about dude and what made her want to marry him…and she did everything but answer, for me, it became less about whether or not she was happy, and more about whether or not her mind was made up. I stated that our family has super high standards when it comes to character, honor, work ethic, etc…and it was unlikely that anyone would be able to meet them…that it wasn’t up to us that we accept this person…it was up to her if she could live with her own decisions.
Like I said…the whole thing doesn’t make me feel better about this technically, but like I don’t want people dictating MY life and what I should do, I won’t do that to her.
If this is her choice, I have to respect that and try not to project so many of my fears for MY future on her situation.
Still scary though…I tweeted this last night, but as a younger sibling we idolize our older siblings. They are absolutely human, but…hard to come to grips with that in reality…
Had a super bad migraine this morning and my dad popped a blood vessel in his eye from high blood pressure from last night.
We bonded.
#babyofthefamilypowersactivate
But yeah…I don’t know if things are better, but at least there are no conversations behind closed doors. Everything is out there now. Dr. Sister isn’t sad or mad or anything…she’s just extremely logical in how she’s approaching this. Marriage for some isn’t lovey dovey and flowers and candles and emotions…sometimes it’s just about providing structure and filling a role.
That’s totally okay if people choose to do that.
For me, I’m gonna need it to be more though…if anything, it just affirms that though my sweetness is understated and conveyed through acts of service and quality time, that doesn’t mean I won’t kiss him on the cheek as I ride by on the lawnmower on my way to cut the yard…that cheek kiss is literally my heart exploding with emotion..it’s hugely genuine even though it’s such a small gesture…
Like I’ve always said, don’t need a provider, a fixer, no huge displays of whatever, it’s those small gestures, being there in our own secret society, understanding and assisting each other in private…while beasting life in public, lol.
That would be ideal…for me anyway.
