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Anger
I think my heart is getting hard. I know it's harder than it used to be, but I think it might be hardening altogether. My grandpa had triple bypass heart surgery or some shit last week. My grandpa and I are not close. I'm not close to any of that side of my family. They have never gone out of their way to do anything for me, and the inclusion of my sister and I in their lives has been haphazard at best. I don't hate them in the slightest, but I feel no overwhelming familial bond to them either. They are, to me, like friends of the family. I am polite and agreeable whenever they're around and it's not necessarily an awful ordeal to visit with them, but I don't do it often and I don't really care to. It works both ways, I am fairly certain. My grandparents had over 20 years to make us feel like they genuinely wanted us to feel like we were a part of their lives. They failed. They failed when they didn't show up to my sister's confirmation because they had attended so many other people's confirmations that they just "didn't feel up to it." They failed when my grandpa didn't show up for my sister's high school graduation because "he was tired." They failed when they constantly lost my phone number or mailing address or telephone number. They failed when we spent Christmas in Florida with them and I spent an hour bawling on the phone to my mom because it felt like I was with strangers. Indeed, when it came time for family pictures there were pictures of my dad and his family including Shelly & Sara, and pictures of my dad and his family without Shelly and Sara and that, more than anything, illustrated how completely separate all of our lives were. The fact that it was so easy to extricate us from my father's family as though we are...expendible. Interestingly - we're never excluded from family pictures on my stepdad's side of the family. NEVER. Even when we want to be. If it's a picture of "all the cousins" - you can bet your ass we're going to be forced into it. There's no distinguishing. It's just family - no matter what way you look at it. It's sad then, isn't it? That there would be such a bold line drawn with my dad's side of the family when we're all blood relatives? In any case, that's not my point. I didn't go see my grandpa after his surgery. Nobody bothered to tell me when he was out of surgery, which hospital he was in, how long it would be before we could go see him or anything really. Honestly? It didn't even occur to me to go see him. It wasn't a malicious attempt at retaliation against him. I just didn't think to. Because we're not close and we both know that and to pretend anything else would be a bald faced lie. I was lying in the hospital 3 weeks ago after one of the most major surgeries I've ever had and they didn't even know about it. Why? Because we are not close. We're just....not. And none of this would have even been an issue if my grandmother hadn't sent an "we thought you would come to the hospital" guilt trip card today. Oh did you? Maybe it would have been the decent thing to do. The human thing. He is, after all, my grandfather. Even if it is by name (and the $35 Christmas check he sends me every year) only. I didn't think to though. See what happens when you make people expendible? People learn how to get through life without you, and sometimes they do such a good job of it that you become expendible too. And yet? THere is guilt. I fight it so hard and yet her mission gets accomplished every time. I feel guilty. I feel wounded and hard - like I should care more and like I'm bad for not caring more. Most of all I feel angry that I could be made to feel this way by people whose greatest involvement in my life in the last 20 years has been monetary. I'm angry that suddenly the gap between us is my fault. This is just so exhausting. |
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