divine angst

I have this relative who I love dearly, but whose flaws I am deeply aware of. These flaws include being a bit flaky, a bit naive, a bit impressionable, and a bit unable to see her flaws in action. Today I received a letter from her, exhibiting each and every one of these flaws and though the letter was well-intentioned, it hurt my feelings deeply. Frankly, I am too busy right now to be in emotional turmoil, so I’m a bit pissed on that account, too, but mostly I’m just upset that someone who has been so supportive of me and my decisions in the past has chosen to write down all the reasons she thinks one of those decisions in particular was the wrong decision (and, typically, then says she felt she “failed” me by not stopping me from making that decision).

I usually find it amusing that I am so different from my family, and they usually seem to also. We all seem pretty accepting that I’m my own person. Well, apparently not all. Apparently some people in my family wish I was more like them—and more like them in a way I chose not to be like as an adult, over a dozen years ago. The worst part is that, upon reading this letter, I thought of a dozen ways I could respond to it, some of which would be equally hurtful to the letter-writer, some of which would just be inappropriate, and some of which would be logical, rational, and true—yet I know that I will never be able to say any of them, because no matter how clear I was (whether in a calm way or in a mean way), she just wouldn’t understand why what she wrote was so wrong.

I often miss living close to my family, but times like these I’m glad I’m far away so I only have to get these little guilt-trips in letters, instead of in the thousand small gestures of daily interaction.