if only in my dreams
Dec. 26th, 2013 02:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jedusorI'm in Chicago with my family for Christmas, and it's by far the longest I've spent with them in years. I'm actually not sure I've spent more than a week with any of these guys since I moved away around my seventeenth birthday. I've been sick for a few days, which sucks, but other than that it's been mostly good. I love my weirdo clan a lot. It's been nice to revisit all our family Christmas traditions, Mom's been cooking like a fiend and my stepdad has been baking my favorites, and my brothers have all grown into pretty cool people.
It's been interesting, though, to note the ways I've changed over the last few years. Like: Mike gets pretty much traumatized by yelling, so I've learned to be aware of when I'm about to lose my temper and tap out of the conversation before it reaches that point. And Mike knows that's what's happening, and doesn't push it. But that's not how we did it in my family growing up--arguments always continued long past the point of potential resolution. So now when I feel myself reaching a point where I can't communicate productively and I exit the situation, my family gets confused and irritated about it.
And my sense of humor has changed, or I suppose is in the process of changing. In this family, intelligence is valued above pretty much everything, and wit is the most common way to express intelligence. So if you think of something funny, you say it. Doesn't matter if it's gonna make someone feel bad, as long as it's funny enough to make up for it. This is something I still struggle with a bit myself, because instincts are hard to fight. But I am trying to fight them, whereas when I was younger I embraced the "it's okay to be an asshole if you're funny enough" philosophy.
And there are the trodden-toe situations. You know the metaphor: when you step on someone's toe by mistake, you don't tell them not to be hurt because you didn't mean it, and you don't argue about whether your foot had more of a right to occupy that space than theirs. You just apologize. This is one I think I've gotten a lot better at over the years, and it's kind of a jolt to be back in a place where being right is generally more important than anything else.
I think I was at least vaguely aware of most of this when I lived with my family, but I've changed in another important way since then: my values have had some time and space to settle, and I don't spend nearly as much time worrying about whether the thing I just insisted I believed was actually flat-out wrong. I'm pretty solid where I stand on this stuff. I might not be perfect about implementing my values, but I know what I'm aiming for. That's actually really reassuring. As is the fact that I know Mike is with me on all of this.
Like I said, I do love my family and I am very glad I'm here. It's just that there's this extra person floating around in the back of my head right now, the teenager I used to be, and I don't really get to check in with her that often, so I'm trying to take the opportunity to work through the things that might be important.
It's been interesting, though, to note the ways I've changed over the last few years. Like: Mike gets pretty much traumatized by yelling, so I've learned to be aware of when I'm about to lose my temper and tap out of the conversation before it reaches that point. And Mike knows that's what's happening, and doesn't push it. But that's not how we did it in my family growing up--arguments always continued long past the point of potential resolution. So now when I feel myself reaching a point where I can't communicate productively and I exit the situation, my family gets confused and irritated about it.
And my sense of humor has changed, or I suppose is in the process of changing. In this family, intelligence is valued above pretty much everything, and wit is the most common way to express intelligence. So if you think of something funny, you say it. Doesn't matter if it's gonna make someone feel bad, as long as it's funny enough to make up for it. This is something I still struggle with a bit myself, because instincts are hard to fight. But I am trying to fight them, whereas when I was younger I embraced the "it's okay to be an asshole if you're funny enough" philosophy.
And there are the trodden-toe situations. You know the metaphor: when you step on someone's toe by mistake, you don't tell them not to be hurt because you didn't mean it, and you don't argue about whether your foot had more of a right to occupy that space than theirs. You just apologize. This is one I think I've gotten a lot better at over the years, and it's kind of a jolt to be back in a place where being right is generally more important than anything else.
I think I was at least vaguely aware of most of this when I lived with my family, but I've changed in another important way since then: my values have had some time and space to settle, and I don't spend nearly as much time worrying about whether the thing I just insisted I believed was actually flat-out wrong. I'm pretty solid where I stand on this stuff. I might not be perfect about implementing my values, but I know what I'm aiming for. That's actually really reassuring. As is the fact that I know Mike is with me on all of this.
Like I said, I do love my family and I am very glad I'm here. It's just that there's this extra person floating around in the back of my head right now, the teenager I used to be, and I don't really get to check in with her that often, so I'm trying to take the opportunity to work through the things that might be important.
