TMI: Family Ties

Stop me if you've heard this before. So of the ideas I had for this and things I wanted to include here I think I may have already written but I'm not sure and I'm too lazy to look and I may have confused this with time with my therapists so who knows. I doubt anyone reads these anyway; they're more for me to vent. And this is what I feel I need to vent about this week. So...
I don't know if I have a normal family, though there is no such thing as normal especially when it comes to family, but just the family dynamic and the sense of belonging and cohesiveness and mutual caring I don't think I've ever experienced. I guess it started when I was young; my dad was an alcoholic and though I don't know if he ever physically hurt my mom, I doubt she would tell me if I asked I remember, especially on one occasion when I was about 3 or 4 my mom bundled my brother and I into a car and we parked in our local grocery store parking lot and slept there for the night. They never got along that I can remember, all I can think of is them yelling at each other and me crying for them to stop. They got divorced when I was 5. Since then I saw him often when he lived out near us then he started moving around the country and I calculated that in the last 8 years I've sen him 3 times; once when we flew down to viist him after he was in a freak accident, 2ndly my high-school graduation and finally for graduation this year. I never talk to him because he really means nothing to me, though I was very close to writing him, for the sole purpose of berating him, calling his life a failure telling him that he would probably die alone because he was already dead to me yada yada, before I calmed myself down, in response to an e-mail he wrote saying he was disappointed in me. Considering how he lives in the deep south I really have no plans to ever see him again. My brother was born four and a half years before me and so we were never really close. When I was in 1st graded and was going to the same school as him, he was in the 6th and would have nothing to do with me, not even showing me around. Then of course when you grow up he enters puberty when I'm still a kid and when I'm at that tstage of trying to figure out wtf is happening physically he's off to college. Of course he was always my big brother and I always thought I cared about him and wanted to please him, and perhaps to some extent I still do but the fact we never have conversations and he seems to hate me sort of cuts that off quick. Even though I've known he was gay since I was either 12 or 13 and I, as the younger kid is wont to do, was snooping around in his computer and came upon a letter he wrote to one of his track friends begging him not to "let some gay shit" get in the way of their friendship, well for that reason and the fact that whenever anyone would ask him why he didn't have a girlfriend he would always reply that he was focusing on school, or that in college he had my mom and I come up (on the weekend of CIF finals no less) to see a reversed gendered romeo and juliet that had so many phalli. When I actually came out to him, over AIM but still, it was in december and when I told him I was a transsexual I remember him freaking out and asking me if I still had my penis and telling me I couldn't get "rid of it" for years and years and really not offering any support, which really shocked and confused me especially when I came home for winter break and his boyfriend is living in my house and my mom I guess was trying to be oblivious. Now that I've been in L.A. he's just incredibly contemptuous of me (and of course we've never had a real conversation, like ever) and dismisses anything I do with such an air of arrogance, though he's done nothing to warrant it, to the point where he's become just another asshole to me that I can do without, which sucks because I would love to have a big brother; I just wish he were'nt such a bastard. I've never been sure what caused this contempt that is so deep he couldn't come to my high school or college graduations, I have a few theories but I feel that it's one of those "all about me" things; one that he was jealous of me that I went to H-W and then Duke, both amazingly prestigious and privileged schools or that I was able to go to Africa for a summer and stuff like that and so he's jealous of the opportunites that I have been afforded, as well as the fact that apparently people who know us tell him that I'm smarter than he is, which has to be grating.. My other theory as to why he has not really accepted me is that even though he's almost 5 years older than me, and almost 30 now, I came out before him and that crushed his hope that I could give my mom her genetic grandkids and now that responsibility falls to him and now he's confronting his own fear of coming out (which at this point I don't understand, I mean he's been living with this guy, that I actually don't like and seems very white trashy, for a few years now, though maybe it's different for older kids) I can totally understand the feeling of not wanting to disappoint my mom, who after my grandma died around the same time the only male figure in my life, my uncle died, has been the most important person in my world and that fear of disappointing her was probably what kept me from coming out for so long. My mom, her brother was 20 when she was born and so all of my cousins are either in alabama, and so I never will see them, or are 50 and if I can be blunt they are a sorry lot. Though I looked up to them all when I was young; I remember when I was about 11 sitting at maybe a Burger King with 2 of them and them quizzing me as to whether I was gay, which at that point I didn't understand. Well two have been in prison, one is okay and the other has no money in his bank account and has been living in my house, smoking weed every morning and paying no rent fr five years. Oh he's 50 and I despise him, not even for the fact that he used to call me a "fag" (lovely word) And so I've never had cousins my age to grow and play with, or whatevs. Or maybe my brother's reticence comes from our family's religiousness. Both of my grandparents were ministers and I was being groomed to be the next generation until I was about 13 and stopped believing in their god when he couldn't transfigure me into becoming a girl. But so my mom is very religious and whenever anything homosexual or whatever came on television, for example she would decry the immorality of civilization (which thankfully she has stopped doing, I'd like to think because of me.) I've always loved my mom and she loves me, as all parents must,but I've always felt there was a distance between us, perhaps because of the gigantic secret I held for so many years, maybe because as a single mom who also was active in all these organizations so I never really saw her which always sucked because I would have loved to spend time with her but she was always "not there." And now as I'm about to move to San Fran the closeness that I thought we gained in the past few months is leaving and though she loves me I'm not sure she supports me. Like the fact I have no money for hormones right now is incredibly frustrating because I know if I were to ask her for "money for hormones" she wouldn't give it to me so I become depressed over the state of my life. At certain points it gets real lonely not having a family not having people you know care about you. I really envy those (obviously fake) families with large Thanksgiving dinners or Christmas parties; I don't even know my uncle's birthday. Family is what is meant to moor you, to give you some sense of place and belonging and the fact I've never felt that obviously contributes to the isolation I would naturally feel, "in my current state." I would love to know that there are people who live me no matter what (besides my amazing friends.) or no matter what I am. Even though I really think identical twins are kind of creepy ( half a soul!) I would love to be able to have that connection with someone. To never have done any of that childhood bonding stuff, to never have a real conversation (hell I'm lucky if my brother even says hello to me) it wears you down which was why I think for the past week (along with other stresses, aka working on living arrangements/job stuff/not wanting to be a boy-becoming a girl) I've been feeling just so fucking down. And I know I should try to cherish my relations and blood because I'll miss them when they're gone but I wonder about that, I can be a very cold person at times Maybe that's hwy I feel no problem changing my last name as well, because I feel no connection to it or any of it's holders.. sigh, Whatever happened to those Full House endings? I think I'm going to try to hug my mom now, while I still can.
end recording. (and yeah i don't think i can or did fully articulate what I was trying to. fuck. whatevs)

Sphere: Related Content