thoughts jotted on the airplane

I have mixed feelings about flying home...

Of course I am more than ready to be in my own bed, in my own house, with my own dogs. But I hate the emptiness that sets in after spending a week filling up with the familiarity of my sister and the joyful - if manic - energy of my nieces.

There is something about visiting family that pulls me in opposite directions - so far that it meets back again - some sort of circle of dysfunction.

I am amazed at how well my sister gets me - and how well I get her. It makes me almost cry because it is one of the deepest, least complicated, most fulfilling relationships I have ever had. I am grateful that I did not completely destroy it when I was out there destroying everything else.

On the other side of that is being with my mother and her mother (and comparing notes with my sister) often strengthens my frustration and resentment at how insane my family is.

Just when I really think I'm in some sort of acceptance of this insanity - even ready to embrace it, to own it, claim it as my own - I come face-to-face with it and am alarmed. Shocked. HOW DID I SURVIVE CHILDHOOD?

And yet, I did. I more than survived. I understand that my sisters and I are who we are - passionate, interesting, creative, strong, independent women - because of (in spite of?) the way we were raised.

I know that part of my discomfort lies in continuing to compare my version of childhood/youth/family with what is accepted as "normal." Which makes no sense because as much as I decry the insanity I grew up in, "normal" does not seem like an attractive alternative. It would have been soul-killing, at best.

So normal is not ti. Only that I wish there's been a little more of that boundary/limit thing, a little more of that modeling of adult behavior thing. Too many times, I still don't feel "old enough" to do things because I never saw an adult be an adult!

But again, from that came as many gifts as drawbacks, and it now about which I chose to lean on. I really want to focus on the gifts, but every once in a while, the part that's missing gets so big, it drowns everything else out, and I have to tread water for a little bit until I can swim back to the shore of acceptance.

I always come home from visiting family somewhat changed. I think it is in the knowing that there are people out there who share intimately all the worst and best parts of me, who know me, get me, don't get me but want to, and who definitely speak the same language.