You’re the middle child of a large dynamic family; a peacemaker-people-pleasing soul that does everything possible to shoo away contention before it can enter the walls of your home.
Stern tones and heated arguments easily radiate through your body and have potential to leave you ill for days. With parents and siblings that are on opposite sides of the spectrum, you’ve grown accustomed to the blows and at the same time wish that things could change. That somehow everyone could just find and focus on the things we have in common and move forward from there.
It’s true that your parents couldn’t be any more different. Being complete polar opposites, you wonder how the two were ever unified in any way, to begin with. They’ve been divorced for a long time now, but with shared custody, you still get a taste of what it’s like living in each of their distinct worlds.
The agreement was to have a family vote every four years to decide where you’ll call home. Each child with an equal voice and say in the matter. Unfortunately, many are not on the same page with what the ideal family rules look like and this divide has only grown over time.
After the tallies are counted, the readjusting begins. By this time everyone seems to have chosen their team and subsequently their enemies too. No matter the destination you’ll find the same familiar rules penned in pitch black or glowing white, no gray in sight.
Some go beyond voicing their opinions when it’s time to move to the next parent’s house. There’s lashing out, slamming doors and digging their heels into the ground in hopes that if they do it long enough they’ll forfeit our original agreement and vote results. On the drive over there’s been more and more bickering and it has grown deafening in the last few trips.
About half of the kids are obviously unhappy and would rather not be headed to the other parent’s house, but they are coming to terms with it little by little. The other half who are somewhat happy and relieved to be on their way to their preferred home, after spending what felt like eons with a parent they strongly disliked, are now agitated to the resistance and complaints.
You see ugly conversations erupt followed by demands to stop “whining,” and for those unhappy to just “get over” their emotions. It’s obvious to you that what everyone really wants is to be acknowledged and understood, but that kind of talk would take patience and humility, and lately, everyone just wants to feel like they are “right” more than anything else.
You get to observe both those that process their grief quietly on the inside and those that take the easier path of viciously picking apart any targets in view. Siblings begin the game of name-calling, grasping for temporary relief by attempting to define each sibling based solely on their parent/home preference or even worse which parent they most look like. Neither parent is perfect, but no one wants to admit to it.
There’s this idea that only one side can be right, yet you know neither seems to have all the answers.
You tend to wonder where you fit in all of this. This isn’t at all what you wanted in a family, but you aren’t sure how to fix things.
When your emotions build up and are ready to erupt, you grab a notebook and journal them out until you’ve sufficiently cooled the fire. Sometimes you reach out to a like-minded sibling and voice your concerns, just yearning to be heard and valued.
You do your best to genuinely listen to those from both sides of the dinner table. You try to make sense of what could be done to improve family life, but it seems the lines have been drawn in concrete.
Every day you hear stories from the upstairs, including the rooms that you don’t visit because they are further away from your room. Thick spread rumors of ugly fist fights with bloodied noses, locked doors with holes punched in them, and holding bathrooms ransom as a way of trying to get points are digested alongside your breakfast lunch and dinner.
The news of these altercations always seems to vary in intensity and facts depending on the source. Many times these “facts” seem to come as part of an impromptu persuasion essay with you as the target. Sometimes you don’t know what to believe, and what picture to paint in your mind about reality.
Fortunately, outside of the long suffocating rides, the family seems to find ways to function in between outbursts and the boycotting of family meals. When I’m not overhearing the chatter from the squeakiest wheels, things don’t really seem all that bad.
There are so many voices and you hear all of them because you were born with listening ears, and you yearn to understand. You can’t help but care about their heart. It’s the same heart that helped you with your homework last week and cheered you up when your favorite pet suddenly got sick and had to be put down.
You see past the angry mask, the facades of titanium wills and know deep down that they are all anchored in good. You see your sisters and your brothers and your mom and your dad, and while you understand that minds and hearts don’t always cycle in the same rotation, you know they are more same than different.
They all have fears and hopes and dreams and nightmares just like you. They all get up every day and put food in their bodies, and brush their teeth and read their books and do their work just like you. They all have good within them.
While the days become hazy with heavy fogs of anger, confusion, and disconnect, at night all the particles of hate seem to settle, and the house is quiet and peaceful again.
As you lay in bed, heart, and mind saturated in the troubles of what seems to be a fragmented family unit, you wonder what can be done to mend these shredded seams. Peering across the large room where a diverse many are sleeping, you gaze on soul-filled bodies that share your heritage and blood. In the shadows, you see only soft faces, warm hands, and hearts that long deep down to connect and that alone gives you hope.
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