Family: A Travesty

Quite unlike my younger sister, I am hopelessly fond of family and keeping up with familial relations. Family, for me, brings a sense of joy that I have never been able to find anywhere else. When I was younger, I saw family as the end-all be-all of life; without it, you are nothing.

Years have flown by and gradually, I have learned the absolute bitterness that my family, in particular, holds for each of its members. To put it simply, everyone hates everyone. I have no clue as to how this came about, though, I imagine somewhere along the line of marriages and 'who's richer than this uncle as opposed to this one' caught on and built the platform for how we all treat each other now.

It was my aunt's birthday today, so it was only appropriate the whole family gather at her house to celebrate. Of course, being the tired girl in need of Gossip Girl re-runs on Netflix, I dismissed the idea when my mother brought it up at breakfast. She said 'okay' but then added a defeated sigh and gibberish about how I never go anywhere at all any more and have become consistently dependent on my laptop. Obviously to get her off my back and also to prove her wrong, I said I would come.

It's boxing day here in Canada and since I needed a few things for my new place close to my university, I asked to take a small trip to Wal-Mart first. I quickly shopped and met my parents back at the car where we went to my aunt's.

My aunt is younger than my mother by exactly three years. They've got a brother in-between them whom they never mention when it comes to age, but like polite family that we are, we ignore that for one day a year and pretend that my aunt is not in fact that much younger than my mother.

The thing about my aunt is that I my baby-self owes a lot to her because according to everyone who's known me since I was still in Mum's womb, my aunt looked after me as if I were her own child. Now, I am well-aware that I sound very ungrateful when I saw this, but, I am honestly beginning to despise her. Somewhere in the back caverns of my cluttered mind my aunt remains to be that sweet person who cared for me when I was young, alas, I see her now and all I can think is "God, what the hell happened?" 

Loving family should be unconditional, shouldn't it? Because when the whole world turns against us, family is the one thing we can count on.

Unfortunately, my family did a damn great job of making certain that we never depend on each other.

This post probably makes no sense because I haven't actually provided valid reasoning towards the dislike I feel for my aunt, but they are reasons I cannot expose and would like to keep to myself.

All I know is that family once meant something important to me and now all I want is to get away from it all. Similar to how she usually is, my sister is right when it comes to family - none of us really love each other anyway, so what's the point?