Learning

Christmas has come and gone, but not completely for us. My husband and I had our own first Christmas here at home, and it was perfect. Now we begin the journey to visit my family and his over the next two weeks. In ways, I'm thrilled, and in ways, I'm not. 

I love my family, but things are always changing. I have to meet my mother's new husband for the first time as well as my dad's new girlfriend. No consistency even since the last time I was home six months ago. I've realized that I have been stripped of childhood identity and an association of home and am learning to deal. It's not too pleasant. 

I have also realized that I have tried to use my husband's family to make up for the insufficiencies of my own. However, lately that has brought a lot of frustration and anger as I realize that they are not perfect either. My ideal of a perfect family may never exist, or it may be my own immediate family, but I will never be able to include myself in my own idea of a perfect family.  It's frustrating to feel so lacking in many areas, but all of them combined make up a decent  family I suppose. 

My husband kept saying that our immediate families are now becoming our extended families and that we are the immediate family now. It's' weird to think about and hard to let go, but I see his point. It's us now and soon we will have children. We don't have brothers and sisters anymore. We have aunts and uncles. Everyone is beginning to go their own separate way. Because of my family having done this prior to now, I feel myself stretching to hold everyone together, to make us all one big immediate family, but that's not how it is nor how it is supposed to be. 

I'm working on my senior project now. I had wanted to do a variety of short stories about daily struggles of teen girls. I have now found myself writing a memoir about my parents' divorce and my way through it. So, needless to say, I'm learning a lot now, feeling a lot of emotions, and having a few breakdowns here and there, but I'm growing. That's the point I suppose. I'm becoming the person I'm supposed to be despite the past. 

Well, off on my two-week journey now. We'll see how this goes. I'm excited, but not. 50 degree weather sure does sound amazing. Happy New Years to you all!

Fear...

In 72 days, I will be in Italy. I have been looking forward to this trip for a long time, but lately I have run into a slight dilemma. For reasons unknown to me, I have accrued a fear of flying. So periodically over the last few months, I have faced much anxiety regarding my trip.

So much so that last night I had a horrible dream about seeing a plane crash, then realized I was a survivor. It was one of those scary realistic dreams. But, this morning, I decided that I had to face this and decided to look at some of the stats.

The odds of dying on a commericial airliner are as low as 9 million to 1.

95% of plane crashes have survivors.

You would have to ride in an airplane every single day for the next 15,000 years to be involved in an airline accident.

These stats have alleviated quite a bit of my fears. Not all, mind you, but some. Thought this might help some of you out there facing the same dilemma as me! We can do this! :)

Frustrations

This is my rant on some things that have been building for awhile. This serves no purpose other than to get it off my chest. 

Your immediate family (mother, father, siblings) is supposed to care about you, right? Even if you live 12+ hours away, you should have the decency to check in to make sure your children are still alive once in a great while. Am I right? 

This "family" is so close knit that they cry through my whole entire wedding because they are "losing" a sibling.... that they have only made the effort to call once in the last six months. And when they do call it is because they need something that only benefits them. I don't get it. 

On top of that, they have such great concern for their sibling's well being that they take an inside joke not even related to themselves and tell the family because they think their sibling's marital future may be in danger, without even talking to the people involved yet again. 

My family that has been ripped apart by a massive divorce, that now exists as no semblance of a family at all, but at least makes the effort to communicate with me a few times a week to make sure I'm doing okay and to halfway know what is going on in my life. I doubt half of them really care, but they make the effort anyways. 

How can a family that thinks they are so close, not care at all? And a family that has been pulled apart at the strings communicating better? It angers me, it really does. Especially when I make the effort, and nothing is returned. Maybe this is just how some people are, but it kind of hurts in a way. Sure wish they could see that. 

Returning...

I used to blog consistently in high school. Yesterday as I was looking over previous blogs, I realized how much I missed it. I want to write, possibly as a profession, and it's such a big part of my life that I need to be doing it more often. Who knows what this will turn into. Maybe just a log of my life, my thoughts, frustrations, ideas, and opinions. But it will be me, and it will be fun. So here it begins.