Family… Friend or Foe?

 

I’ve been thinking, family you either hate ‘em or you love ‘em. Mine… well…I’m still on the fence about that one. I will say this, some days are better than others. I ask myself some days why couldn’t I’ve been born into a different family, a normal family, and then I laugh at myself and say that would make things too easy. Life is about challenges, duh… I thought family was supposed to make things easier, they’re our rocks, our place of refuge, then why come, yea I said it, why come some of our family members are filled with so much hate, jealousy, envy, and all the other evil stuff? Family at times can treat you worse than strangers, with their constant belittling, comparisons, and unrealistic expectations. They’re the only ones that know which buttons to push to really get under your skin. They become experts at exposing your weaknesses, your deepest fears, and your inadequacies for sport.  Why, I have yet to figure that out. I have this one family member and no matter what I do, haterade is relentlessly sprinkled my way. I’ve been called a “bitty,” whatever that means, selfish, and whole lot of other colorful words. Reason, who knows and frankly, I’ve stopped caring. I’ve come to this conclusion; you can’t please everyone especially your family no matter how hard you try. We find ourselves doing things we don’t necessarily want to do in hopes of making them proud and pleasing them. We try desperately to live up to their expectations, despite the constant criticism. All we want is acceptance. It’s depressing to think that some of our family members thrive on seeing us do bad in order to gossip and kick us while we’re down. It’s hard to believe but some of our family’s really hate seeing us succeed and will attribute our success to selling drugs, gambling or anything else negative in order to avoid giving us credit for our hard earned work. My mom always told me keep your friends close and your enemies closer but what do you do when your family’s the enemy?