Would you choose your family?

There is a saying that you can choose your friends but you can't choose your relatives. Well, you can also choose whether or not to be friends with your relatives.

Being raised catholic, it was always instilled in me that you love your parents no matter what. You accept what they say, what they do, what they deem necessary, as law. It's much like how catholicism is taught. Do not question your lord; do not question your parents.

I lived like that for 30 years. It took me almost my whole life before realizing that I am the one who has the right to dictate what is acceptable to me; for me. Blood ties does not give a person a right to make a person doubt them self, or feel they are not worthy. A person may not get to chose their relatives, but they do get to choose having a relationship with those relatives, and they do get to chose their own beliefs.

So does this knowledge offer me peace? No. Does it help to erase the memories and emotions that go with those memories? No. But what it does offer is a type of closure, and that my friends, can sometimes be enough.




Washed Hands

Lollipop kisses (sticky sweet)
Impress their nectar upon your whiskered cheek:
Your hand absently wiped away their
adolescent aftertaste.

Despondent arms:
Outstretched for a reassuring (pretentious) hug
Grasp only the stale air of your indifference
Breathed upon my naively upturned face:
Smothered in incognizance.

Does it mystify?
That I have excommunicated myself from
Your well rehearsed pleasantries?
Your hypocritical attempts to condone
justification of Your displaced loyalty
simply compounds the situation.

Your bed is not mine to lie in -
Your rules no longer mine to follow.

Perhaps now you will be the one to recite fairy-tales
On feather-filled pillows, as silent tears cascade down
Self erected barricades, puddling by your cheek...

Pray you never hear the lone hoot owl
As he waits impatiently by your grave...