Just in time for the holidays, a few ideas of mine from a recent trip home to visit the family..
Coming home to visit the family is like stepping from my world into some disconnected reality. The events are all irrelevant to my own life, and yet I must continue performing these mechanical motions to please those who are close to me. I love my family more than they know, yet the boundary which divides us is greater than they might ever guess. We feel the same simple emotions of mankind, yet our values and beliefs - the basic building blocks of our societies - are so different that we might as well be from different planets. But if they are all human, then what am I? Subhuman? Superhuman? Anti-man, posthuman, ultrahuman? I wonder if this is simply the generation gap which each young person much face in the company of elders, or if these differences are the result of my own lifestyle choices. I feel that I must keep my thoughts to myself and put on a mask of sociability and happiness in order to maintain any sort of positive relationship with my family. At the same time, I know that I owe it to both my family and myself to be honest. I have the urge to tear myself open, completely exposed to the eyes of everyone, with all my thoughts, feelings, and dirty little secrets out on the table once and for all. I feel like I have to come out of some proverbial closet, and my sexuality isn’t even the issue at question here.
My cousin Nathan is in the 7th grade. He eyes my glass of water suspiciously. “What are you drinking?” he asks innocently enough. Not alcohol, I tell him once more. “Don’t drink,” he tells me, “or smoke. Those kind of people are evil.”
Thanksgiving with the family, home for the holidays, and I would kill for just one cigarette.
Don’t drink or smoke or do crack or weed or any other drugs. Don’t burn down houses and don’t kill people.
nox.diz.nu