Dividing Lines

It seems like in this period there are so many more questions than answers, but I feel it is better to share them, letting in a little ethnographic light to some of my more querilous meanderings.

A few things that have become clear about the situation with my sister and her illness, is the way it reflects/refracts/amplifies/externalizes bigger, older, or hidden issues that lie within the family. The primary issue that we have been faced with is the way in which we have divided over her illness, and our differing ideas of how it should be treated. For many years I have thought this was simply due to a strange dis-reality that my parents lived in, especially my Dad, when it came to issues with which he had trouble. And I think he does disassociate himself from others and the possible opinions of others when it comes to issues over which he feel sensitive, uncertain, and most importantly, wrong!

However, what I am coming to realize more and more is that my sister's behavior, and her own anti-socialism, her own psychotic dreams of escape and desire to simply 'have everyone be at peace' (without each other) in fact reflects our own family's biggest trouble: we have been told since childhood that too many people, too much family, too much society, (in the the end, too much support) is poisonous, it has been modeled to us from our father to break apart and become solitary in times of trouble. And that is what this illness is highlighting. It is casting into high relief the struggle we are all going through to unite, as we truly desire to as a family, despite the since-childhood message of divide and scatter in hardship. Even my father seems to be turning his views, slowly - ever so slowly - toward a more whole family.

Furthermore, it is this divide, not so much the still-extant (as it has always been extant) illness of my sister that seems to cause us the most pain. It is the running blood of family history, and all our growth as adults to turn around the rejection we felt I think first from our father, and then perhaps from each other, as we were taught and followed the path of silence, cutting-off, non-communication. As adults, though, we are slowly shifting the system; today I think there is some hope.