Interesting, as always. Also, I think one of my friends did that adoption thing, and I can see how someone I knew in high school is prone to it.
I have things I can rattle off, sure. The thing is, to put it simply I hate my parents and I have no relationship worth talking about with my brothers and I have deep, deep resentments against my paternal grandmother and haven't seen my maternal grandparents in years which I'm totally fine with. And yeah, I can skate past all that and dive into the stuff about my grandfather who grew avocados around Anaheim and some of what used to be his land is now part of Disneyland and the Israeli relatives and all that.
But in my personal value system, I measure relationships by trust, and I show I trust someone not by telling them about my family but about my mental illness and how talking to my parents is bad for my health and how fucking angry my grandmother's bigotry makes me. I imagine even a Southerner who I can indeed trust with that information about me would be taken aback if I shared it too soon or in the wrong way or without going through the formalities first or whatever. And then, I just have Issues about family, it's kind of a sore point generally. And I would so much rather say I'm from Philadelphia than from Connecticut.
Basically, the tradition you describe above would make me actively uncomfortable, even on a good day. It doesn't help that I'm uncomfortable with lying, including the thing you do in social situations where the truth is too personal and you have every right to just not share a whole and true answer.
And it's not that family doesn't matter to me, it's that I don't trust it and anyone who knows much about my family would understand that completely. Like, my father's first cousin and her non-biological sister* has turned out to be incredibly helpful in certain ways ... and I'm currently having all kinds of angry!depression about opening up to her and asking for help. Huge fucking can of worms. Not something I'd want to bring up with someone new. The thing I'd have to do is get all historical as fast as possible.
*Non-biological family/extralegal adoption is something my dad's side of the family does, despite being Ashkenazic Jews - the only members of the family who live beneath the Mason-Dixon line are all in Florida, and I don't mean the Panhandle.
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Date: 4 Apr 2011 11:49 am (UTC)I have things I can rattle off, sure. The thing is, to put it simply I hate my parents and I have no relationship worth talking about with my brothers and I have deep, deep resentments against my paternal grandmother and haven't seen my maternal grandparents in years which I'm totally fine with. And yeah, I can skate past all that and dive into the stuff about my grandfather who grew avocados around Anaheim and some of what used to be his land is now part of Disneyland and the Israeli relatives and all that.
But in my personal value system, I measure relationships by trust, and I show I trust someone not by telling them about my family but about my mental illness and how talking to my parents is bad for my health and how fucking angry my grandmother's bigotry makes me. I imagine even a Southerner who I can indeed trust with that information about me would be taken aback if I shared it too soon or in the wrong way or without going through the formalities first or whatever. And then, I just have Issues about family, it's kind of a sore point generally. And I would so much rather say I'm from Philadelphia than from Connecticut.
Basically, the tradition you describe above would make me actively uncomfortable, even on a good day. It doesn't help that I'm uncomfortable with lying, including the thing you do in social situations where the truth is too personal and you have every right to just not share a whole and true answer.
And it's not that family doesn't matter to me, it's that I don't trust it and anyone who knows much about my family would understand that completely. Like, my father's first cousin and her non-biological sister* has turned out to be incredibly helpful in certain ways ... and I'm currently having all kinds of angry!depression about opening up to her and asking for help. Huge fucking can of worms. Not something I'd want to bring up with someone new. The thing I'd have to do is get all historical as fast as possible.
*Non-biological family/extralegal adoption is something my dad's side of the family does, despite being Ashkenazic Jews - the only members of the family who live beneath the Mason-Dixon line are all in Florida, and I don't mean the Panhandle.