Against a Corpse's Will.

You are a product of your surroundings. I am not exempt from this rule. I refuse to follow my surroundings into a tailspin of self-destruction and insanity. The surroundings I am referring to are my family. I am striving to cut all ties with my extended family. These people may have shaped me into who I am today, sadly though they attempt to drag me into what they are today. This could be a multitude of roles in life ranging from the blind know nothing grandmother purposely ignorant to what she does not want to see, all the way down to the methamphetamine addled cousin with two affected children and her dope dealer boyfriend. These characters in my life have seen me develop into “the fine young man” I am today. I have developed into my role right along with the others as they simultaneously evolved into what they have become.

I hold much resentment at this decision in my life. I do love these people; I love them more than they know. I have tried to help all of them when they have needed it. What I have found out in this situation is that you can lead a man to reason, but you cannot make him think. I mean I have taken care of my cousins when they were sick, they’ve given me a ride home when I was too messed up to walk three miles home. I have stuck up for them and they have done the same for me. Yet, now I feel as if I am just throwing them under the bus. What are you to do when someone will not even look towards the light? The Bible says to take care of yourself before you go nitpicking into someone else’s affairs, and I know I have my problems. So currently, I have given up on helping these people. I hate to let them drift further and further into the depths of depravity. How am I supposed to help these people after being gone for so long?

I was raised in a culture where your family is worth dying for. If any of my family needs anything, I would feel obligated to give it to them. If it were an organ or bone marrow, I would almost feel as if they would owe me enough to straighten up the existence they had created. I am twenty-four years of age, working my ass off, attending a university with a fulltime class schedule, and I still manage to balance a social life in it somehow. I am working to end this current existence and begin the metamorphosis into something much more. Even though I am striving to succeed in my definition of the word, the others are content with their welfare checks and low quality dope.

I grew as a young child far from my extended family as my father was in the United States Navy. The government uprooted my shallow network of roots every two or three years and replanted me into new soil. Soil that I had to adjust to. Finding the different needed nutrients to survive, evolving to my surroundings. This was a blessing in disguise, because I now know that I can sever ties with anything and not feel regret. The only real contact I had with my grandparents throughout the majority of my childhood was a visit once or twice a year, along with the birthday cards and Christmas presents in the mail. This is not much more than the contact I had with my aunts, uncles, and my cousins. This was the way things were for quite awhile.

One summer I left my parents and moved in with my aunt Kim. She has always loved me and never spoke against me that I know of. If I ever needed anything, she would try to help. She was also the mother of the majority of my cousins. This was the beginning of a tragic drama. We got into fights with the neighbor kids. We went exploring in the woods. We did anything a kid could have wanted to do. After the first two weeks, things changed. My novelty had worn off. I was not special anymore. They turned on me. We still got along, but they had picked on me. This was the first time I had ever been bullied by anyone. By my own family. My uncle Dan played a game entitled “Uncle Dan Wins”. The rules to this game are the same as the title of the game. It would apply to anything and everything. A thirty-five year old man had to make children feel inferior to make himself feel superior. This messes with a child’s psyche. I wanted to go home. I wanted my mother. I had to deal with this personal hell for at least another month.

Eventually, my family moved back to Ohio and right next door to my grandmother. Of course, I was close with my family after that. Who wouldn’t love to go to Grandma’s house every day, scoring free cookies, a few bucks here and there, and being spoiled? My cousins moved in down the street, so we were always together. We all had matured from the past and I was inseparable from my family. We picked at each other and prodded each other to fight. That was just kids being kids though. I was one of the older ones so I had some power over my cousins. I was put in charge. I would baby-sit them. We were family, and at this point, I would have fought to death for any of my cousins. They were my other brothers and sisters.

I understand many families are not that close at all. However, my family gets together at least once a month for dinner these days. I was raised in a family where you stick up for your family. I have learned to fight for my family. I still will; depending on the family member, I will let a lot more criticism and hateful remarks about them go without conflict. The reason for this is that these remarks are true. My cousin is a methed out dope head with two kids from a redneck dope dealing wigger. Its sad that this type of comment and those much more derogatory don’t offend me anymore.

I have realized over time that my family is institutionally insane. Now you may be thinking that, “Everyone feels this way at one point in time or another”. This is the truth. My family suffers from so much substance abuse its sickening. My parents are the only ones that have not had the need to go to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. I may need to go, but I do not let alcohol affect my life; I’m doing fine in school and I hold a decent job. In my family though, alcohol is not the only vice. I can go to a family reunion and be able to score a decent amount of dope, depending on what's in stock. My Aunt Kim likes to self medicate. She has a back problem, which apparently reserves the right to be hopped up on Soma’s and Vicodin constantly. If I complain of a slight headache to this woman, she will hand me a small handful of Vicodin. It is sickening. It is nice to she cares; yet her care is poison. I have seen her hand out prescription painkillers to her children for every bump and bruise.

This may just be substance abuse. To strengthen this point more I would like to point out that the majority of my family is on some kind of prescription anti-depressant or anxiety medication. They cannot function in society without these crutches. This may be due to the incest in the family three or four generations back from mine. This may be due to the abuse that was sustained from my parents severely alcoholic fathers. It could be due to substance abuse. All of these explanations of this argument of insanity are possible contributing factors as well.

The best example of how family deals with a harsh family situation is to use the example of my one cousin. The Methamphetamine addled, honor roll earning, responsibility shirking, mother of two. We both started dabbling with marijuana together. She was my supplier for quite some time. My family believed I was her supplier since she was such a good girl. Her boyfriend at the time had brought her into his destructive circle of addiction. At first, she just smoked weed with us. Then she had moved onto coke. I pleaded with her to get off coke, but when you are a pretty girl, you get copious amounts of free drugs. She was coked out of her mind for quite some time. During this period of her life, she was dating one of my best friends. I saw this all first hand. The worst was that we would all party together in a little house on Sherman Street in the attic of our squat. Cramming nine people into a one-bedroom house and you learn quite a bit about people. No privacy equals no secrets. After her little fling with coke, she had gotten herself into smoking meth alone in her garage. Eventually she became a full-blown tweaker. My tribe had disowned her since none of us dabbled in speed. Tweakers are also well known for being thieving bastards. She eventually “settled down” with a meth dealer from the area. All they did was get high, Even after she had two miscarriages from it. They had been kicked out of their old place, so my parents and my grandparents put them up in cottages that we rented out. They robbed my grandmother while she was out. Stealing almost five thousand dollars in jewelry. Her doper boyfriend had been arrested on drug charges. During his questioning, he had rolled over on some bigger fish in the business. He was released and a week later, the house they were living in was firebombed. Luckily, and I use that word loosely, they both were out at the time. They fled to Florida.

Now the relevance of this story is how my family deals with my cousins choices. What they do is make excuses. My family is very religious and I know the story of the Prodigal Son very well; hell, I’ve lived that story. The excuses they make for her are far-fetched and unbelievable. They range from “Her first boyfriend must have really hurt her” to “This must all stem from her head injury in that four wheeler accident”. Personally, I think these are absolute bullshit. Like I have stated, you are a product of your surroundings. The only way to change this is change your surroundings. They make excuses for everyone!

They made excuses for me saying, “He just has to find himself, it won’t last long”. I can guarantee you; my life would still be huge parties, good sex, high times and random road trips if I had not left. I would still be in the fast lane to self-destruction. This prodigal son would never have come home; he would have bummed change for a forty ounce of malt liquor, swept the storefront for a place to stay and then disappeared again. It would have been Harry Crews road trip without a motorcycle. I would have hopped boxcar to boxcar to find somewhere new. The worst part is that I still just want to escape life, ride the rails everyday, and not be locked down to any responsibilities. This choice would have shirked my responsibility to humanity. I would have denied the responsibility to myself. The responsibility of bettering myself, the responsibility of attempting to better humanity.

I took my own advice a few years ago and now I am struggling to pull myself from the flaming wreckage that my life was. It would be nice to have that flaming wreckage still be my monkey cage, where I would still do stupid tricks for simple treats. I yearn for it, but like I said, I have a responsibility. This is what my family, except for a few, has not realized. A few are attempting degrees, and one is attempting to get her teaching license. Other than that, everyone is worthless. At least they are worthless to myself. I have no need to be dragged down into those pits of hell again. When I attend a family gathering its usually just for the meal unless its Christmas. After the meal, I abruptly leave.

With my disgust for my family, I have decided to cut my ties with those that refuse to better themselves. Those that refuse to attempt to climb out of the shallow graves they have dug themselves. If they tried, I would be the first hand helping them out; but I am tired of sitting in this graveyard with them. I am tired of chiseling their names and dates into a small piece of granite that will stand as a mock memorial, glorifying the lives they had supposedly lived. For these reasons, I am leaving the cemetery gates that are my family’s grasp. I may be out of reach; yet I plan to stay within earshot hoping I hear the gasp of reanimation. I hope I hear it soon. I am sick of attempting to drag the living dead from open graves; I had much rather help the atrophied and reanimated being yearning to live again.