The loyalty of family love

Is it love or loyalty? That’s what I often ask myself of the feelings I have towards my family. On the one hand, I love my mother unconditionally. It is a wholesome, unbreakable bond that has only strengthened over the years. She is my confidant, friend, mum and I love her deeply – so much, even, that I know I will struggle to survive life when she goes.

On the other hand, I no longer know how strong I love my brother – and this, in spite of the countless difficulties he has faced in the past few years; troubles that should reinforce our bond. But it hasn’t. Instead, it is driving us apart: it’s crowbarring two very different people into opposite directions. Instinctively, when I ask myself if I love him, I say yes. But with equal instantness a large part of me hates how ignorant he can be, how blind and unwilling to listen he is, how…older brotherly he still is.

If only he would listen. If only he would just slow down, wake up, realise his actions and bloody listen.

Because of that, I wonder whether I am now merely loyal to him as a brother by genes alone, and not through friendship or love. However, the fact that it pains me (almost to the point of tears) that I should even be writing this suggests that, in fact, I do still love him. I just miss who he once was, who we both were.

I don’t think he’ll ever be back. I might be younger than him, but it’s not unlike watching a young son fly the nest. They will learn from their mistakes – they have to. And as painful as it is, there is nothing we can really do to help.

Enlightenment

That moment, that isolated encapsulation – that realisation – when something makes sense. What is that? Is that enlightenment?

I’ve always sought knowledge and so-called enlightenment from as many sources as possible. Brainwaves, business ideas – or more pleasurably, the thought that you’ve unlocked a problem which you experience in life  -  appear and disappear with complete randomness.

But if you have one of these moments in which the problem, or idea, is suddenly a little clearer – when it makes sense – surely it has always been there, somewhere, after all? In which case, why would watching a film, or someone falling off a stool at a cafe, or gazing into a screensaver trigger it?

I suppose I shouldn’t question why, just act upon it. What a wonderful feeling it is!

Please be quiet

I consider myself courteous and kind. I’ve never had reason to doubt it, however self-serving and smug that may sound. “Treat others as you wish to be treated yourself” was never a doctrine my parents specifically laid out, but it’s a philosophy (or even a way of life) I believe and adhere to.

However, my patience is running thin with my two younger house-mates. They’re nearly my age, but one is still educating herself into the rigours of modern feminism and the power of sexuality by pretending to study art. She comes from a background dripping in money, and continues to slam, bash, smash, force, drop, crash, bang, beep, shout, close, open, close, open her way through life.

What is so difficult about closing a door quietly? And how many times does she have to be told by her limp drip of a boyfriend that I work very, very long and odd hours, sleep at inordinate times and would appreciate their courtesy by being a little quieter? How wrapped up in her own world must she be that she either continues to forget or, god forbid, is deliberately irritating me?