Necessities

My brother gave me a really lame Christmas present. The Complete Calvin and Hobbes. Stupid me took the wrapping off of the box. I should have kept in on so I could try to return it and get something that I will actually read. It's not that the gift is bad, I can think of other things that would be worse (like socks, Mom. If you want to give me some socks, just give them to me, they don't need to be a Christmas present). What makes the gift lame is that I would have found it appealing when I was a teenager. I'm almost 40. I'm not the person that I was all those years ago, but in all too many ways my brother in particular and my family in general seems to have a thing with keeping me the person I was back then.

In their minds the young version of me is the true version of me. That's who I am supposed to be. My brother and I are supposed to be best friends. I'm supposed to like Stephen King (another recent Christmas present) and be a sloppy eater. My family expects me to play a certain role and for way too much of my life I've been all too happy to play along and fill that role. I made the decision not to do that earlier this month and it has been interesting to see how they reacted. It's been more interesting for me to see how I've reacted. Noticing the stress and tension, the desire to make things right, and recognizing that these feelings were rooted in family dynamics that go back to when I liked reading Calvin and Hobbes in the paper was a revelation. All those things I felt I "had" to do turn out to not really be all that necessary after all.