who's labour is it
May. 29th, 2020 12:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jkatkinaI had a minor breakdown today over the idea of things going back to normal.
Precipitated by Mat telling us "it's high time for a hangout, don't you think?" Which for the record never means "can we come visit" but "come over here". When I tried to hash out a short visit, like 30 minutes to an hour, he got offended.
I love my brother, and my sister-in-law, and our nephews, but I'm in the midst of piecing together something in my head about how I feel about our relationship, and it's not really... good.
I was brought up as a child to entertain myself. My brothers, six and seven years older than me, and my parents, were always doing important grown up stuff and any childish interjections I might submit were cute, quaint or annoying. The good and right thing was to find ways to keep myself happy, by myself. I was alone, too, when I was in battle with my mother; no one ever asked how that was going and by then I had learned not to reach out.
I got really good at it, to the point that I didn't bat an eyelash that neither brother ever contacted or visited me the whole time I was away at college, and it seemed really weird when one of them visited shortly after my graduation, to celebrate.
As an adult we're told in a million ways, though, that introversion is unacceptable. Now that I can take care of myself, now that other people can extract labour -- emotional and economic -- from me, I am obliged to, and resented if I don't. I'm not used to extracting this labour from other people, so I don't get reciprocation. It just drains me.
I love my family but I hate the endless guilt about "not seeing them enough". I was raised to take care of myself. Fuck you all for telling me now that that's not good enough. You should have spent more time with me when I was young and needed you.
Even aside from the family stuff, though, I desperately don't want things to go back to normal. I don't want to be in a big warehouse painting in a cold room five days a week, with an hour transit either way full of strangers and through a sketchy part of town. I don't want my weekends to be full of social obligations that eat up all my time.
I don't want that crushing guilt over not being enough to return, but it's already coming back, and there's nothing I can do to stop it.
eta I suppose the upshot here, the tl;dr if you will, is that I have been enjoying my time completely cut off from people outside my household. Whatever horrible things that says about me. Because fuck personal preference, right? You're only good if you can exist in the ways other people want you to.
Precipitated by Mat telling us "it's high time for a hangout, don't you think?" Which for the record never means "can we come visit" but "come over here". When I tried to hash out a short visit, like 30 minutes to an hour, he got offended.
I love my brother, and my sister-in-law, and our nephews, but I'm in the midst of piecing together something in my head about how I feel about our relationship, and it's not really... good.
I was brought up as a child to entertain myself. My brothers, six and seven years older than me, and my parents, were always doing important grown up stuff and any childish interjections I might submit were cute, quaint or annoying. The good and right thing was to find ways to keep myself happy, by myself. I was alone, too, when I was in battle with my mother; no one ever asked how that was going and by then I had learned not to reach out.
I got really good at it, to the point that I didn't bat an eyelash that neither brother ever contacted or visited me the whole time I was away at college, and it seemed really weird when one of them visited shortly after my graduation, to celebrate.
As an adult we're told in a million ways, though, that introversion is unacceptable. Now that I can take care of myself, now that other people can extract labour -- emotional and economic -- from me, I am obliged to, and resented if I don't. I'm not used to extracting this labour from other people, so I don't get reciprocation. It just drains me.
I love my family but I hate the endless guilt about "not seeing them enough". I was raised to take care of myself. Fuck you all for telling me now that that's not good enough. You should have spent more time with me when I was young and needed you.
Even aside from the family stuff, though, I desperately don't want things to go back to normal. I don't want to be in a big warehouse painting in a cold room five days a week, with an hour transit either way full of strangers and through a sketchy part of town. I don't want my weekends to be full of social obligations that eat up all my time.
I don't want that crushing guilt over not being enough to return, but it's already coming back, and there's nothing I can do to stop it.
eta I suppose the upshot here, the tl;dr if you will, is that I have been enjoying my time completely cut off from people outside my household. Whatever horrible things that says about me. Because fuck personal preference, right? You're only good if you can exist in the ways other people want you to.
no subject
Date: 2020-05-29 09:36 pm (UTC)Well, that is the narrative that Capitalism sells us (ha!). But that doesn't mean it's true.
After all, back in the days of Feudalism, the narrative was that you're only a good person if you try your hardest to stay withing the social rank you were born in.
And narratives can change.
no subject
Date: 2020-05-31 01:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-05-31 11:17 am (UTC)And then, the other day, I watched this video Late Stage Disney from the YouTuber Renegade Cut, and for the first time, I heard the actual definition: It's the stage of capitalism where every single aspect of our lives have been commodofied -- even our friendships and our hobbies.
That's not the joke I thought it was, but it is an ultimately unstable system, and bound to collapse eventually, like a super massive star that burns through all its own fuel. In the meantime, it's helpful to remember who's selling you this narrative, and what they have to gain from it.
no subject
Date: 2020-05-30 10:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-05-31 01:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-05-31 11:23 pm (UTC)--Mori
no subject
Date: 2020-06-01 04:01 am (UTC)More than that, though, TL and I have been wistfully discussing like, moving out of the city. There are some lovely smaller towns up the sunshine coast, and I bet we could find a pretty queer one.