Disconnect

People sometimes say things that are foreign to me. Most often, I feel it around the holiday times when people speak of how important family is and the special bond that connects them. "Blood is thicker than water," they say. I often find myself very resistant to these concepts, but it was not until recently I determined why. This concept just does not make sense to me and is completely opposite to what I have learned.

I am not what anyone would consider close to my family. The thought that people would actually look forward to seeing and being with their family for longer than an hour or two is shocking and ridiculous to me. Why would they possibly want to do this.? However, I know people who actually enjoy their family. They cannot wait to see their siblings and parents and spend time with them. It is not just something they say to sound cool and popular. Although, I also know many people that say these things just to say them. Meanwhile, in their hearts the actual act of spending time with their family makes them wish for death ... or at least morphine. They have been taught, and somewhere in their minds believe, that they enjoy it - deriving some perverse pleasure from the misery. Much like Stockholm's syndrome.

I wonder how many other things might be like this. I often find that I will tell people things that they have never heard or thought about and they are initially uncomfortable with the concept and dismiss it immediately. I know others that languish in relationships, of one form or another, that clearly have no hope of satisfying their needs or making them happy. People like to believe things that are comfortable familiar and I believe for me, it was comfortable to believe that no one really enjoys their families. However, I think the real answer is I just do not particularly enjoy most of mine and it is foreign to me to think that anyone else could.