Scared Thoughts

something disturbed me and has shaken things that I had assumed were going to be constant for the rest of my life.

This past weekend, a friend of mine Sue, mentioned to me that she was going to be babysitting my nephew, Elijah this coming valentine's day weekend on friday for my brother. I was stunned. It felt like a betrayal, since I had been asking Sam and Julie about babysitting Eljiah, but the excuse was that he was still breast-feeding, so I was patiently waiting for him to take the bottle or be weaned off so that I could babysit him.

So when Sue gets to babysit him and I don't, I felt like I was cut out from the family. I'm trying to justify it, by thinking that I probably don't have the skills needed to babysit, and that maybe I didn't make myself clear in my desire to babysit. Maybe Elijah just likes sue better. So this past family dinner, I asked whether or not I could babysit elijah and I was going to work from home on tuesday to do that. so hopefully I'll get a chance to spend some time with Elijah...

This event has gotten me thinking about family and the bond that our family has. We're all really tight and I always thought that no matter what happens, that the family will always be tight, and that's that. But I am finding out that while family is family, family still means that there needs to be effort placed in maintaining the relationships with the family and you can't just rely solely upon the blood factor. we meet every sunday, I suddenly realize that I don't know my brother or sister as much as I should, that I haven't been keeping up with them as much as I have with my friends...heck, my roommates probably know more about my life than my family!

I know I have been distancing myself from the family by not putting forth the effort to maintain contact, and this whole "babysitting" thing is a symptom of that. I don't believe that my brother knowingly did this to spite me, but it is a function of the relationship that I have with him. An example of this is when my brother got married, he ended up asking his friends to be the best man. To be honest, I was really hurt by this, but I didn't say anything, because it was his wedding and I didn't want to bring conflict or embarrassment to him about it. a couple of weeks before the wedding, sam sat down with me and we talked about the best man deal and suddenly I realized how much that hurt me that my own brother didn't ask me to be the best man. I couldn't help but think about how maybe I wasn't a good big brother, or that we have grown so far apart that sam didn't ask me to be the best man.

So now I am sitting here thinking about how different my family is from what I remember it. That the memories of the family are more pleasant than the reality of the family now. Can it change? Sure...I know that the love my family has for me and vice versa are strong and that there is a willingness to continue the relationships, but I know that I need to put forth more effort in keeping the family and not taking the family for granted, simply because we meet every week for dinner.
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