A Note on My Family and My Self
Apr. 9th, 2003 04:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldI'm human; as such, I'm quite falliable. (God, I definitely know this.)
I admit that I've got flaws, and as I try to puzzle out the niceties of social relations I'll certainly alienate and upset plenty of people.
I think, though, that my sister was wrong. I'd like to think that I'm acute enough to pick up on the tensions I'm supposed to be creating with people outside home. I'm certainly aware of the tensions at home.
I probably could have phrased this more delicately in the English Lounge but the fact remains that I don't think that L.M. Montgomery is a writer of such a calibre as to be able to sustain a graduate program. As a major component in different sorts of program focuses--Children's Literature, or Islands Literature, or Edwardian Literature, or Popular Culture and Literature--sure. Good for an Honours essay? Why not? But as a standalone feature? I've legitimate doubts, and I don't think I'm alone in this, and I'm not apologizing for believing in this or for expressing this.
Which goes to the point, I suppose, of my family's relationships. We don't talk about anything substantive, needing radical interventions to do that; we've been coasting on the good will accumulated in childhood, never bothering to recharge things. With my parents, at least, we had something, and the prospect for something improving.
Never with my sister, though. To be sure, I was a brat in childhood; but then, I've never really gotten the sense from M. for any sustained periods that I'm anything but a nuisance for her--my asking advice of her is interpreted by her as some form of self-centeredness, which is possible as far as it goes but seems a bit lacking. Isn't it normal to ask your sibling for help? (Like, say, the way that I helped her edit her essays.) As her post suggests, even though our academic careers seem to be following similar paths our development as individuals is taking us even further apart from each other.
Truth be told, I don't mind this that much. Well, I do mind it; I really wish that somehow, some things had happened to produce for us a normal sibling relationship. By this point, though, that's gone, and there don't seem to be the same sorts of things connecting us to each other as connects myself to my parents. (Some kind of solidarity, say, or vague hope that mutual venom might be transmuted into sweet wine to be shared between us.) Obsessing over my failures, perceived or otherwise, is something I've done too much of in the past, along with retreating into myself and emerging only long enough to get good marks and go to work.
I've been trying, in the past year, to develop some kind of healthy balance between excess of pride and utter lack of said. I'm still trying to find a balance, in fact. I'll probably, and unintentionally, make mistakes along the way. An apology is in order, I strongly believe, to those people whom I've similarly offended. To do what my sister wants and to revert back into my pre-February 2002 state, though, would be going much too far in the wrong direction.
I know that M. is reading this, and I don't much care that she does. I rather hope, in fact, that she has a good life ahead of her.
Now, all that remains is for me to go out and get the same.
I admit that I've got flaws, and as I try to puzzle out the niceties of social relations I'll certainly alienate and upset plenty of people.
I think, though, that my sister was wrong. I'd like to think that I'm acute enough to pick up on the tensions I'm supposed to be creating with people outside home. I'm certainly aware of the tensions at home.
I probably could have phrased this more delicately in the English Lounge but the fact remains that I don't think that L.M. Montgomery is a writer of such a calibre as to be able to sustain a graduate program. As a major component in different sorts of program focuses--Children's Literature, or Islands Literature, or Edwardian Literature, or Popular Culture and Literature--sure. Good for an Honours essay? Why not? But as a standalone feature? I've legitimate doubts, and I don't think I'm alone in this, and I'm not apologizing for believing in this or for expressing this.
Which goes to the point, I suppose, of my family's relationships. We don't talk about anything substantive, needing radical interventions to do that; we've been coasting on the good will accumulated in childhood, never bothering to recharge things. With my parents, at least, we had something, and the prospect for something improving.
Never with my sister, though. To be sure, I was a brat in childhood; but then, I've never really gotten the sense from M. for any sustained periods that I'm anything but a nuisance for her--my asking advice of her is interpreted by her as some form of self-centeredness, which is possible as far as it goes but seems a bit lacking. Isn't it normal to ask your sibling for help? (Like, say, the way that I helped her edit her essays.) As her post suggests, even though our academic careers seem to be following similar paths our development as individuals is taking us even further apart from each other.
Truth be told, I don't mind this that much. Well, I do mind it; I really wish that somehow, some things had happened to produce for us a normal sibling relationship. By this point, though, that's gone, and there don't seem to be the same sorts of things connecting us to each other as connects myself to my parents. (Some kind of solidarity, say, or vague hope that mutual venom might be transmuted into sweet wine to be shared between us.) Obsessing over my failures, perceived or otherwise, is something I've done too much of in the past, along with retreating into myself and emerging only long enough to get good marks and go to work.
I've been trying, in the past year, to develop some kind of healthy balance between excess of pride and utter lack of said. I'm still trying to find a balance, in fact. I'll probably, and unintentionally, make mistakes along the way. An apology is in order, I strongly believe, to those people whom I've similarly offended. To do what my sister wants and to revert back into my pre-February 2002 state, though, would be going much too far in the wrong direction.
I know that M. is reading this, and I don't much care that she does. I rather hope, in fact, that she has a good life ahead of her.
Now, all that remains is for me to go out and get the same.
