Family Ties

This evening I am sitting here thinking back over my family and wondering what happened in my life that there are no Family Ties.  My mother and I are pretty close, I call her when I have the time and I am feeling up to it.  But, I hardly speak to my father or my brother.  I am trying to figure out what happened to these two relationships that makes them so difficult and hard for me.  My father and I got along pretty well when I stayed with him, but since I moved out and have tried to make it on my own we have had some troubled times and have shared some harsh words and feelings. 

My brother on the other hand we were closer when we were younger but ever since I moved to Atlanta back in 1997 we have drifted further and further apart and we hardly speak to one another unless something bad has happened in the family.  I see some of his posts on Facebook but I don't even have an address or phone number to contact him on. I have asked my mom several times to send me his number she says that she will and never does.

But my family hasn't always been this distant to one another. When my dad's mom was alive we were a much closer knit family, and all of the relatives talked and we saw each other quite often. Since her passing the whole family drifted apart and seemed to go their own separate ways. My dad's youngest brother died just last month in November and that leaves only my father as the last of my grandmother's children.  Though all of us grandchildren and great grandchildren are still around my dad immediate family line is completely gone except for him. This must make it lonely for him, though he drifted further and further from his family as the years went by it must be a terrible feeling knowing that you are the last one standing.

I really don't know what caused the rift in my own immediate family and I don't know what is keeping us so far apart from one another. I call my dad when I am go into the hospital, and I try to check up on him every couple of weeks, but he really doesn't reach out and call me like that unless it is my birthday or a holiday.  As far as my brother, I don't know what happened between us, when we are together we seem to get along fine and we talk to one another as far as I know there is no hard feelings between us or a reason that is keeping us apart.

I don't know maybe it has something to do with me being gay and always being in a relationship that has kept him away.  I don't know, or it could be that I have been sick for so long and everyone has thought I was going to die so many times maybe he doesn't want to get close to me because losing his brother to illness and death might be too hard to bare.  I really don't know the answer to that question.

How can a family turn out to produce 4 individuals that are so different from one another?  It is almost like we are total strangers to one another, we don't seem to confide in each other and we are all dealing with our own illnesses on our own and trying not to involve the other family members.  I think this is totally strange. I see so many families that are so close, that the brothers are best friends and are there for each other.  My family is nothing like that.

Maybe it is because of the difference in our ages. I am 7 years older than my brother and that is quite a bit of distance. He had to follow in my footsteps go to the same high school I went to and deal with the same teachers I had, who all probably remembered me.  Maybe there was too much comparison between the two of us as he was going to school and he felt like he was treated differently because I was so much older than  him.  Again, I cannot tell you the answer because no one has told me how they have felt.  Now back in June my father and I did have a heated discussion where he frankly told me that I have made his life miserable for the last 50 years and that I was making his death that much worse than it could be.  We have made up since then but the words still haunt me to this day.

No, I wasn't the perfect child and I missed some very important life lessons along the way, and I am don't know how to correct that which I have never picked up or learned.  I can tell you that I care deeply about people and I am a nurturer and that I try to take care of everyone around me.  Most people including my parents are not like that.  I may be stuck in a codependency issue at this point, because I feel like I need to take care of everyone and everything around me. Yet, many times I end up losing control of the situation and get myself hurt.

I struggle with these issues as well as self-esteem issues and self-worth issues as well and none of my immediate family seem to suffer from any of these problems.  Some of these feelings I can attribute to my early age of having cancer and the scars and surgeries that needed to be done to correct the issues that I had.  Some of these surgeries have left physical scars and permanent damage to my body that can never be reversed and at the age of 24 dealing with these life changing events can be traumatic. Not to mention that I suffer from severe depression and anxiety and in 2014 was diagnosed with PTSD. 

I am actively seeking help through VA counseling and seeking psychiatric help as well.  Nothing that my parents, military or friends taught me helped me deal with my body, illness and disability.  I have had to learn to adapt and cope with this on my own.  Luckily, I have made some very good friends along the way and have created a pretty manageable support network through them.  I also am a writer and I use writing as a sort of coping mechanism that helps me deal with the issues that I am facing. There used to be a time when I wrote every day, but I haven't had that luxury in several years, though I am trying to get back in the swing of it. Because believe it or not it really does help me calm myself and focus on the things that are relevant and important to me at the moment.  Writing not only allows me to express myself in words, it is an outlet where I can channel my frustrations and ask myself questions like I am doing tonight when talking about my personal family.

My writing is personal and based on my own life and experiences, it is an outlet and a medium where I can put my thoughts, ideas, poems, and prose into action to help others who may be facing or going through something similar to what I am going through at the moment.  Not everyone can benefit from what I write, but I am read by over a million readers a day and I have followers in 40 countries and that is something to be proud of. My words are reaching people across the world and who knows who might be benefitting from my experiences.

Every day I remind myself that I have no idea who might be watching me, who might be learning from me by seeing how I function on a daily basis, nor do I know who is reading and hearing my words.  That a simple casual conversation can lead you to an unexpected place.  Fate, Destiny and Karma bring us to the place that we need to be at exactly the right moment that we need to be there.  Plus God promises us that if we keep the Faith that he will not give us more than we can bear, for just as long as we can stand and will be with us through it all.  He will carry us when we falter and lift us up when we fall. 

As always my hopes and dreams are with you,

Uncle B

Gay Relationship are hard enough add distance to it and you got a mess

Now for those of my readers who are gay, you know that I am serious when I say that gay relationships are hard as it is.  But, when you add a long distance romance into the mix you can imagine how difficult that can be.  You often wonder what is happening on the other end.  Mainly because you feel dissociated, that personal connection you have with your partner is strained to the max.  Further, you have to have absolute trust in your partner.  Even the slightest doubt can cause major insecurities to blossom.  Further, as the miles and distance are major factors, you may also find yourselves faced with different time zones and other such impediments that at home relationships don't have to face.

There is also the longing and loneliness that you have to contend with, there is a yearning to be with that person and though it is impossible you try to think up ways of keeping the communication lines open.  You may try video chatting, messaging on Facebook, texting via cellphone, calling and a myriad of other methods to try to whittle the distance down.  I speak from personal experience, I am on a different time zone from my partner, and because of his medical condition and career, we are often unable to communicate.  It kills me when I don't hear from him for days on end.  I found out today that the reason why I haven't heard from him since Saturday was because he is sick and in a lot of pain.

The good thing about my relationship is that I don't have to worry about him cheating, because we have already been down that road.  We have had are party days and fooled around with a lot of people. I know for me that my health will not allow me to do that anymore, even if I wanted too. Further, I know that he isn't interested in anyone other than me. We both have been through an abusive relationship and won't tolerate letting ourselves get back into that type of situation.  Plus, our time together has made us stronger. We talk about everything and every decision. This is the key to any type of relationship.  As I have said before in my article about how to make any relationship work, you have to be flexible and have open lines of communication.  It is imperative that everything you do that affects your life you share with those you love and care about.  What I would love to tell you that as with pain and hurt that time makes it easier. But the truth is that in a long distance relationship time makes it harder to deal with. More and more feelings of dissociation and loneliness creep in.

I would ask you to ask yourself what could you do to bring the too of you closer, and I would challenge you to try and make it happen. Make yourself and your partner happy, close the distance and start over, because I am going to tell you that if you are separated any length of time you are going to have to start over, relearn everything about each other.  In doing so you need to keep an open mind and be flexible to change. As in my case I know that illness is what ended up separating us, and it is what is going to pull us back together. I know we have discussed me coming to where he is at, and then again we have talked about him coming to where I am at.  Which ever way it finally works out is going to be a blessing, because the truth of the matter is we really need each other. We feed off each other and we are actually the opposite of one another. In other words if we were a circle we would each be a half and when combined we would be a whole.

I have been feeling so lost and alone because I feel like a big part of me is missing.  I had fantasies of others and thought that I would explore other options, until the day that my partner and I finally started comparing notes and we realized that we really did love each other and didn't want to have anyone else our lives.  I am so very glad that he is in my life.  Even though we left Atlanta last year each of us going in separate directions we never truly ended the relationships that we had. So we decided that we were going to build on it and make it work even over the distances that separate us.

My hope is that if you are in a relationship, whether straight or gay, that you keep an open line of communication and endeavor to keep an open mind, stay flexible and open to change.  This will make being in a relationship that much easier.  Be willing to give 100 percent of yourself and demand a 100 percent in return. Keep in mind that you have to be willing to accept that no one is perfect...remember that in true love you accept the other person for who they are, all of them as a whole.  A complete package, the good the bad and the indifferent.  Long distance relationships are even tougher, but again I think that the key is talking and having an open communication line.

As always my hopes and dreams are with you,

Uncle B