Fractured Family
Being on vacation is always a wild ride in my world. I almost always end up doing things I shouldn't. Like wasting money and hooking up with the most unexpected of partners. After it all, I always feel regret. And I wind up feeling exhausted spiritually, most of all.
Raya was very very uneventful to the point of being downright depressing. Despite staying over at my parent's house and seeing my brother and sister and their respective families, I felt such emptiness. After Ramadan ended, my mind only thought of one thing: debouchery. And I fulfilled my naughty desires promptly during the first day of Eid. I am amazed at the extent I would go to fulfil my urges, but I am not shocked at myself. I'm always like that.
But still, it amazes me.
I realised that I lead a very different life from what people constitute as normal. While Raya should be filled with obligatory visits to friend's and relative's homes, my Raya was filled with fantastic woe. I stayed home. Watched television. I entertained my three guests who came to my parent's, separately I must add.
Thank God, I had sane friends who invited me to their abode and I had a chance to just chill out.
Thank God I attended a family gathering at my sister's last Saturday. It was just like the good old days. All my relatives (there are many on my mother's side) used to converge at my grandfather's house in Kajang every Hari Raya. It was the most lovely, loud, hectic , crazy and stress-inducing thing all at the same time. But hey, that's family! Since grandad died five years ago, the annual family reunion stopped. And I spent each Raya in the quietness of my JB home. I say quiet because my parent's usually invited their handful of close friends while I'd invite my four best friends and a colleague over for a Raya do.
It was always a quiet little do. Just a bit of kuih and several people. We would chat about life, work. I missed the loud family gatherings of the old days.
This year, it was different. We hopefully started the gathering tradition again. Though it was downright awkward to meet my cousins, aunts and uncles again, I am sure our famity ties could be strengthened with more and more meetings. I'm just being positive, I suppose. It will be damn hard to do and mind you, it would require tonnes of work to recapture the old family bonds.
On a related note, my sister-in-law did not visit the family for the third year in a row. Though my brother and his two kids came over, the wifey was a no-show. Why? Well, she's always never gotten along with my mother and my family. And she's always distancing herself from family, even, as I heard, from her own family in Sarawak.
It seems that she's been keeping a distance from my brother as well. A few years ago, my brother said that she'd taken a job far away from the family and only returned to her kids during weekends. In the end, my brother took care of the kids all week long. It was a strange story, but that's what my brother told us.
It doesn't take a professor to figure out that she and my brother are having marital problems.
Imagine working in the same town as your in-laws but never making an effort to visit your in-laws. Well that's what my sister-in-law has been doing.
It used to much worse than that. It used to be that my brother would completely disappear and not show up for family gatherings as well. We always thought it may have been his wife's influence, though we always brushed off that thought because it was so absurd. But nowadays, I got a feeling that the assumption may be true.
My mom, sisters and brother-in-law got to talking the other night. We were talking about families. We talked about how children are a reflection of the kinds of family they come from. My sister said how there is always one family member who would bind the family together. We kinda felt sympathy with my sister-in-law. We knew that she didn't have much of a close knit family, or at least that's what we had learned since her marriage to my brother 10 years ago.
My mother kept repeating how marriage is always a marriage of two families. "It's never the two people only. You are also becoming part of the family," she would say. And then she'd ramble on, as always, about making sure I find a girl who matched my education level. Someone who comes from a good family.
I don't know how it works. But it sucks when your family is sort of fractured. Though it's not a great great fracture, but you feel it nevertheless. Though it gives me no licence to commit debouchery. It sure does motivate me to that direction. It's like, " I come from a fucked up background. So why not fuck myself up?"
Being on vacation is always a wild ride in my world. I almost always end up doing things I shouldn't. Like wasting money and hooking up with the most unexpected of partners. After it all, I always feel regret. And I wind up feeling exhausted spiritually, most of all.
Raya was very very uneventful to the point of being downright depressing. Despite staying over at my parent's house and seeing my brother and sister and their respective families, I felt such emptiness. After Ramadan ended, my mind only thought of one thing: debouchery. And I fulfilled my naughty desires promptly during the first day of Eid. I am amazed at the extent I would go to fulfil my urges, but I am not shocked at myself. I'm always like that.
But still, it amazes me.
I realised that I lead a very different life from what people constitute as normal. While Raya should be filled with obligatory visits to friend's and relative's homes, my Raya was filled with fantastic woe. I stayed home. Watched television. I entertained my three guests who came to my parent's, separately I must add.
Thank God, I had sane friends who invited me to their abode and I had a chance to just chill out.
Thank God I attended a family gathering at my sister's last Saturday. It was just like the good old days. All my relatives (there are many on my mother's side) used to converge at my grandfather's house in Kajang every Hari Raya. It was the most lovely, loud, hectic , crazy and stress-inducing thing all at the same time. But hey, that's family! Since grandad died five years ago, the annual family reunion stopped. And I spent each Raya in the quietness of my JB home. I say quiet because my parent's usually invited their handful of close friends while I'd invite my four best friends and a colleague over for a Raya do.
It was always a quiet little do. Just a bit of kuih and several people. We would chat about life, work. I missed the loud family gatherings of the old days.
This year, it was different. We hopefully started the gathering tradition again. Though it was downright awkward to meet my cousins, aunts and uncles again, I am sure our famity ties could be strengthened with more and more meetings. I'm just being positive, I suppose. It will be damn hard to do and mind you, it would require tonnes of work to recapture the old family bonds.
On a related note, my sister-in-law did not visit the family for the third year in a row. Though my brother and his two kids came over, the wifey was a no-show. Why? Well, she's always never gotten along with my mother and my family. And she's always distancing herself from family, even, as I heard, from her own family in Sarawak.
It seems that she's been keeping a distance from my brother as well. A few years ago, my brother said that she'd taken a job far away from the family and only returned to her kids during weekends. In the end, my brother took care of the kids all week long. It was a strange story, but that's what my brother told us.
It doesn't take a professor to figure out that she and my brother are having marital problems.
Imagine working in the same town as your in-laws but never making an effort to visit your in-laws. Well that's what my sister-in-law has been doing.
It used to much worse than that. It used to be that my brother would completely disappear and not show up for family gatherings as well. We always thought it may have been his wife's influence, though we always brushed off that thought because it was so absurd. But nowadays, I got a feeling that the assumption may be true.
My mom, sisters and brother-in-law got to talking the other night. We were talking about families. We talked about how children are a reflection of the kinds of family they come from. My sister said how there is always one family member who would bind the family together. We kinda felt sympathy with my sister-in-law. We knew that she didn't have much of a close knit family, or at least that's what we had learned since her marriage to my brother 10 years ago.
My mother kept repeating how marriage is always a marriage of two families. "It's never the two people only. You are also becoming part of the family," she would say. And then she'd ramble on, as always, about making sure I find a girl who matched my education level. Someone who comes from a good family.
I don't know how it works. But it sucks when your family is sort of fractured. Though it's not a great great fracture, but you feel it nevertheless. Though it gives me no licence to commit debouchery. It sure does motivate me to that direction. It's like, " I come from a fucked up background. So why not fuck myself up?"
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