I woke-up the day after thanksgiving to news of Omicron. I was devastated: Just as I had begun to taste a little post-vaccine freedom, I was now imagining a newly locked down life.
One of the things stressing me out the most was that I would need to cancel an upcoming trip to see my family in January. I have barely seen them since the pandemic began, particularly my brother and his family. I feel not just disconnected, but derelict — I knew they had already returned to basically normal life, and I felt embarrassed, like my not yet having done so was being judged by them, and that my absence was being read as a lack of care. I worried about the toll of my absence on our relationship. So, though the timing was tough, the pricing extremely high, I started hatching plan to fly down to Miami, via charter, and see them all the following week.
I sent a group chat to Mom and Seth and asked their availability. Mom was free, Seth said he was busy, but he is always busy. So I booked the flight. Over the next day or two though my brother kept sending more messages about his business, about how he doesn’t have time, he went so far as to send over a text with his day-by-day commitments so I could figure out if I could ‘squeeze’ myself into his free time. It seemed clear to me Seth didn’t want me to come, that I was an interruption in his busy life, that I was an intrusion and a burden. I was hurt. I would have canceled, but I didn’t want to disappoint my mom, to make her feel the same level of unvalued as my brother was making me feel.
As hurt as I was, I started thinking about my wrong views:
In my egotism, I believed my brother and his family were pining away for my company. I felt like I was disappointing them by not seeing them for so long. I thought the visit would be a boon, a favor for them. But here it was the opposite, my brother made it clear my visit was a burden. The proof was right in front of me that the world –even my little corner of it, even the people I loved and identified with the most – doesn’t revolve around me, doesn’t affirm me.
I knew that Seth didn’t see risk in Omicron, and I suspected he believed my own risk calculation was overblown to the point of being crazy. I guessed that he felt now like my ‘crazy’ was a reason he had to ‘drop everything’ and accommodate me. Even knowing/suspecting all this, I still believed my brother would want to see me if he understood that it could be the last time for a long time. I believed he would prioritize time with me, no matter the circumstances, even if he didn’t agree with the reasons or urgency behind the visit. But why?
The truth is, everyone in this world, operates under conditions. Even love, which we tend to pretend is so absolute, is conditional. Both the feelings we feel, and the priority – measured by actions – we give to our loved ones is done with terms and conditions. With fine print. Under specific circumstances. To simply believe that Seth, in every circumstance and under all conditions, would want to see me is a deeply wrong. To believe that just because I weigh a situation as sufficiently important to ‘drop everything’, he would as well, is crazy. His conditions for love, for attention, are shaped by his life, his beliefs, his priorities, not by mine.
I thought more about my suffering and realized too how I was ultimately its author. Seth and I weren’t always close, for many years in my 20s we were basically estranged. But we became closer after my dad’s death and when his Seth’s first child was born. At that time, I decided I wanted to BE a better family member. I decided there was virtue in the identity of good sister, good auntie, and I embarked on acting the part. I used my brother to create a particular identity.
But using him to create my identity was a double-edged sword — as our relationship came to symbolize a facet of my virtue, his disapproval/rejection took on the power to deflate me. I realized everything we use to build our sense of self is like this — money, partner, clothes, job — as long as I have these things I can see them as aggrandizements to Alana. But once they are lost, once they turn on me, or fall out of favor of either myself or those I seek to impress, I see them as ego blows. It is two sides of the same coin. And because of impermanence I am bound to lose these things and suffer the inevitable blow. But in truth, I don’t have to, that blow is my choice. Just like with Seth, I chose to use him, to imagine him making me the me I want to be. The choice was both mine and arbitrary. And had I not chosen him, had I not given him that ‘power’ I wouldn’t have felt so pained when I felt rejected by him.
As I contemplated, an image popped into my mind. It is like taking on something we love, we feel boosted by, and in that moment it sinks little claws under our skin, like a wall anchor, going in smooth – as long as it is going with the grain – painless and unnoticed. But when it is time for that thing to come out, the hook catches, pulls against the grain, and we suffer such pain with the separation. Pain I allowed by letting it sink in in the first place.
