Before any family reunion, there’s usually a briefing of what you can mention and what you shouldn’t even think about saying in front of your relatives. You prepare rigorously, not unlike how you’d get ready for a final presentation: an aesthetically pleasing PowerPoint with all the information relevant to what the people evaluating you want to hear. You’re allowed index cards just in case there are any surprise questions, but other than that, you’re on your own and in front of the audience. So much planning just so your aunties won’t have a fit over your new nose piercing, or the fact that you want to change majors, or any other decision that truly only affects you. They can take everything personal, but you have to be a patient saint, smiling as they pile on a year’s worth of criticism on you.
When you’re a child, there always seems to be specific relatives that barely show up to holiday gatherings. The adults around you at the time, who have yet to make you a topic of conversation while you’re still within hearing distance, paint them as ‘antisocial’, or ‘too busy for their family’. In your naivety, these comments seem like the truth. You soak them up like a sponge and judge those members of the family accordingly. How dare they? All they did was cast themselves out. The opinion you have is born out of gossip; never facts. As you grow into yourself, you begin to understand the black sheep within the bunch.
The pressures that come with getting older are enforced by family. There’s not a single thing they say that hasn’t already haunted your sleep. In between meal courses, you’re reminded of all the things that are expected from you, how far behind you are in comparison to their own generation. Instead of leaving with leftovers, new sources of anxiety fill your plate, nourishing your existential worries for the next year or soー but only until your relatives can dig their loving claws into you again. Feeling ready for their scrutiny is a near impossible task. Once you think that you’ve finally fixed what they view as flawed, there will always be something else to pick apart.
Suddenly, those relatives that were too busy to swing by, that didn’t prioritize quality time become a cautionary tale. Empathizing with them and their potential motives is a piece of cake, but you’re well aware of what your relatives think. The things they say, how they have a round table discussion of someone they’ve known their whole lives. Under layers of patience, you also fear what they might say about you. How they might paint you in the family portrait. As a kid, you were a beam of light, shining with opportunity and they protected you from the sharpness of their tongues. All bets were off as you approached young adulthood. You miss being unaware and completely immune to their loud thinking.
Leaving cookies for Santa is long forgotten, because now you leave pieces of your identity tucked away under the Christmas tree; well-kept secrets that will be gifted to those deserving. It makes you lighter in theory, but the heaviness that comes with compromising who you are for the sake of self-preservation is a party pooper. There is a version of you that arrives at family reunions, that hugs everybody and enjoys the limited time where everyone is gathered together. A person with your smile and filtered answers to repetitive questions. Who takes one for the team and tries their best to not take it personally, because “you need to love them as they are.”
But do they offer you the same grace? Do you feel unconditionally loved when they comment on your weight? Or when they voice in detail how they feel about your life decisions? Is their presence the embrace that you remember from your childhood or another uncomfortable side-effect of adulthood? Most of these people you rarely see outside of certain occasions, yet they are confident that they know exactly how to fix you. Because that’s how you feel in their eyes. Like a failed prototype up for inspection, the early drafts of an essay, or a song that doesn’t fit into the album. There’s always something to say, something that could be better, and something that is lacking. You will never be complete, even if you follow their blueprints to perfection.
These are dynamics present in most families. Our relatives often mistake criticism as some sort of secret love language that only they understand. The more notes they give us, the more they want us to feel loved. But there is an emptiness that surrounds you in these moments: will you ever be enough? If life is about modifying ourselves for people that don’t try to walk a mile in our shoes, is peace in the cards for any of us?
“Suck it up”, they say. But if anyone outside of your family made you experience anything like this, they would advise you to cut them off. In spite of it all, you love them and you wish to keep them close. There’s an underlying desperation for their acceptance. You want them to be proud. You want the gold stickers, the pretty ribbons, and all the recognition. But there should be limits as to how much you give, based on how they react. There’s no greater gift than knowing your worth and making sure others are aware of it. The most important opinion, the one that you should always linger on, should be your own.