my unfamiliar family.

 

I recently watched this drama called "My Unfamiliar Family". Even the title is relatable. Where do I start? Let me start from how I feel about the two lines above. 

"We're family, but we know nothing. We know nothing if we don't tell each other."

That is how my family is like. Sometimes I feel like we're just strangers who happen to live together. I think my family is even worse than the family in the drama. I don't even know my parents' favourite food. To be fair, we don't know each other's favourite food.

I thought my family was pretty normal. Now I don't think we are that normal. We don't talk like other family. I can't talk to my parents openly. Or my siblings for that matter. We always only talk about general stuff with each other. We've always been this way. Maybe our situation is pretty common, but it's certainly not what normal family looks like. When I'm with my father in a long car drive, the only thing we talk about is the weather. When all of us eat together, which only happens on special occasions, the only thing we talk about is the price of the ingredients. When we're done with that topic, we will all eat quietly. Most of the time though, we eat separately. It's awkward to eat together on the same table in this house. Unfortunately, I don't remember the past that well. I don't know when this started or if it has always been that way. I have no idea. 

There are so many things that we don't know about each other. I think it's because we don't ask each other anything. When you are not asked, you don't tell. At least that is how I think. I don't know about other families. Is it normal to not know anything about your parents' marriage? Not even the date of the marriage? Is it normal to find out about your parents' past marriage not from your parents but someone else? Is it normal to not know any details about your parents' divorce? Or is all of this none of our business? Maybe we don't have the right to know all this. Maybe it's not necessary for us to know. I think our family has this one way of dealing with things. If something is wrong with my sibling, it will only be dealt by my parents and my sibling. If there is a problem between my parents, they deal it with each other. Now that make sense. But is it normal? Is that how a family should be? 

Are we really family? How do we define family anyway? 

A few days ago, my sister scolded me for ignoring my mother's text. She said I'm acting like I don't have a mother. Well, she's not wrong. She had been gone for so long I've forgotten that she is my mother. Yes she must have done so much for me. She gave birth to me. She took care of us. I don't deny that. Should I just accept the fact that she left and got married to someone else? If I'm to think from her perspective, maybe she's unhappy with her marriage with my father, so she left. Staying in an unhappy marriage for the kids, yes that is not very clever. But I, I think I am just angry because she hurt my father. I guess I wouldn't mind if the feeling is mutual. It is clearly one-sided. I don't even know why she left. Why was she unhappy? I will never know. We will never know. Because we won't ask. That's the kind of family we are. We won't ask each other anything. As a result, we don't know anything about each other. Can we still call this a family? I don't know.

Should we change by telling each other everything? I don't see that happening, ever. I think we're all used to and comfortable with how we are now. We won't change. Nothing will change. We will stay clueless about each other. And I guess that's okay. It's odd, it's not normal, but it's okay.