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rambles and half-essays

Tag: family

  • family, tradition, and growing up

    KM Brunner

    I want to start by saying that I love my family. I had a fabulous time with them over the holiday. Best one I’ve had, I think. Ever. Of course there were difficult moments, but we each have our failings and challenging personality traits, so that’s to be expected. Ultimately, though, I love them. And that can be hard, because we’re so different.

    I was the black sheep of the family the moment my sister arrived. My sister is a fantastic woman. She’s smart, confident, and loving. She can be intimidating, but so can I. Thing is, she’s unique in ways that elevate her in American/traditional society, I’m unique in ways that alienate me from it. Regardless, I think she’s very cool and in some ways, I envy her. I certainly envy her easier navigation of the world.

    She doesn’t question much. Her life is her life, and my family understands that life. They lived that life, and are thrilled that she, too, is living it.

    I do nothing but question. It can be exhausting. I can be exhausting. My family doesn’t understand my life – and it has nothing to do with my being gay. It’s ’cause I think too much. That’s it. And that molded me into someone so, so unlike my family. A little changeling creature.

    But I’ve been like this forever. Mom used to say I was “born forty,” but I know that’s another way to say “strange.” I never stop at what. I always have to interrogate things, get to the why. And once you understand something, you can’t un-understand it. If you’re like this as a child, you get stuck with knowledge you don’t know what to do with, and worse, knowledge of things you can’t discuss. So it’ll fester. Little things will start to grate, especially things that to the rest of the family, might not seem like a “big deal.”

    They are, though. Some small things – word choice, teeny judgements, off-colour comments – the roots of them are serious and so, so telling. The things that grate are the things you can’t unlearn, only ignore, and ignoring is tough.

    My sister is an amazing woman. My parents are fabulous people. I love them more than is reasonable and will continue to love them. Still, when we are all together, I feel so different from them that it’s almost unbearable.

    I’m still trying to understand the divide; when I’m not paying attention, I sometimes find myself trying to repair it. I found that sad, this last Thanksgiving. I don’t want to be more like them. They’re not bad, they’re just different, but I like the things that make me different and don’t want to sacrifice my personhood to make them more comfortable.

    This Thanksgiving, I felt the most myself than I ever have around them. It was a little scary. It was thrilling. It felt like I was daring them to finally acknowledge my strangeness. They didn’t, of course, and they won’t. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t brave of me to be myself, to maintain my boundaries, while in their house.

    ‘Cause it was. Anyway, I hope they never find this piece.

    Recommendations:

    Music: Illinoise is my favorite Sufjan Stevens album. It’s really cohesive and a fun listen. The song “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.” is buck wild and really unsettling, but it’s my favorite from the album.

    Reading: Just finished The Writing Life by Annie Dillard, and it was fun. Dense and poetic, but fun. I took my time reading it; I recommend a…slow digestion.

    I find THEMA, this entirely-analog small literary journal, to be really charming. Been submitting again lately (not to this journal, but to others), and damn does it take a long time to get responses back.

  • leaning in, shame, power exchange

    KM Brunner

    I’m happy that I started this blog. I began it after re-reading one I maintained during college. The old site was less a blog and more a record of my failures. Good failures – the death of creative projects, explorations of different musical genres (and my subsequent abandonment), and a subconscious attempt to confront my chronic illness, among other things.

    I did confront it consciously, finally, about six years ago. I’m still working on it.

    I also wrote a lot about college, growing up, and moving to Boston. The writing was bad, but even worse than that, it didn’t sound like me. I guess it’s tough for writers to own to our voices before we’re ready, so I forgive myself for the posturing. But that truly is what it was: posturing.

    To be oneself is such a task.

    It requires consciously leaning into what you – and only you – want, know, need. Of course, borrowing traits and ideas is normal. Necessary, even, but once you come to know what you truly like, when you pinpoint what comes from only you…

    It is hard to abandon the shame of some things, you know? It took me years to write science fiction, but I like it. I finally got tattoos in my late twenties. I only just admitted to myself what I’d like my future to look like, and…I stood up to my father at dinner only last week.

    He was being particularly mean, and I cannot stand anyone forgoing kindness for a power trip. A little bit of exploiting ones authority can feel good in the moment, but that doesn’t indicate power, really. Any resulting compliance is a fear response.

    Want power? Play a long game. Usurp a throne (any kind will work) or better yet, become the throne’s right hand. Become the office confidant or the quietest – and most influential – member of the C-suite. Or maybe play chess and remind yourself that the king’s the weakest piece on the board.

    If all else fails and you need straightforward “power,” demand it from someone who’d like to give theirs to you. They’re out there (and gagging for it, honestly).

    Do not externalize your own shame and frustration. It’s embarrassing and frankly, crass.

    I’m done now. With the entry, not the blog. I haven’t decided on its purpose, so there’s no end in sight, yet.

    Some recommendations:

    Music:

    I like Paloma Faith. She’s great. This is her most popular song.

    I just really like John Oliver and this is a good, well-written piece.

    Been reading the best of Shakespeare’s plays. I had an idea for a character – kind of a sundowning scholar – and he’s a Shakespeare guy. Had to find some good speeches, didn’t I? I’ve been reading the Arden Performance Editions.