.:Dreams and Swords:.

She's Baaack...

Well, I'm back home and slightly less sane for it. I love my family, would do almost anything for them, but when you're juggling six sibling under one roof at a time it can be difficult and brain-numbing.

An interesting fact about me is that I have five brothers and three sisters. If you go in alignment with my mother's biological children I'm the youngest. If you go in alignment with my father's biological children I'm the eldest. And if you threw steps into the mix I'd be dead middle.

Freud and Jung would have a field day with me.

Sanity as I've stated before can be overrated. I made this trip on the "insistent suggestion" of my father. There are tricks to dealing with family, and I think every family has it's own way of dealing. My family, depending on which branch you speak of, hashes out everything in their unique ways.

For example, my mom and elder brothers are of the stoic clan, which is the bane of many people's existence. We are some of the most tight-lipped people when it comes to pain or anger it's ridiculous. I've been exploring my emotional boundaries with my guy. In my mom's family our main motto is "Suck It Up". Severe a limb? Suck it up. Brokenhearted? Suck it up. With my guy that's not so easy because for the first time it feels dishonest. By holding back from him, I'm keeping vital information from him which is wrong. Weirdness to discover I can't do what I usually do with him. I'm pretty sure that's for the betterment of everyone...

As for my father's side, well, we're just nuts. There's mountains of expectation. Of legacy. Of "debating". And depending on which member, a grand scale of manipulation. You have to be extremely strong of mind to survive that part of the family. Lesser people have been crushed under the suave heel of their cold, calculated determination. Boggles the mind sometimes how single-issue focused they can become.

All of this is written in retrospect of what happens when I switch from one mindset to the next. Seriously, it messes with the gray matter. Switching from one mind to the other takes a toll on the body, and I'm starting to get a head cold...

Ah, the joys of the familial love.