Two Paths

I bump heads with my brother a lot - mainly around the expectations for how one should show up for family.

This weekend was my mother's 70th birthday, and my father organized a surprise party for my mom with a bunch of family and her friends getting together. The day after the party, my aunts, cousins, and their children all spent the day at my parent's house and it felt very reminiscent of when I was a kid... We used to spend most holidays and family events at my fraternal grandparent's house with the whole family together.

Kids would run around playing together. The adults would hang out doing whatever boring shit adults did (which I now understand was usually drinking and giving each other shit).

And this weekend, that is exactly what happened - the kids were all playing together and those of us now at the biological age to be called adults were all sitting around, catching up, and giving each other playful ribbings.

One topic of conversation that came up was around one of my cousins that wasn't able to make it, and her husband's staunch pro-Trump stance. We all were shocked to learn how hard he was drinking the MAGA kool-aid, given that his whole side of the family is Cuban, he has multiple daughters, his son has a non-verbal form of autism, and his brother is gay.

There are so many reasons for me to not support the current administration and their gleeful harm of people, but any one of those reasons should elicit some pang of sympathy that should cause one to question if they should rethink where they are putting their support.

Instead, he seems to be doubling down.

To the point that he and his family were not invited to his brother's wedding.

For almost all of us, this made complete sense - you have someone in your family that claims to support you, but their actions are causing you immediate risk and harm. Actions carry more weight than words, and when someone shows you who they are you believe them.

My brother, however, was aghast that someone would think to not invide a family member to their wedding, regardless of their political stance and the impacts it would have on someone's life.

He was of the mindset that no matter what someone did, the label of family provided them unfettered access to the rest of the family. He felt the brother being married was in the wrong for exclusion, but didn't see any issue with the other brother supporting policies that negate the rights of said brother being married.

I am very much in the "family is a title that is earned" camp, and blood relation doesn't get you any special treatment or access. ^[1]

Telling my brother that the idea of unfettered access for someone causing harm was bullshit rocked his world. He was so taken aback by the thought of someone being ok with cutting off family for causing hurt that I don't think he was able to process the implications and the conversation naturally drifted to some other topic.

Seeing my brother so fervently defend his position for a moment opened my eyes.. It makes sense why he doesn't tend to think about how his actions impact others. Why he doesn't worry about other people's wants or preferences. Why he is dismissive of people's stated boundaries...

To him, those things aren't behaviors that will push someone away, because the label of family automatically negates whatever he does. Instead of having to approach the people with care at all times, his partially thought out gifts and stilted attempts to connect are enough because family buys him all the grace needed to make up for any shortcomings.