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Nobody Cares About Your Boring Life

I have a big family, but I'm not part of it. At last count, I had nine siblings, 4 uncles, 4 aunts, and 13 cousins.  That is certainly inaccurate. Regardless, I have no meaningful relationship with any of these people.  They are close with each other on their respective sides of the parental divide. Why have I separated from my family? Contemplating this, I arrived at another question: why has my family separated from me?

I've always been different. I don't meet my family's standards for what someone who is worth their consideration should be like. I'm an outsider, and that means I appear to be a waste of normal people's time. No one in my family wants to talk about the only topics I'm interested in, so being around me isn't very fun or comfortable.  When I was young, even though I was weird, there was at least some potential that I might come to be someone my family could relate to. So, naturally, young me is what my family wants to see. The few members of my family who still contact me can't help but infantilize me because adult me is far away from them while child me, with whom they had no relationship either, is a memory they can experience however they want. So they earnestly seek me as a child and they find instead a man in his 40s. I have my own life now, and what are they supposed to do with that? Worse, my adult life involves nothing they care about. Connection is impossible. When I did spend time with these relatives, it was always weird and I was always on the outside.

But most of my family have never cared to reach out.  That's OK. I've tried in vain to reach out myself.  For a time, I made an effort.  I wanted to be part of my own family. I endured many years of awkward holiday gatherings from which I came away none the more enriched, and I can't imagine anyone else felt the better for my visiting either, regardless of what they told themselves. Finally, I decided to stop performing. It wasn't a decision that I made in anger, but I still feel that I need to defend it. I don't, though, so I won't anymore.

Then there's complex trauma. There's severe, long-term abuse in my past. I have PTSD. There isn't much to evince feelings of remorse from the guilty parties. Naturally, that stunts potential relationships.

You may have read on this blog angry comments from one of my relatives.  "No one cares about your boring life," this person wrote.  I understand why my family might consider my life to be boring. It's boring by design. I'm a hermit, and I've devoted myself to contemplation. I'm not at all interested in excitement. Adults are, to an extent, fixed in place. For adults to add to each other's lives in significant ways, they must invest time and care in each other. I don't blame anyone in my family for finding it difficult to invest time and care in me. Many of them blame me, however, for not abetting the ruse and fantasy that they do care. I can't conduct relationships that can only exist on the pretense of affection. I simply don't have the cognitive equipment to do that.  And why should I want to associate with anyone who doesn't care about my life?

I walked away from my family because they couldn't invest in me. In their defense, I require a prohibitively large investment. I'm asocial and I don't naturally bond with people. I'm boring and overly intellectual. There is in memories of me as a child a comforting quality that doesn't map onto my adult presence. As those of my family who claim to miss me can only be missing an imaginary child, I may spare them much disappointment in distancing my adult life from theirs - my boring life, about which nobody cares and about which I need none to care anyway. I am happy without people in my life who will never be able to relate to me.

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