So my brother was in town for the weekend which brought its usual mess of shenanigans, that I will post about later, but after he returned to his home on Sunday night he sent me the email below in italics.

kyle,
  not sure where you are with thinking about buying a place.  but, marissa is going to vienna for two years and is selling her condo.  sounded like the price wasn’t too bad.  i think 125,000.  not sure if that is good for around here though.  the link is below.  if you guys are interested let me know and i can talk to marissa.

I will admit, I had a rather gut wrenching reaction to this email.  Some of it was an overreaction but as I thought about it a little more I decided that it really wasn’t.  First I must preface that my family is very different from me as far as interests go.  So I understand that they have no frame of reference when it comes to the things that I am really interested in.  Due to this acknowledgement I choose to forgive the fact that they don’t listen to me talk about what I am into and I let it go…well mostly anyway.  I even let it go when they come right out and say that they want me to stop talking about my stuff.  Normally they usually just start talking about what they want to talk about and interrupt me instead of that one time that they were quite brash.  I let it go.  I realize that if they are not interested then they are just not interested.  I can’t make them care about what I am interested in.

What does bother me is that they expect me to be into what they are into and partake in it with them.  And if I don’t, then they assume that I am just being a jerk.  I am sorry I don’t think sitting in front of the TV and watching a football game should count as family time.  I think that if you are serious about spending time together then an activity that everyone likes should be chosen.  But I am the only one who appears to not like watching TV.  I mean, I only watch TV when I am bored and lonely and it usually just makes me feel more bored and lonelier. 

I should stop before this becomes a long tangent.  Basically my interests differ from my families and they don’t acknowledge it.  Back to the email from my brother that really turned my stomach.  It turned my stomach because I thought he listened when I speak but apparently he does not.  I distinctly remember have a few conversations recently with him regarding my future plans.  These plans happen to be in the exact opposite of buying a condo and staying in my current geographical location.

My first impulse was to bury my hurt and frustration deep and not reply to the email and just move on.  Clearly he does not listen nor care so why bring it up and expose my hurt even more.  That rational has not got me very far with relationships within my family.  I don’t get it.  I let them win, I give what they want yet still they are never happy with me.  I have finally decided that I should just do the opposite of my original instinct when it comes to my family.  At least this way if they continue to be not happy with me and consider me an asshole at least I will have expressed myself and stood up for myself.  So this is what I did I sent the following email reply in italic below. 

 

What? Are you serious with this? Do you even know me?