The Family Portrait

So, I got this great photo of my parents, my sister-in-law and my (getting quite big) nephew, Seif this morning and immediately, I was gripped by pangs of guilt.

At least, they felt like guilt until I pursued them further.

I've always maintained that the way men receive emotional cues (even their own) is akin to a WW2 serviceman intercepting a coded message from the enemy: there's a lot of numbers and letters thrown at you and none of it makes too much sense. Even when you get better at understanding your own signals (better known as your 30s), there's so much to keep track of, that we never get any good at it.

The other thing I've always known is that because men (and me!) spend long periods of their lives suppressing their feelings, our reactions can be tied to random emotional cues. For instance, I cry when there are last minute winners in soccer or when I smell certain things or when songs talk about dying alone. Some of these associations are obviously relevant, while others are also relevant, though not obvious, even to me. I have a great deal of wonder and respect for people who are able to cry about the exact thing that makes them unhappy; I don't. When something bad happens to me, I get extremely, extremely enraged.

Here I was, awake at 7am, staring at this photo and wondering why I felt like shit. So I pulled out the universal emotional decoder that I invented in 1983 and went to work. Here are the results I arrived at (+/- 22% accuracy differential):

12% guilt
26% home-sickness
31% confronting reality, after weeks of a severely manic episode
11% bad association with anything family-related
6% post-sleep confusion
5% low blood sugar
4% slightly disturbed because picture looks natural without me in it
4% discomfort at my own advancing years and lack of family
1% wanting to pee and embarassed to do it with my parents around

Of these, we can dismiss the home-sickness (natural reaction since I haven't been home in 2 years), manic-depression (what can I say? It ain't going anywhere), post-sleep, low blood sugar and the peeing thing (red herrings planted by my body because it lacks the respect to stand aside and allow you to process a problem you're facing, without imposing it's crass, bodily demands on your consciousness).

Guilt. What am I guilty about? Well, for starters, I got high and drunk last night, and I know they wouldn't approve. The bigger thing is I've always carried the feeling that I've let them down and I don't like feeling like that. Which is why I don't like being around them.

Not being in the picture. This is an example of being faced with a realization that may have escaped your notice. Namely, I don't belong there anymore. It's not a bad thing, just very real, very suddenly and it brings with it, a mixture of surprise, regret, nostalgia and second-guessing. All should be ignored.

Bad association with anything family-related. This has lingered from childhood and probably has Freud rubbing his hands with glee. I had a rotten childhood, with tons of guilt and rejection and it's carried over to my adulthood. When my family (meaning, dad and mom) are in the picture, I develop this awful dichotomy of rage and despair (the latter is there because I can't will the rage away). I feel they have an invisible hold over me that won't go away until they die (which wouldn't make me happy, either).

In many ways, I'm also afraid of having a family and suspecting that I elicit the same feelings in my kids, as my parents did in me. Which leads me to the next point.

My own family. I don't like commitment, I don't like compromising with my life and I've yet to meet a woman I wouldn't mind sharing a hemisphere with for more than six weeks, much less a queen-size bed for, oh, shall we say a good forty years? And yet I have the nerve to lament my inability to settle down to settle down and start a family.

People who know me well, know that I'm resilient on the outside, a mess on the inside and it's not even a case of me pretending to be strong. No, I have a very naturally-tough shell and a strong understanding of people and situations, which helps me protect the soft, mushy parts on the inside. The parts that, for all intents and purposes, make me completely incapable of opening up to anyone. Because I have major breakdowns when I do.

I'm always going to be closed-up and uneasy about emotions. And I resent that people think that requires fixing or therapy. In a world where people are randomly born in either affluent societies or dangerous warzones, why would we think that fixing flaws in our psyche would first, work and second, matter?

Best to just accept the warts and work around them, I say.

Which is why the official, final verdict is that what this picture did is make me miss my family, a little.