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Dear Alexander #20: Family
This idea is not mutually exclusive to family. You shouldn’t feel morally obligated to support your family, whether it be a father, mother, sister, brother etc, IF they are dragging you down and making your life more hellish. Being family doesn’t exclude them for taking responsibility for their actions. Culture has attached these grand emotional sentiments to ‘family’ and ‘friends’ that often manifest into poisonous relationships that everyone feels trapped in, but is obligated to stay in due to unwritten cultural rule of ‘family always sticks together’. We’ve ‘family’ on this huge pedestal that almost removes them from taking responsibility for the hell that they can impart on ones life.
Being family doesn’t mean you have to give unlimited chances to prove they can get their act together. It doesn’t mean you have to stand by their self destruction and watch them burn just because you want to ‘be there for them’. They end up not only burning themselves, but everything around them caught in the crossfire — that includes you. Why is it selfish to save yourself? Maybe it is actually selfish, but maybe that’s not a bad thing in some circumstances — maybe it’s exactly what’s needed. Maybe you’d feel too guilty to step back or walk…
