dysfunctionality

We were like a dysfunctional family, although none of us were connected by blood. Instead we were brought together by something our blood relatives couldn’t provide: A sense of belonging, acceptance, love maybe, none of which we would actually find from such a hodgepodge of maladjusted outcast types.

I had a loving and supportive family. Yet, even as a child, I felt out of sorts. As soon as age gave me the freedom, I gravitated toward people with problems. Somehow in my eyes, those problems, translated into appeal. I was intrigued by people who fought the norm, even if their crusade was as intellectually empty as a long night of partying, hanging out car windows, stealing half-racks of cheap beer and robbing ATMs. Fascinated with trouble and troublemakers, I found myself also in trouble, a common accomplice. In fact, I managed to select the lead troublemaker as my partner and kept him around—in spite of crude and twisted disrespect—for an unfathomably long time, keeping me high in the hierarchy.

Our dysfunctional family did everything together, so long as it involved drinking in ridiculously large quantities. We found solace in our familiar faces and phrases. Our shared appetite for over-indulgence—for filling a hole likely neglected years earlier—bound us and kept us convinced that what we were doing was not only acceptable but good. In fact, if you didn’t want to get plastered, you risked degrading verbal assault in the form of: “You fucking pussy.” I’m not sure whether any of us genuinely cared about the well being of our cohorts – I’m not sure any of our relationships could be rightfully considered friendships. Rather, we were dependent on one another to defend our bad habits as good. It seemed we stuck together more because we needed to than because we wanted to – as most dysfunctional families do.

The cast was classic: There was the odd artist type. The obnoxious life-of-the-party. The one who was willing to try heroin. The other who tried crack. The goof who got sloppy. The adrenaline junkie who walked the edge of high-rise buildings. The musician who would never start a band. The doormat who’d do anything for the troublemakers. The one who always seemed fully capable of leaving but didn’t. The one who slept with anyone for attention. And so on.

I feared leaving. I wasn’t scared to miss my so-called boyfriend. I was scared to be without my family. I was scared to be alone. Not until my early ‘20s when I landed a job in another state was I finally able to escape. I almost went back a few times. But it never felt the same. I had abandoned them and they no longer treated me as a member of the family. Aged and drawn further to the earth, their faces looked vacant as I described what I had been doing, how the new job went. I stopped talking as their attention shifted elsewhere, to someone who had never left, someone who wanted to get wasted, someone who still had a familiar face and phrase, someone who wasn’t such a fucking pussy.