When Disappointing Family Means Being Able To Be Ourselves

Sometimes, disappointing the family is almost an obligation in order to be free, to reaffirm ourselves as people, as individuals deserving of their own happiness and managers of their own independence. Breaking or questioning certain family mandates is a healthy act that renews us inside and out, and which in turn puts “ours” at the complex and necessary crossroads of accepting ourselves as we are or letting ourselves go.

Is not easy. Throughout the first stage of the life cycle there is always a moment when the child awakens and becomes fully aware of those subtle incongruities that inhabit many family dynamics. He perceives with amazement, for example, what parents advise him severely and what they do not apply themselves. He also feels with discomfort that bitter distance between the expectations that they place on his head and those that he freely constructs, feels and considers.

Family mandates are like little atoms colliding with each other. They create an invisible matter that no one is aware of, but suffocates. They are originated by intergenerational force, by our belief system, demands and unconscious codes; Those that are expressed not only in the type of messages emitted during communication, but also in the tone and non-verbal language.

Thus, and almost without realizing it, we are shaped by a series of attributes and beliefs that we internalize in silence and with great difficulty. Until suddenly we realize that we do not fit into this puzzle, we realize that our “functional” family may not be so, because they inhabit too many silences, too many low glances that avoid meeting. It is then that one decides to make a decision, a path of one’s own that sometimes will have a high cost: disappointing our own.

The complexity of some family ties

When Lucas came into the world, his mother was 41 years old and his father 46. For his parents, having an only child was not a choice, but the result of a very hard process. Before him his mother suffered four miscarriages and after him, he suffered one more. Without wanting to, and of course without wanting to, he was always that lonely survivor on whom his family drafted a whole manual of expectations, a whole compendium of hopes, dreams and desires.

However, Lucas was never a good student, nor was he docile, calm, and even less obedient. The worst of all is that, during all that stage of failures at school, he had to live with the specter of his invisible siblings, those who were never born and yet his parents were always present. “Surely some of them would have become an engineer like me”, “Surely some of them would have been more focused, more responsible …”

In addition to the constant imaginary idealization of his parents, Lucas has also had to deal with the odd unfortunate message from some uncles and grandparents. “Listen to your mother, leave the music and focus on a career. Your parents have suffered a lot to have you and it would not cost you anything to make them happy for once ”…

Now, at that age when one can finally take responsibility for their decisions, Lucas heads abroad to enter a conservatory. He is aware that he is going to disappoint his people. He knows that it is going to cause pain, but he is unable to integrate into that family paradigm inhabited by ghosts and impossible expectations. Lucas needs to fulfill himself, aspire to a coherent life between what “I do, I say and I feel”.

At the same time, and finally, it is convenient that we do not perceive ourselves as “marginalized”. Despite the fact that many “black sheep” do not mind – apparently – being that “disruptive” or “defiant” element of the family nucleus, sometimes the “black sheep” end up being slaves of the label that others have given them. and in which they have found some reinforcement. Thus, for example, someone can end up systematically opposing any unwritten family rule or desire, no matter how much she also prefers that option.

Let’s relativize that biased value that they have placed on us for so long, and also understand that disappointing, sometimes, does not have any negative connotation. It is a necessary act with which to reaffirm ourselves as independent people and with our own criteria.

Images courtesy of Łukasz Gładki