Growing "pains".

I don’t know how many of you this will speak out to but I hope that it’ll reach at least one person. I was on the phone today with my aunt. We were talking about family and I brought up the fact that none of my family called me when I was around 18 or 19. She said it’s because that’s the time when I wanted to be independent. I looked back and realized that was the truth. The fact is I never wanted to be around adults at that age. I had my own friends to hang out with and I didn’t think it was ‘cool’ to hang out with my family. So we continued talking and I said “You know, I’ve tried to call Rhonda for the past three years and she hasn’t called me back once.” She then proceeded to tell me why:

‘Well from what I remember you upset Rhonda because when you lived there you didn’t do anything except for eat, sleep and make a mess. You never cleaned up after yourself and all you cared about was getting out of the house and spending time with your friends. I think it made her angry that she took you in and in the process you just did what you wanted, never cleaned up and never spent time with their family. I would have been upset too. Also when you were around that age you didn’t want any of your family calling you. You could have cared less about me, your aunt B or your mom for that matter. You were so busy in your own world that we didn’t make a difference.’

All of this was true and until now I never realized it. Basically I ‘took advantage’ of people without realizing it in my 19-year-old little mind. I was too fixated on doing things outside of the house that I never realized that I was hurting people in the process. Who knew that I could have such an impact on people that they wouldn’t want to talk to me five years later. Now, I don’t know for sure if that’s why she’s not calling me back, it’s just speculation but I’ve learned something. When you’re younger (18-19) you really don’t give a shit about your family, you really only care about your friends but as you get older you start to care about them. You look back and you probably don’t realize that you may have used people to get where you are today. Hell I didn’t until I was told as such. Now I want my family to call me and unfortunately I’ll never hear from my aunt B, my cousin Devin or my mom again because they’ve passed away..

So I think that people shouldn’t exclude their family from everything. Take a call or make a call once a week. It won’t kill you. Do it in your free time. If I did that, I probably wouldn’t feel as bad as I do now. Though cleaning and such would have helped greatly with relationships now, I think all I wanted was for people to nurture me. I wanted them to mommy me because I had lost my mom at that point. I’m not going to give some lecture and say “Savior your time with your family because you never know how long you have with them” bullshit but try to just talk to them every once in a while. It’ll make you feel good when you’re older and you’ll have a relationship with them that you wouldn’t have had if you didn’t call them or spend time with them.