Para-domesticated

As the holidays approach, I'm reminded of some templates for how all of this stuff works. For example, there's blood family, then there's family of choice, which sometimes includes blood family members but often is completely separate. I stopped trying to do blood family holidays a long time ago. I think the last Christmas I tried to do with blood family was in 1990. Engaged to my first wife, I went to Santa Fe for the holidays when she and I lived apart (I was in NY). Then, I moved out West permanently, and never went back for holidays. In fact, I only visited back East again once, in 1999, and then not again until my parents' 50th wedding anniversary, in 2003. Since 2003, I've been back for summer visits in 2008, 2012, and then every summer since 2017. So, five visits in 20 years. None of which have been around holidays. 

In July, when I was driving from Ann Arbor and close to Minnesota, I was fantasizing about seeing someone in that state. But then it occurred to me that I had not been invited. And then it really hit me how much effort, time, energy, money and planning I have put into visiting where I have not been invited, a lot of my life. I have initiated a lot of visits. "Hey, I am going to be in such and such a place, let's get together!" The last long distance relationship, it was very mutual, almost every time, until the trailing end of things, when I kept asking if I could visit. Or jumping at the slightest hint that it might be possible. The last visit was around that kind of energy, but then I was an imposition and inconvenience when I was there, and that's a shitty way to have things reach a conclusion, but it is almost inevitable when one codependently keeps pushing oneself on someone who is clearly preoccupied and not into it. It is revealing to realize that the last really unfettered, enthusiastic and eager invitation there had been seven months earlier. 

I can count on ten fingers the number of times people have taken any kind of effort to visit me, my entire adult life. This is revealing also. And I have invited people too. And I have been living either in an incredible tourist town that's very expensive or a fucking winter paradise for the past 20 years, so you think more people would have taken me up on it. I feel some resentment and sadness about this dynamic. But, I also realize that my anxiety around the motto "go where you're invited" has been that I would never be invited anywhere. 

However, what's actually happened since I made that resolution is that I've been invited repeatedly to all kinds of places, and all kinds of interaction with great people. Most recently, I got a kind and generous invitation for Thanksgiving including a place to stay. It's funny to note that I have been resisting accepting it. But I finally did today, and let's see how it goes. I am feeling sad, lonely, angry, and very hermit-like. My romantic notion is to pile my gear into the new car and go hide out in the back country for days. So I am going to do some of that, but I am also going to be with family of choice for Thanksgiving. Balance!

It all kind of reminds me that I have a lot of the personality traits of a feral or more accurately para-domesticated cat. I want to be invited, but when I am, I often hang back. I want to be within sight, but hiding out. Hovering on the edges of the property so to speak. This goes back to the utterly savage, chaotic, emotionally unsafe way I was raised, where I honestly felt homeless from about the age of 5. Like a guest in a house full of strangers who were not to be trusted. That's the primal foundation of all of the ways I have dealt with the entire concept of "home" and "family and friends" since I was a tiny boy. I have tended to connect best with other such alienated misfits, who have duct-taped together barely workable living situations (even when doing well financially) or found some kind of uneasy domestic peace by just jumping into the scenario. 

It's been a toxic aspect of my partnerships in the past, either with women who were far more comfortable with the idea of home and family than I (or at least trying), or with "homeless" women, living out of boxes or always halfway packed, ready to fly. I've never really understood women who have legit healthy, supportive and intimate relationships with their parents and/or siblings. Who honestly miss them and want to spend time with them. There's a reason the weird phrase "family obligations" has always resonated with me. I have since made peace with my blood family and have enjoyed visits (that I have arranged, planned, initiated) in recent years. Yet it is still true that, if energies were to take their simple, natural course, I doubt there would ever be any real interaction. If you asked any one of my blood family members what is going on with me right now, they would probably either shrug or make up some kind of strange, fantastical tales. 

Anyway, this para-domesticated beast is doing a para-domesticated holiday, with the hermit wilderness first and a family of choice experiment second. 

I'm already feeling this weird sense of having to brace myself. And that's around the prospect of being with people I actually like.