(((lavendersage)))

Why keep doing it then? By which I mean, pretending this or that for their supposed benefit..? My way of dealing with my family around these issues is not to overtly burden them with unsolicited explanations of my troubles BUT to be honest when they specifically ask. Those who are freaked out don't ask; the few who can handle the topic do. But you're right, pretending is exhausting.

What will happen if you don't do the pretending? Maybe or maybe not there is some world of possibility available to you through considering that question. Maybe some of the possibilities have the potential to be less emotionally exhausting, more validating for you.

I was thinking about your post just now as my television is blaring at me loud commercials that suggest we all have money to spend on more things for ourselves, and that we all are in a jovial, manic mood about doing so, and it occurs to me that this personality of pretending that everything is great is one that is imposed upon us by the commercial world in which we live..

Which I bring up because maybe thinking of it not as your family's individual hang-ups (though I recognize they own their own variety), but as this manic personality imposed on us by consumerist society, would make it easier for you to reject it? To smile knowingly and even understandingly (to the degree that is manageable) at your family about the plight they are caught up in, even as you are doing your best not to be?

If any of these ideas/suggestions grate on your nerves I humbly apologize, but I know the perils of being wound up in family dysfunction and want only to help however I might. If I'm totally missing the mark in some regard please forgive me.

Of one thing I'm certain, and that's that in the end you will be victorious, will emerge from this moment in time with your soul intact, and that is no small truth.

xx von