Weary and the Reasons Why

1. Too many days of interacting with people and concentrating: Friday was a 7-hour day of checking out the G-job, Saturday was a five-hour day of ethics for my upcoming lawyer ethics exam, Sunday was an 8-hour day of mediation training AND an exhausting pair of family phone calls, today was meetings and class from 9:30 til 7 pm, and so on and so forth.

2. Indecision, of course. Today I found out that it might be possible to get as much as $11K extra for the first two years of my G-job, if I got the right kind of fellowship from Crimson. It would all go into loan repayment -- if I don't get it, it would be impossible to put that kind of money towards my debt. But even with that, I calculated that I could put about 5 times as much toward loans with my firm job.

3. Lack of sleep. All last week, I slept about 4-5 hours a night because of the global thermonuclear device disguised as my heater, which would not turn off or stop pumping out heat even when set to zero. Thank the gods, facilities finally fixed it yesterday and turned it off completely in my room. However? I still woke up at 5 am. What is wrong with you, body?

4. Sadness. I had a couple sad moments on Sunday. One was bittersweet -- the last mediation training I'll ever take part in as a law student. For all that the coaching and feedback and being generally friendly exhausts me, I get energized by it and glad to be part of something with so many nice people. This was my sixth training session since I started law school, and my best -- I've got the friendly schmooze thing down, the coaching feedback, everything. I had a great time. I'll miss it.

The other sad moment was just down right depressing. I've been in "talks" with my aunt and uncle since October about graduation. First they weren't going to come. Then they were going to come, on the condition that they didn't have to see my father, and they were happy. Then I got upset about the conditioning and the emotional hostage-taking, and told them it was unfair. So then they weren't going to come, "to make it easier on [me]." So then I made peace with their anger and said, "Okay, I want you to come, but I can't guarantee you won't see my dad, but I think you should put it aside and come anyway, because I want you to be there." And still, they would not come. So I sort of make peace with that, and say, "Okay, if you really don't want to come, why don't you visit me during spring break, and I can show you around and you can see how I've been living here and stuff?" And at first they seemed receptive, but then -- then, on Sunday night, they said no.

Already tired, I kept asking them, "I don't understand. Why not? Why don't you want to come?" I couldn't help it. I felt like a little kid begging for attention. "What if I paid for your tickets?" I asked. No, they couldn't accept that. "I don't understand. I keep trying to share my life with you, but you don't want to be part of it. That's really upsetting to me." It's not that they didn't want to see me, it was just so far. They were old now, I had to understand that, and it was a long, hard trip.

My aunt and uncle pretty much set the values that bigbro and I hold dear in our adult lives. They shaped us with their working class standards of hard work, honesty, generosity, and kindness. I know they were stung by what they perceived to be our rejection of them, back when I was in Korea and living with my dad. I just thought they'd get over it someday. And I've been trying, trying so hard to get them to trust me again, to make them feel appreciated, to make them feel like yes, I do think of them as my second set of parents, the ones I trust above and beyond my biological parents.

I know a year and a half of weekly phone calls isn't that long, in the grand scheme of things, but ... I'm at a loss. I feel like I'll never regain their trust, never be able to prove that my forgiveness and acceptance of my father and his side of the family wasn't a rejection of them, it was a rounding out and filling up of a void that never should have existed in the first place, that existed only because people in the generation above me fought and fell out and hurt each other and crossed over onto their own sides of the canyon, never to meet again.

So. I don't know what feels worse. To try -- as I've never had to try before, because I've been either lucky in love or chilly in nature -- to bridge the gap and fail, or to ponder giving up. Just letting them be alone and aloof and hurt and old because of things I can't take back, and because of events that I never had control over.

There's a double acceptance I'm contemplating here. Last year, my aunt and uncle -- again, so repeatedly and so stupidly generous with my mother and my grandmother and my brother and me over so many years, with their time and their money and their house and their lives -- were in a car accident when they were visiting the dying sister of my uncle. While they sustained no serious injuries, it made them into old people. Afraid. Timid. Withdrawn. I've been trying to battle this too, but... I think it's a lost cause. I can't make them un-old. Just as I can't make them trust me, apparently. Not through my actions nor my words.

It's a terrible thing to feel that you've failed at family. For all the mediation skills I've learned, the communication skills, the patience, the maturity I've tried to gain, it all came to naught, you see.

Is this what it means to be grown-up? To be an adult? Sometimes I feel so like a child, flustered and bewildered by the choices running around me like shiny pretty butterfly things. And sometimes I feel positively ancient, struggling with old folks who've abdicated their adulthood and refuse to come back, trying to convince them that they should turn around and act the way you want your elders to act.

I'm pretty pessimistic about the world and our ability to effect any change in it, but -- you've gotta try. That's the only thing you can do. And that's what I have to keep reminding myself here. You gotta try, hk. It's your duty. Think of all the swallowed pride, the words held back, the high roads taken, the holding of tongues to keep the peace that countless adults have done over countless of generations. Love means you try again, even when you feel like you've been slapped back. Family isn't a concept. It isn't a tidy basket of neatly wrapped interactions. It's messy and painful and you get ignored or condescended to or rejected at times. But you gotta try, is what I'm saying. You gotta try to hold it together, because you know what? Your friends'll get married, your lovers'll leave you, but your family is stuck with you and vice versa. You gotta try. That's all you can do.

But there's no denying it. Sometimes, it's just so weary.