One of my dear friends once said that when her sons grow up, she'd prefer if they come forward to her and say that they were a drug addict rather than a gay. At that time I was like, okay..I can totally understand why she said that. Been raising in an eastern culture where sex orientation is still pretty much sacred and becoming an openly gay is still pretty much a sin, I can say that I myself, would probably say the same too if I were a mother. I thought I will be more prepare if someone in my family admit that he or she was a drug addict instead of gay. Until something happened and it opened my eyes that no one will actually be prepare for such things.
Here is the thing, one of my family members who was very closed to me when we were kids, just admitted that he was addicted to drugs and needed help. First my reaction was, WTH? I mean, I barely seen him apart from when I came back to my hometown in Sumatra which was not very often since we both live in different cities separated by two big oceans. But when this thing happened, my family called me and asked me to talked to him as we were that closed, and yeah, I think he was kind of listen to what I said since he was actually like four years younger than me, then of course, I talked to him. After our first conversation over a phone call, I then realized that what my friend said above was probably true but when thing like that really happened, no one will prepare in any circumstance.
Let me tell you why did I say that. True that if someone in any family says that he or she was gay, this fact would probably sounded more embarrassing than if that person says that he or she was a drug addict, BUT, the damage was pretty much the same. And believe me because I am talking through my very own experience, this thing can easily torn the family apart as everyone will try to find someone to be blame. None of them would probably have a thought that when thing like this happened, that means it was too late to find who's guilty of what. Way too late.
When thing like this happened, that means it's time to make a move, eventually. Because one thing I've learn from this situation and that was how blind we were when thing like this happened to our family. I mean, after a while and think of the flashback, I now realized that I was supposed to knew about this long time before as the signs were pretty much there right in front of my face. But, as someone who love her family, I was kind of blocked my own view and shadowed it over that wall called 'trust'. Of course, sometime I feel weird whenever I met him in my gramm's house and he acted not as himself, but I was always found a positive answer for his weirdness, even though sometime I barely recognize him anymore, but as a family, I will never ever have any negative thought. Come on..that's what family do, right? Besides, since we were very closed when we were kids, my last image of him was still like when I was in Junior High and he was in Elementary School and we played football together in my garage. I would never have a thought of that young kid who played football with me back then would ever take any drugs whatsoever. Despite on how grown up he is now, my image of him is stay like that. He was, is, will always be that small kid to me.
So don't blame me if I didn't see the signs or maybe I was a little bit in denial before, but considering our circumstances, I think it was kind of acceptable. My point is, when things happened to your family, no one would prepare of anything. No matter what. We love our family too much and it drives us toward our super high expectation that never allow us to tolerate anything. Our selfishness won't let us. Because of we love them, we were never have a doubt about them. Like what happened to me. I actually heard a rumor about my family member I talked above on how he was possibly a drug user and I confronted him one time and he denied it. As a family what did I do? I believed. Yeah, despite on how my common sense told my heart to not believe, but my feeling won the battle then as you can see now, I let love fooled me. How stupid. Now after everything was too late, I have no one else to be blame but me. I was a fool. If only I listened to my common sense that time, I would probably became a hero in my entire family for being a savior by saving them from the embarrassment. And the even better thing to happened was to be able saving someone in your bloodline from an addiction..that was an achievement! If only..
^_^
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