My Rants

Family Reunion

June 25, 2015

So here I am on "vacation" with my family. I mean three fourths of my family. My dad has to work so I'm in Atlanta dealing with the onslaught of extended family with only my apathetic brother and meek mother as shields. In the two days that I've been here I've already cried twice. That is so not me. I'm not a crier, maybe when I'm hormonal but I'm definitely not one of those people that cries for no reason. I hate that I've cried twice. I'm in a house with eight kids younger than me ranging in age from fourteen (a couple months younger) to one and I'm being compared to the youngest of them. I get that I'm childish, I enjoy being happy but everyone is saying I should act more my age. I can do that, I can be the bitchy teenager who doesn't give a damn about anyone but herself, I can be selfish, that's what my age tells me to do, but I'm not like that because that's not what family is about and that's not me, my family is more important to me than that. But that doesn't mean that I'm ok with being chewed out for being too childish, or too loud, or talking too much, or too fast. I live with my mom and my brother in my house, my dad's job happens to be in another state so I only get to see him on weekends. I hang out with my friends and my brother's friends and the little family I have nearby is close to my age or used to my antics. I listen to my mother, but I'm also used to a lot of freedom. I eat when I want, I sleep when I want, I do what I want, I speak the way I want. I've done this family reunion thing before but normally if I dodge one kid I can manage a moment of sanity. Now I don't mind chaos, don't get me wrong, I quite enjoy it, but dear god, if I have one more person tell me to watch what I do or say in case a little kid picks it up I might just rip all my hair out. And the kids, oh lord, the kids. There are ten of us including myself and my older brother and two more set to show up tomorrow. The youngest never stops crying, says "NOOOOOO!" to legit everything, favors boys, and starts bawling like the world is ending the second his mother comes into sight. As if the crying wasn't enough to give me a migraine, this kid has everyone in the house fawning over him, once again, not a problem if they were quiet about it, but I'm not that lucky. He never comes to me, slightly disappointing, but I'll live, but when he does I'll finally get him to shut up and his mom will decide to choose that moment to show up and the story starts yet again. Him bawling because he wants to go to his mother and her not being able to take him because she has work to do. The next one started off nice but now all she does is play nursery rhymes on my iPad. There is only so many time you can hear "The Wheels on the Bus" before your ready to stab yourself. The next one is hands down the cutest. He is adorable and he doesn't know it at all. He has a high voice and a really optimistic view of things. He is always looking after his little sister ( the previously mentioned nursery rhyme devil) and always wants to play. He saw me crying earlier and kept asking if I was ok and checking up on me, such a gentleman, I hope he stays that way. Next, my next favorite the sister of the youngest one. She is about to turn 5 and every time I sit down she sits on me or she lays on me or asks me to pick her up but she's the most consistent so that's why she's one of my favorites. Poor girl gets yelled at by her mom for little things, accidents, like spilling flour when all the kids were baking, and other stuff like that. She's about to turn five, she's much too young to have to be yelled at for such little things. The next oldest is a boy who's seven, he also gets yelled at entirely too much. He is fun and playful and extremely smart. His only problem is he doesn't always listen which gets him into trouble. The next oldest... is an interesting specimen. She is really smart as well (her brother is the seven year old) but she is such a try hard. That's really mean of me to say, especially because she's only eleven, but dear god, that girl grates my nerves so much, and besides I'm not in the business of lying to spare someone's feelings. Anything that needs to be done she'll do, not a bad trait at all, but when I'm on my way to go grab something because my aunt or someone else asked and you're literally pushing me out of the way so you can go get it before me, we have a problem. When you are pulling infants out of other kids hands so you can be the one to hold them and get them to stop crying, we have a problem. When you are not watching where you are backing up in your efforts to keep said infant away from cousins who may have the audacity to try and give the baby a kiss, we have a problem. I have no sympathy for kids who act like that, everyone is like, "oh, but she's so young, that's why she acts like that". No, one is young, five is young, eleven is not young. At eleven years old, I had already had six years of experience taking care of kids younger than me. At eleven years old, I was told by those same people to grow up (but you know, in nicer terms. Really. But that just happened to be the general gist of it.) At eleven years old, I was able to share. The next one, she's ok, I guess. She's like the more moderate version of the eleven year old, but same basic problems. I think  another issue is that I'm slightly jealous of her. She is a really good piano player, and I quit this year. Besides that, she has a lot of patience with the youngest and he comes to her, my patience is practically nonexistent. She is that stereotypical Indian girl that every parent loves, and that I just cannot be, nor do I want to, it goes against every fiber of my being, but still. She's quiet, I'm loud. She's patient, I'm not. She reads a lot of books, I outgrew books in elementary school (right about the same time I found Wattpad 😊.) as for helping around the house, I have no problem helping, in fact I enjoy it, but you have to ask because I feel annoying when I go asking if people need help. (Probably because I'm that person that's like don't bother me while I'm working.) but she always knows what to do and who needs help and how and she's younger than, I'm supposed to be the one doing those things but I'm not and I feel kinda useless. Now comes her brother. He is only a few months younger than me and he's one of those people that knows exactly which buttons to push to get me pissed. And the worst part is, I can't curse my frustrations out for fear of some child repeating my words, and now I'm also not allowed to say the word "kill" as in "if you say another word, I'm going to rip all my hair out, or kill you" or even if I were to use it in the context of killing a pawn in a game of chess. I got a lecture for saying the above sentence in case the little kids heard, but the kicker was that the four year old had left the room before I said it and I was still getting chewed by her mom. The logic was that the seven year old, who was still in the room, might learn the word kill. Ok, cause he managed to make it through this many years of public schooling without hearing that word, that makes total sense. If you know anything about me, or have met me at all, you know that I threaten people. I threaten people a lot, but I'm harmless I can't actually physically hurt someone. I'm all bark and no bite, so when you take away my cursing and my threatening, add tons of little kids, bossy adults, constant screaming, micro aggressions, and no privacy, I guess it's not hard to see why I broke down twice in two days. No one questions it when a toddler comes into the house and says "I want to go home" because they get that he wants to go where he's comfortable but if I said the same thing I would be told I'm acting like a child. This is a perfect example of the struggles of being a teenager, the only real struggle related to my age that I've had since becoming a teen. I'm expected to act like an adult but I'm treated like a child. I don't need to be home to be comfortable, but you need to give me a break. The little kids are allowed to hang onto their moms the first day they are here to feel more comfortable but me and my brother were thrown in and expected to be able to adapt to having bed times and censored conversation with no attitude. It's a wonder I haven't sassed anyone yet, because it's hard to not show attitude to people to who treat me like I'm four and then ask why I'm not acting fourteen.