Starting anew, from a frame

In childhood, we often do not realize the bounds of our reality until we encounter alternative experiences to provide contrast – we human beings require a known range to understand position. We are constantly reframing our perspectives in response to new experiences, adjusting our expectations of the world based upon this continually refreshing compilation of knowledge.

For this truth, I am grateful; to be able to willfully guide one's perspective is a fantastic gift, and one that every feeling, thinking individual possesses. Still, there exist realities in life that feel static and enduring no matter our appetite for change. 

Over the course of my life I have struggled to maintain a functional relationship with my family. While this statement is commonplace, and even the stuff of anecdotal embroidered pillows, I believe this is different; our fractured state is beyond accommodating suggestions of the difficulty in matching expectations and presence, to efforts and maps.

There is intention driving our distance. 

Our connections are frequently fractured by a long-remembered contentious moments, or deeper still, the resulting resounding feelings.

Often, healing requires time.

Then there is the impression of interplay upon our personal perspectives, and ultimately, our representation of those standards outside ourselves. Simply, new experiences beget new perspectives; when we admit connection with another individual, we permit them, intentionally or not, the ability to restructure our neural pathways – the mental outline which guides the way we see the universe. And while a noticeable shift in one's mental reality is not immediate – the remodeling of pathways requires countless interactions – engagement with those outside ourselves can feel frightening, still.

I have at times resisted engagement with my family due to awareness of its ability to rewrite my past; every unique interaction presents the prospect of recoloring one's history – mine, being one I've come to accept, peaceably, and offer to others in an attempt to share myself. 

Inviting connection also invites the potential to be hurt, and the unknown can be unsettling. 

But life should not be governed entirely by fear, and venturing into uncertain emotional territory is often necessary in pursuit of the uncharted.

Thankfully, even given the most trying circumstances, children frequently persevere – resilient well beyond the capacity of those of greater years – though adults, too, retain the ability to remodel perspectives well into old age, despite ongoing assertions regarding old dogs and new tricks.

With this promise in mind – the piece I believe I may deliberately form to accept what is real and what will never be – I will continue, year over year, attempting to know and understand my family; to resist the instinct to withdraw, and instead welcome the uncertain everything of interaction, with awareness that its impact may be broad and inescapable.