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I am not sure if conflicted is the right title. I find myself going back and forth so much that I find the is the perfect title.

As most people have figured out by now, my health isn’t doing all that great. I cannot express how much I feel that this is holding me back, or why I even show up to work most days. I don’t want to go, but I shouldnt. I also know that this is my hell, not my empolyers. Sometimes we like to think of our work as a family. After spending a Chrismas dinner with my family I am not sure that this is such a great idea.

Last Christmas Jen and I were late to dinner. My mom was ok with it, or at least she told me she was. While waiting my mother and sister started to play games and drink, drink a lot.

After playing Karokee for an hour, listening to my intoxicated mother and sister bicker back and forth we sat down to eat. I am not sure what the comment was that cause my little sister to leave the table in a fit of rage, call her friend, walk around the block, and to come back. She was better when she came back, but I could still feel this sense of out of place.

I never asked her what the real problem was. I already knew. She was away from my older sister, my niece, who were in Maryland, and most importantly, away from my father, of whom we had squander are last few chance of having a Christmas dinner with. Christmas is never fun, but needed.

When I was taking my little sister back to the airport she told me what was bothering her. She had told me that it was because we were late and didn’t say we were sorry. She ranted for 30 minutes, and then brought up specific details of when Jen has been late, and on and on and on.

I can see where this would upset someone, and I cannot argue that isn’t a good reason to be upset, the fact of the matter is that was not the reason why she was upset.

I find to that my family is there when I need them, or at least that is what they tell me. If my family is reading this, I am sure they can point to specific times in which they were there for me. On the other hand, I can tell them twice the number of times that they were not there for me.

I then find myself conflicted. Is it like the song, “never had to knock on wood.” In which the singer describes life changing events that has never happened to him, and admits that he might be a coward, just has never found out. The point of the song was that the writer did not know of who he was or how he would fair if things got really bad. “Have you ever had the pain so powerful you had to collapse?” Then says that he has not. I wonder that my family appears to have never been been there for me because I have never really needed them.

I find that argument wrong on some many levels, but write on one or two. So I find myself conflicted. I have always known that I cannot do this alone, but never really had faith in anyone ever really helping me. This is much like finding out today that a very likely cause of my current health problems is the treatments for the problem.

I feel like I am not sure which end is up. Who is a co-work or who is a sister. Sometimes you need to interact with your coworkers like family and deal with your family like co-workers. That I can accept, and more importantly, I have to accept that this is not just my job, or my family, but this is how we all are in almost every aspect of our interaction with the world.

My problem is that I treat people like family far more than I treat people like business partners, which is why I find myself conflicted.