Things have been moving in my life recently or rather, they've been moving all around me. I'm not directly being affected, and yet I feel the effects everyday.
Several months ago, one of my uncle on my father's side died after fighting the effects of failing kidneys for several years, including dialysis, an almost-failed kidney transplant and several long-term infections that finally managed to get the best of him. Now, I love all six of my uncles, but he was still the funniest and most social one, so his passing in his mid-forties affected me and the rest of the family quite a bit.
Also, several months ago (already!?), my parents finally decided to get a divorce, something that my sister and I felt was probably a decade overdue. A lot of reasons are involved of course, chief among them the fact that my dad always resented being "dominated" by my mother who had a much stronger character than him (always being berated over trivial things, being made to be an idiot in front of people, etc). It probably sounds worse than it really was said like that (you can't summarize a marriage of 30 years in one or two sentences after all, and I do know that my mother has always had affection for him), but it was still bad enough that I grew up with a very skewed image of my father. It took me until college to really start re-evaluating both my place in the family (by standing up for myself to my mom for example) and the true character of both parents.
But the turning point was when, a few years ago, my mom had job burnout, and since she was very weak emotionally, my dad took care of her (because he felt affection for her too) but also took the dominant position during her recovery. So the role got reversed for a few years and, well, afterward they both stood up to one another and that created friction over the tiniest of issues during trips, family celebrations, etc.
The whole thing happened quite civilly actually; things were separated evenly, the house was sold, they both agreed that they could still hang with the same friends despite the separation (which was important for my mom since, having lost her father in her late teens, she practically adopted her step-father as her own) and last week they both moved out.
I have to say that having lived in the same house from birth up to the start of college, I find it sad that I'll never go back there again. In fact, the whole things makes me sad more out of nostalgia than anything else. You know, the idea of a united family, of a house that would pass from parents to children, of spending weekends in my childhood village, of family celebrations, etc.
I'm still not sure how things are going to go from here; trivial things really, but still, how are things like Christmas going to be handled? And on my part at least, there's also the fact that I'm really a lot closer to my mom than my dad, mostly for the reasons explained above. By the time I realized I was always siding blindly with my mom against him, it had become very difficult to really connect together, which wasn't helped by the fact that my dad is quite emotionally distant (I used to be like him too in fact). I get along with him very well, but we don't have nearly the same chemistry, interests and view of the world. With my mom, I can be totally honest on anything since we think alike and aren't afraid of saying what we really think and feel. With my dad, it's much harder to get his real feelings on things, especially if it puts him in a position of weakness. There's a lot of efforts still to be made to improve our relationship.
Anyway, I just needed to vent a bit, or rather, to organize my thoughts and feelings on the whole thing. Big changes tend to destabilize me quite a bit if I'm not prepared for them, but fortunately I usually manage to bring myself around pretty quickly these days.
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Current project: Castlevania: Aria Of Sorrow (GBA)
Upcoming project: Castlevania Legends (GB)
