Growing Up Indifferent in a Conservative Family
As far as I can remember family gatherings have consisted of speech regarding illegal aliens and the economy. I can not remember a time when my family was not concerned with such things. I’d like to think that it was a good thing that my family was so aware, but as we got older and less and less people appeared at our family gatherings I could not help, but wonder if politics had a hand in their absence. From one side of the room I had friends screaming at me that my family was wrong and that their believes made them inhuman. Well, wouldn’t that make me inhuman? There’s a possibility. Although, on the other side my family made little comments one after the other attempting to convince me that theirs was the only truth and that’s how I became an independent. Torn between two worlds, a half breed if you will, not knowing where I belonged. Winston Churchill once said if you are not liberal at 20 you have no heart and if you are not conservative at 40, you have no brain. I don’t know if that means I have both or if it means that I have neither. I’ve been told by so many on both sides that I have neither, but I can still feel it beating even when I think it has been ripped out of my chest and at night when I try to sleep I can still hear my brain screaming for attention that I won’t give it. I do not fit in this fork in the road. I do not read only black and white. I am not a decisive person, but I shouldn’t be forced to become one. On the 4th of July my family celebrated by shooting guns at targets and I’m reminded of our amendments, but I’m also reminded of a child gunned down in a street by someone who was too filled with hate to give the boy a chance. I’m reminded of those who died to give us freedom and those who died despite it. The metallic smell of bullet shells waft into my nose and remind me of times I was told I was not good enough for this family. It reminds me of times I was not good enough for my friends. It reminds me of times I told myself I am not good enough. Everywhere I turn I see hatred, but every molecule in my body is whispering to stay strong because in the end neither side is fighting an honorable battle, neither side is all truth and no lies, neither side is worth dying for. We sit around the living room watching Fox News and discussing the future of the government and I wonder why when I watch CNN with my friends and discuss the future, that I can begin to taste the same poison. Seeping from the screens into our eyes, infecting the brain, but they spin their webs a little different. I can’t see any evidence of unbiased news anymore and I wonder if there are any unchained minds left in this world. I begin to feel alone again, I begin to feel alone again, but no more alone then I’ve been all my life. Because no one loves a man who does not conform.