I’m crazy, you’re crazy, we’re all crazy, I think, I wonder. I’m slowly becoming more and more convinced that we all have an element to ourselves that is less than sane. That element seems to only increase with time and circumstance in my family. Pity the girls that have married (or are about to marry) into us. And should there be guys marrying in someday… Heaven help them! Or they will have to be superheroes.

Issues. We have issues. Us girls more than the guys, apparently. We’re intense, we’re emotional, we react strangely to things, etc.

The two of us even seem to be polar opposites to each other, never able to clearly communicate or to see eye to eye about anything. It has only intensified over the years, as our lives went different directions and our personalities developed in different environments.

Now, every family gathering seems to be characterized by some clash of ours, this Chrismas more so than usual, I think, to the degree that we had a red hot verbal lashing of each other between the giving of grace and the filling of the plates. It ended up with her yanking her plate off the table and stalking upstairs to eat, yelling that she’d only stay if I left.

The thing with us, and not just us girls, I think, is that we incite a thunder storm of ear-covering magnitude, we run away, we take a few breaths, medicate with something or other, then return as if nothing had happened. We don’t deal. We don’t know how to deal.

In some ways, I’m grateful that my sister incites me to vocalize my frustrations and anger with her, because I feel like I know how she feels about me, how we feel about each other. I wish more of us were that open with each other.

Yet, I’m sick of the storming and the bashing and the yelling. These past two days have been, well, to say it again, intense! I’m trying not to write this out of anger, so I won’t go into details, but she’s mostly unbearable, today was rough when she was in the house, and enjoyable when she wasn’t.

I wonder if this very difficult time in our (and I’m referring to all of my immediate family now) lives will make us shy away from each other, as our weaknesses and insecurities and, again, ISSUES become more and more glaring. Can we keep it together? Or will we run away from each other?

Superheroes, these in-laws, superheroes, I say. The Apostle Paul says it’s better to marry than to burn. I wonder if it’s better for us to stay single than to pull other people into our issue-ridden dysfunctionality. I mean, love can conquer everything, they say, but our kind of crazy I wouldn’t wish on any lover.

Still, we had a mostly merry Christmas, I’d say due largely in part to the three little adorable blonde heads distracting us from our issues and making us smile in spite of ourselves. I love you, Salome, Jaida, and Eliana! May you never inherit our emotional complications!