Unconditional Love

Unconditional love.

This is the love that those who are closest to you are meant to have, is it not? Often, the family is used as an example of such a weird concept. You get told that unconditional love is the love that you have for your family and your family has for you.

But, what if that isn't the case? Am I truly the only one that cannot wrap my head around such a crazy concept as unconditional love? Or love even in general?

Surely it's not just me who looks at family, who looks over at my mother, and instead of feeling safe and warm, I just feel... nothing.

Don't get me wrong, I don't hate her, or my family for a fact, it's a bit more like, I don't love or hate them. I am just neutral.

To me, they are just people that I was forced to be stuck with. I never asked to be born, I never wanted to be a part of this family, so why do I have to love them?

Why do I have to love someone just because we have the same blood in us?

If anything, I have more reasons to hate my family rather than love them.

Constant emotional abuse, constant arguments, constant divorces, moving to different countries... Why, despite this, do I still have to love my mother, even though she has brought so much despair into my life?

When I talk to others about such issues, everyone just sugarcoats the ever-loving shit out this. "Oh, but it's your family, you have to love them," and "Everyone has arguments in families, doesn't stop me loving them."

And frankly, I am sick of it.

I am sick of the constant bullshit that people spew out of their mouths, acting as if this is such a big taboo, that not constantly loving and admiring your family is wrong—because it's not.

It's not wrong to not love them.

It took me a while to accept that, and a part of me still hasn't really accepted that in a way.

It's just like in all of the films, families argue, families make up, all is happy and all is good.

But really, that just makes me sick to my stomach. Those aren't real families.

In fact, call me cynical all you want, but I don't think any family is like that.

Sure, on the outside the families can be all smiley and happy, but I'm sure on the inside, at least one member of the family secretly could care less about everyone else there.

Or maybe not just one, maybe it's all of the family?

Maybe it's all of us, but just because it's such a big taboo we are forced to push that thought away, deep into our minds to forget about it.

But then again, maybe there is still some truth behind unconditional love? Even if 'love' isn't the best way to describe it.

Even despite all of the previously mentioned issues, the emotional abuse and what not, I still don't hate my mother. I still don't despise her. Even through all of the despair I've felt, even through all of the depressive thoughts that I have suffered through, I still don't detesther in the slightest.

All that I feel for her, for them, for all of my family and the people I was just forced to 'love' through being born into the family tree, all I feel for them is nothing.

And maybe, just because it is simply 'nothing', rather than something, that unconditional love exists.

Even despite the fact that I should loathe them, the fact that I do not, even if I do not love them, shows that maybe (just maybe) somewhere deep down there is a special bond you feel with people who you have been brought up with.

Maybe there is something to be said, about special connections to families...

But despite all that, I still don't love them, and that's fine.

If you take one thing back from my rambles, take this back:

It's fine to not love your family. It's normal. It's not taboo. Accept it.