The cruelties human beings perpetuate in the name of so-called 'love' - it's a kind of insanity, like being possessed by a demon - the pain, the fear, the longing, the shame and humiliation of being shunned, of being turned away - by a parent, a sibling, a child -

Where does it end?

It's like an emotional version of musical chairs - who's the one who's 'left over' when everyone else has found a place in the circle?

What does that person *do* with their life? With their *self*?

Because, as humans, we are *defined* by those roles - by that place we hold in society, which begins - and ends - with our 'family'.

So.

The only 'choice' I can see here

is to CREATE the family you need.

I know that's not a new or original idea.

I'm just getting there my own way, in my own time. Aphorisms are like bitter pills, that you only swallow

when all other possibilities have been used up.

***
Near the end of Legends, Aidan's character says to his brother (the 'pretty' one, played by Brad Pitt):

"I followed all the rules - man's, God's - and you, you followed none of them.

"And they all loved you more,"

and then he recited the names of all of them, the family: those who had loved, who had all, in one way or another, rejected him, and his love for them.

No matter what he did, it was never enough.

He was always the outsider, the one who could never win.

Why is that?

Why does one get to win the hearts,
and the other 'loses'?

Sometimes, all it takes is to

remove oneself from the circumstances of one's birth - to step into another place on the chess board, and play a different role.

To REFUSE TO ACCEPT
the role one never wanted,
into which one was unwillingly cast - to walk away, FOREVER, if necessary -

never looking back.

Because, to do so? Is to risk being sucked back into the vortex
again
and again
and again.

***
Why *do* parents love one, and not another?
Why *do* they pit child against child, choosing sides, forcing allegiances, as if this were some kind of - war?

Perhaps the pain of being so chosen (or rejected?) them*selves* as children

propels them, inevitably? to visit their own fate(s), endlessly, relentlessly, on their children.

Is it, really, human nature? Is it, truly, inevitable?