Written by Elisa Rudolf
- German/Spanish
- currently living in Arnhem, Netherlands
I start writing this with tears streaming down my cheeks while flying on an airplane coursing to about 2000 km away from my family. When you are just a kid you feel safe being near your family and you donʼt want to do anything without them; when you are a teenager you canʼt even handle being a minute nearby them; when you get older you still donʼt want to stay long around them, but you sort of learn ― if that is realistically possible ― to get over it. But when you leave home, every single emotion melts into something you canʼt even believe: you start to hate and love being around them, you realize things that never before you could have imagined, but I think itʼs a pity that sometimes you donʼt feel it until you have left the nest.
Family, I think, is a quite complex subject to talk about. Nothing is more complicated than the inside of a family. If you compare families, the way family members get along with each other is really diverse, like different worlds. In so many families when they think of family they think of, for example, honor. They have learned and have the urge to make their parents proud, even though it is not something that is making them happy. But, from my perspective, when I think of family, I think of support. I have been raised in a, letʼs say, normal and kind family. We never really had problems, besides from the usual ones, like money ― money influences a lot, it is one of the main issues parents struggle from to maintain their family-. And what I can say is that they were proud of me whenever I accomplished something, but especially if what I was doing was something that was making me happy.
However, as I am half German and half Spanish, I guess my situation is a bit special. I was born in Madrid, Spain, and have always lived there, so my relation to my Spanish family is closer than to my German family. I would spend a whole month in summer in Germany to see my grandmother and uncles, but during the year I would barely see them or talk to them. It is clearly a different relationship I have between them. Both cultures are, to a certain extent, unlike my point of view: my German family has always been, in my own words, colder and distant, while my Spanish side has always been totally the opposite, showing their feelings at all times and, as they do best, screaming them out loud. I have to say it sometimes gets a little bit too much for my taste, yet I wouldnʼt change it. When it comes to discussing it you visibly see the difference of both families: while one family would discuss something calmly and organized, the others would raise their voices as if they believed they were in the middle of a demonstration. I believe everyone has a different way to show affection, nonetheless when it comes to extreme situations, everybody, no matter how emotionless they are, seem to come together and transform themselves in to sensible beings to comfort each other.
Nevertheless, I have never been really dependent on my family in comparison, I think, from other children at a certain age. I always wanted to do everything by myself, to be alone from time to time and to feel grown up. But I would lie if I say I never miss them. I am now already four years on my own in another country, and I can say that as time moved on I started to enjoy and appreciate much more the time I spend with my family, realizing how important they are in my life. The bad days I have being away from home become a countdown to the moment I can put a foot in the plane to fly back home again ― that is kind of a weird thing to desire if you are afraid of heights ― . For me, family helps you to break the sometimes attempting society to involve you in its claws, opens your eyes and gives you back the tools you need when you have lost them, to be able to think for yourself and donʼt become a slave of social order. Parents always put you first, no matter what. So, as I said before, although I have never been really dependent of them ― excluding economic dependency ― , they are the first ones I really trust and rely on when I really need it.
My parents have always pushed me to do the things that make me happy. Of course sometimes they tell me to go back home and do something they think is better for me, but after all they are still parents, right?
（Elisa Rudolf / エリサ・ルドルフ）
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