Whenever I think of dysfunction I think of all of us together. What causes us to function is each other. We never function when we're all together.
If you looked at a picture of us you'd see fragmented faces and aching stitches holding up the frames of our smiles.
If you looked in my brother's eyes you'd see the red around the edges that tells you how much he hates it. He thinks he'd break the function if he let the blood spill down his face. He can't close his eyes, he won't blink, he won't make a mistake, he's so tired, he has to fix it, he doesn't know. He's still bleeding.
If you looked into the creases of my mother's smile you'd see that she is tired. Her smile doesn't know how to smile all the way anymore because the creases have to hold up everyone else's. They're growing weary and fading into a slant. You'd see that she's tired of holding us all together.
If you looked at the pieces of hair that fell across my father's face you'd see a few gray hairs. You'd see that nature took a few too many spins on his life and that things aren't going right anymore. His shadow is following him from underneath the ground.
If you looked at me you might say, "she looks fine."
I am fine.
I'm perfectly functionally fine in the most dysfunctional meaning of the word. I'm smiling, see?
Lies.
Lies make you appreciate the truth, but who wants a picture of a family in misery?
If we were never so broken we would never be this whole.
We never function when we're all together but we function because of each other.
We dysfunction together.