#writing this was how i realised i kin kyoya

[sakura-kissyy]

the institution of family

*poor punctuation/grammar, what are capital letters again? :) mention of divorce, dysfunctional view of family, might not make sense, i wrote this while trying to fall asleep, therefore not proofread as i fell asleep, see that makes sense doesn't it?

i have only seen the anime, but ouran has taught me so much about the meaning of family. as a child of divorced parents, even though i am blessed to have always been safe and loved, family has always been a confusing, and borderline negative term. familial pressures and societal views have no doubt shaped my view of the institution of family growing up. according to (segments of) society, there was a formula to a functional family, and mine didn’t quite fit the bill. according to (members of) my family, the things I did should be based on the preferences of (said members of) my family, and the stress i faced was only collateral damage for the happiness of (or maximum peace between) everyone else. 

thus, i deduced that my family were merely people who felt a moral obligation to love me; whom i was bound to love in return because of my own moral obligations. I wasn’t satisfied with this answer, because if my family were merely people i was biologically related to, why are morals at play? the only explanation was that the term “family” meant obligations, expectations and responsibility. an obligation for your family to love you, and you them, an expectation to do what those who love you ask of you, and a responsibility to act in your family’s interest. familial love came with such strings attached. if that were the case, wouldn’t we all be better off without family? no strings attached, free to do as we please. it was harsh, but that’s how the world works, isn’t it? the only problem was that even I didn’t fully believe in this black and white world i created in my mind. 

the high-society families in ouran matched my understanding of family perfectly. obligations, expectations, responsibility. the family that encapsulates this in its entirety is none other than the ootoris: kyoya, as the third born son — obligations — has to do more than his brothers to please his father, yet should not outshine his brothers — expectations. That would be overstepping his role. his father frowned upon his involvement in the host club — responsibility. He should have prioritised his family’s preferences over his own and acted in the interest of his family. he accepts the burden of being an ootori, just as I accepted my own loaded definition of family, until we met tamaki.