Family Are The People You Get Stuck With

Written for The Rooms 2017 Memoir Madness

Family are the people you get stuck with. While you get to choose your friends. You don't get a choice about who your family is. You cannot change your biological parents as much as you may try even with all the various methods of genetic manipulation. All that you do is turn yourself into a GELF or make yourself sick.

Forget changing things with time travel. You end up creating a new dimension or erase your timeline altogether and create a new one, I should know I've done both. Erasing the timeline leave these weird fragmented memories that are like déjà vu, a dream or a memory that you just can't quite remember no matter how much you try.

Family, it is something I thought I understood. They people that you raise you that you happen to be related to by blood. Your parents be it biological, adoptive, step or foster are the people that people who raise you. You didn't get a choice in the matter, they chose to raise you, even if they say otherwise.

Biological parents, they had the choice of abandoning or aborting you. Stepparents know that you come as a package deal with your parent they marry. Adoptive, well why adopt if you didn't want the child in the first place. Foster really goes in the same draw as adoptive parents, why be a foster parent if you didn't want the foster child or in you end up with one that doesn't fit with your family you send them back and get another one.

Family are the brothers, sister and cousins you are raised with. You don't get a choice about them either. You don't get a choice as your placement in the family. You are either an only child or you have siblings. Either you have cousins or you don't. The order you are born in isn't your choice. If I had a choice I would be the eldest child instead of the youngest child.

Family is your partner that you chose to marry. That is one family member that you do get to chose. Coming along with your partner is an extended family that you don't get to chose. You get the in-laws and the rest of his or her extended family whether you like it or not.

Children are the family that you get to chose if you will keep or not. They are still your biological child on your family tree even if you do adopt them out. You don't get to chose if or when you will have biological children. You think that you have control over that matter, but you don't. Fertility issues and unplanned pregnancies galore exist out there. You may be one of the lucky ones where children happened when you just happened to be ready for them.

I never realised there is another family as well, more than biological, adoptive, step, foster, children, parents, siblings, partners and extended - until recently.

- Red Dwarf -

Friends were something I never thought I would understand. They are the people that you choose to be in your life. I craved friends. I wanted someone who was just like me, who could understand me and get into shenanigans together. Some whom I could share secrets with and support one another.

I just could not makes those personal connections that I so desired. I didn't even have those personal connections with my own family despite my best efforts, I didn't fit in. What hope did I have of making connections with someone outside of my family?

I would watch my parents with their friends at social gatherings. Talking about their children, politics, the weather, goings on of the Space Corp, and unfortunately my mother's sex life among other things.

I would watch my brothers bring home other boys from school that they would play games with, team up to bully me, and other silly shenanigans I always craved to be a part of. I thought when I started school that finally I would find someone else just like me to be my friend, but everyone singled me out because of how different I was to everyone else in the school. I had no one else I could relate to.

I thought University would be different, my father made a spectacle of me my first day of class, drawing negative attention to me that I just could not overcome. I thought getting away from Io when I transferred to Saturn Tech would be the step up I needed to making a friend or even a girlfriend by that point. I was too nervous and scared that I just couldn't talk to anyone.

When I started working on the Red Dwarf, I had a slim hope that I would find someone of the one from the thousand plus crew that could relate to me. I managed to alienate myself in the first week and new crew were warned off getting close to me because of how different I was.

Over the years, I gave up hope of ever finding someone to marry or just someone to be my friend. I just wrote it off as another fault I would never be able to fix and prepared myself for a friendless partnerless lonely life.

- Red Dwarf -

Have you ever heard the saying, a face only a mother could love? I'd have people say that to me after they get to know me. I was despised by everyone around me. I am bitter and as a result of my past treatment. I am not a very nice person, taking out my frustrations on people who didn't deserve it. I try to be nice, I don't know how. The saying about mother's loving her child despised how ugly the child is, that wasn't true about my mother. They were wrong about my mother, not even my own mother, related to me by blood, the woman who gave birth to me, not even she loved me, even when I was an infant and before I developed my own personality, she hated me.

Mother would remind me while I was growing up that I'd been a mistake. They'd been happy with three children, they didn't need a fourth. She'd rub it in my face that she had to do things for me she never had to do for my brothers. I never asked her to sleep with my principal and school teachers just so I wasn't held back! I think that she would've slept with them anyway and just used me as an excuse. Maybe I would've done better at school if I had been held back. I struggled with most of my classes, the classes I did well in my parents didn't approve of. Ace, another version of me, he is living proof that he - I did well in that universe despite being held back.

When I wasn't living at boarding school, Mother used to force me to go to the theatre and opera with her. I spent my childhood and even my adulthood pretending that I didn't like the theatre or opera, even now I struggle to admit I like it even though I am certain that Kryten and Lister both know.

If I had expressed liking either of those things, my parents would've been banned from going, just like I was banned from the skipping team at school when my parents discovered I was the Captain. I was prohibited from playing with my female cousins because I enjoyed dress ups and making up stories and playing with dolls and stuffed toys. Playing the piano was made off limits when they learnt I could only play by ear and not from reading the notes after years of forced lessons because it was all to feminine for a future member of the honourable Space Corps.

All of fathers sons were going to get into the Space Corps. John his eldest was the head of the Special Forces by the time of my death.

Frank named after our Uncle who'd been a General was a Captain of an entire fleet.

I'd been told that my brother Howard was also a Captain, only to find out years later that had been a lie. While he had made it into the Space Corps, unlike myself, he'd only made it to First Technician, which is still high up the ranks then I ever made. I signed up to the private sector when I failed to get into the Space Corp and only made it to Second Technician by the time I died a position I seem to be stuck at eternally.

In recent years I met a holographic version of my brother Howard, he'd been turned on by a simulant woman looking for my dimensional saving alternative other self Commander Arnold 'Ace' Rimmer. Howard didn't know the Simulants were evil and hell bent on destroying humanity. The Simulant uprising was still in its early days when Howard died. He'd only been turned on for a couple of years before they came across us. Howard believed she just wanted company, the simulant. I cannot remember her name, pretty sure her corpse is in one of the holds somewhere. This information about what the sim wanted was only discovered after she killed Howard and we'd taken care of her, disabling her permanently. I think I would've panicked more if I'd know she was after me, or an alternate version of me.

Discovering I was lied to about Howard being a Captain has me wondering if I was lied to about my other brother's roles in the Space Corps. Was John really a Captain and in charge of the Special Forces division. Did Frank really have an entire fleet as his command? I still do not know the truth, three million years into deep space is a little bit hard to get on a phone and call someone and ask.

The databases we've come across are a bit mess. For instance, I have records of my mother dying when she was one-hundred and three. They do say only the good die young and she wasn't a good person, that must be while I died at thirty-one. Yet I can't find out anything about most of my other family members.

Along with finding out that I was lied to about Howard's role in the Space Corp, I learned that my father was not my biological father. At first, I felt so relieved. I was not related to the man you used to put me on a rack to ensure I was taller, because he was bitter about being too short to get into the Space Corp.

Father was so obsessed with not getting into the Space Corp because he was too short. His sons were not going to be too short not matter what. He never even considered that we may not get in because we are too tall or because of other issues that getting stretched out on a rack might cause. I used to think it was normal to be stretched out on the rack every Tuesday afternoon for a couple of hours while father tried to enforce other information that I needed to know if I was going to make it big in the Space Corp.

He used to lock us in dark rooms on our own. Made all four of us share a bedroom despite big age differences between all of us. I don't even want to think about what else he did, so I won't write about, but just know it was horrible. I don't remember everything myself, some of it was so traumatic that I blocked it from memory and Holly had to keep those memories blocked when I was generated for the first time.

How did I find out my father wasn't my biological father when I am living three million years in deep space? He sent me a hololetter when I first joined the Red Dwarf that I was only to view when I became an officer. I always tried to listen to father and being the obedient son I was, so I never listened to it. I think the main reason I never listened to the letter wasn't because of obedience but because I was afraid, afraid that he was going to be disappointed in me. All I ever wanted from him was to hear him say Arnold I am proud of you. Instead, when I finally listened to the letter I heard the words that I'd always sort of suspected. Arnold, I am not your father.

Well, my suspicions were off, I always thought that my father was father or Uncle Frank since Uncle Frank was mothers favourite. Considering the number of affairs mother had over the years, I thought that it was very strong possibility I was the only one that was actually a Rimmer. I thought that was why father and Uncle Frank put so much pressure on me because I was the only one that could hold onto the family name. I thought that was confirmed when father gave me his Javanese camphor chest, a family heirloom that was passed on from oldest son to oldest son and had been for generations. An heirloom that Lister destroyed on me and was not fixed or recreated by the nanobots when the rebuilt and redesigned the ship.

This left me confused, why would Father leave me a family heirloom if I wasn't his son? Did it mean he didn't have any children at all? That none of my brothers where Uncle Franks?

My biological father Dungo was the gardener for our family. He was always somewhat nice to me. He didn't talk much. Dungo would untie me when my brothers hung me up in trees, dig me up when my brothers buried me and would get me unstuck when my brothers pinned me to things. That was the extent of my relationship with Dungo, who I should call Denis since that is his first name. I never even suspected Denis was my biological father, even looking at myself in a mirror, trying to find a resemblance I can't find anything. I take after my mother in looks and sadly in personality and I'm just her all over when I look in the mirror.

Finding out he is my biological father has me asking questions that I will never know the answers to. Did Denis know I was his son? Did he care that I was his son? Why did he stay working for my family? Was it so he could see me? Was it because he was still seeing my mother? Or did he just have nowhere else to go? He just continued working for the family year after year.

He was still working for the family when I died on the Red Dwarf. I don't know why he stuck around. But if he knew and just left me in that situation, with abusive parents, does that make him just as bad as my parents? I cannot think of Dungo as my father, as a parent. He was someone who was just there. I don't even remember what his family name is. Was he proud of me? He never said that he was proud of me. Did he have other children? Do I have other siblings and would they be nice to me if they knew about me?

After I learnt Denis was my father, I went out and tried my hand at gardening. I didn't have any skills of the father who raised me so maybe I had skills that came from my biological father. Turns out I am a plant killer and I don't enjoy being around plants in the slightest. I prefer looking out the dome at the stars whenever I am in the botanical gardens over tending the garden. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a well-kempt garden, only because I like everything to well-kempt, but I just cannot do the work myself.

I don't know what I am or if he even he is my father. Maybe it was another lie a lie that my father was just ashamed to call me son so he made up someone that could plausibly be my father. After all, Mother was having an affair with him. I don't actually know what the truth is, and over the years, I have realised I don't actually care.

Those people who raised me, who I call mother, father, brothers, who I may or may not be related to by blood, I have come to realise they are family, they are not MY family.

- Red Dwarf -

Family are the people you get stuck with. For me my family is Dave Lister, Holly, Cat and Kryten 2X4B 532P - whose name I hope I got right, it always amuses me that he thinks his middle name 2X4B is a jerky middle name. It's just numbers and letters like his last name. How can that be jerky?

Not all of us are human - if any of us can be called human. I am a hologram, human when I was alive. Dave is supposed to be human, but I swear he's something else entirely. Kryten is a sanitation mechanoid, Cat is a decedent of Lister's pet cat and Holly the ship's senile computer.

When Holly turned me on, I knew that everything would change. I just didn't know it would change the way it did. I found myself happier in death than I ever was in life. I didn't have parents to live up to, I didn't have Officers I needed to obey. It was myself, Lister and Holly. I could learn how to be myself.

- Red Dwarf -

Dave Lister, he is the reason I exist in this form. I still don't know why Holly turned me on for him out of all the people on the ship. I'm not even sure if I have succeeded in keeping him sane. He's still alive and he's not wallowing in depression and self-pity at the moment. He does, however, drink a lot and has developed this sort of split personality and I never know if I should encourage or discourage.

Dave Lister the father and Dave Lister Junior his son. Biologically Dave is his own father and son, I get a headache thinking about it and how it's possible. It is refreshing to know that someone else has a biological family that is just as dysfunctional as my own, even if it is in a different way.

Dave Lister, the father, only comes out when Lister drinks a lot, drinks passed his sloshed stage. I have watched him on many an occasion filming videos for Dave Lister junior the primary personality, telling him what he needs to do with his life and that he does have the ability to make something for himself.

Dave Lister, the father, often seeks me out and cries on my shoulder for the twins he never got to raise, for his baby self that he abandoned at six weeks old to keep to time stream functioning properly and not cause another time paradox. God knows that we've caused to many of those.

Dave Lister the father, I see him as what Lister could've been, what Dave desires but keeps wrapped up because he is afraid to grow up, knowing that he is the last human alive. Dave often forgets that despite being the only human alive that we know about, he is not the only human.

I'm human too and it hurts at times when everyone forgets it I am human. When they call me a hologram. I often forget that I am a hologram, that I am dead. That EMP waves can kill me as can having no electricity for long term, I require electricity to stay alive. On the Red Dwarf that was never an issue, we'd run out of food and water long before the electricity would cut out.

I was not around when Dave junior came into existence and then abandoned to maintain the timeline. The third child that Dave had to leave for its own good. Staying in this timeline would've meant that Dave would never exist to become his own father. From the records, Dave Junior was kept in this timeline till the first effects of destabilisation became apparent and was causing both versions of David, baby and adult a great deal of pain.

The first two children Dave had to leave was the twins, Jim and Bexley. God, we both, still miss them, it still hurts to talk about them even years later. It feels like they died when in fact they were forced to move to a different dimension to be with Dave's female alternate self Deb, their biological 'father.'

Three short days is all we got to spend with them, we watched them grow up from infants to eighteen-year-olds in those three short days.

We remained in our female selves' timeline for a few more days, until the point we became too ill to stay any longer to ensure that the boys ageing evened out and didn't remain the same or reversed. We couldn't stay in that timeline. I know a day doesn't go by when Dave doesn't think of his children, that I don't think of them either and what could've been.

I always thought I hated children, children didn't like me when I was as a child. I thought they are were only smelly, noisy little brats. Didn't want anything to do with them, didn't want them. When I saw Jim and Bexley for the first time, before we realised something was wrong, I realised how wrong I was. I'd been lying to myself all these years so I wouldn't be disappointed when I didn't get any or if I did have children that hated me like the rest of my family.

I promised myself before Jim and Bexley were born that I would be the best Uncle I could be and treat them as if they were my own children since I couldn't have children on my own. I didn't think that Lister could raise the twins on his own back then, even looking at him now I have my doubts. I know Dave loves those boys more than anything else and would be the best father he could be. It's such a shame he didn't ever get the chance.

Dave regressed when he gave up his children. He never allowed himself to grow up and I let him stay that way because I didn't want things to change. I didn't want him to realise that I cannot progress beyond the mentality I had at thirty-one, that I am eternally in my early thirties despite how old I look physically. The physical ageing is a part of the programming to help keep Dave sane, to keep myself six years older than him no matter how much time passes for myself. I don't even know how old I am anymore seven or eight hundred years old? Maybe more.

- Red Dwarf -

My desire for family and friends has always been strong. I keep looking for that in myself since I had been rejected by others so many times. The first time was when I turned on a second copy of myself. That hadn't lasted very long and had turned bitter very quickly. My other self-was even crueller than my brothers were. It hurt so much to look at him and know that was me, that he was saying aloud what I thought about myself.

The next time had been when I got trapped by myself with a cloning machine. I thought I could clone myself a companion and because they didn't have my memories that it would work out better this time around. I was wrong, very very wrong and it was the worst part of my existence to date.

The clones and their descendants locked me up for just under six hundred years when they realised they couldn't kill me. Tortured me daily in different ways, either physically, mentally or via isolation. I thought the treatment at my father's hands was terrible, this was worse. It was then that I learnt that even though I feel human and experienced everything a living person does with the hard light drive, I cannot starve to death or die of dehydration. Due to the hard light drive, I could experience those things as if I was still alive.

I came back to Starbug with an eating disorder that took me many years to overcome. Lister didn't even realise I wasn't eating. Kryten thought at first I just wasn't eating due to the low supply stock. When we had supplies again, Kryten knew that something was wrong. I still struggle with eating when things get too stressful. I don't think it is a new disorder for me either. I nearly died of malnutrition as a child and I now suspect back then I wasn't answering my father's questions on purpose, that I deserved to be starved. I don't even know how I survived my childhood with my parents.

The third time I tried to have other copies of myself, Kryten pointed out that me and me didn't work - after all, I fight with Ace every time I see him. I know that I was once Ace Rimmer but I cannot imagine me being that goit, especially since I don't have any memories of that time. I just think I would've been me and despising all those other me's that I was meeting. Maybe that is why I didn't last as Ace and brought back to this dimension, because I couldn't let go of me enough, and the fact I am a coward who runs away at the first sign of danger. I could not become him or at least that is what I assume.

The third time I though because I was made an officer, even if it was by acts that were not worthy of being an officer, that I would be able to control my clones and that we'd finally get along. I'm not sure it would work or not long term, when we were making the last lot of copies, they copy machine went haywire and I ended up with a clone that was absorbing the other clones. At the time I thought it could eat me as well and I had to give up my new position as an officer to get Lister, Kryten and Cat to help me. They would've helped me in the end, they just wanted me to see past my own pig-headedness to see how stupid I was being.

- Red Dwarf -

If I had a choice, I never would've had my biological family, I also never would've got stuck in deep space with only Dave Lister, Kryten and Cat. Holly sadly is no longer with us. A choice between being stuck on Io with my family or being trapped in deep space with the people who not only managed to become my friends but who I consider my family, I would choose them and day of the week.

I have experienced things I never would've experienced on my own. I have learnt that my family was not normal. That I can move past my upbringing, even if it is slowly. I will continue to make mistakes and regress occasionally. Despite my issues, my new family will not abandon me and help me through the trials I face. I will help them in return, even if I want to run at the first sign of danger, and do run at the first sign of danger before my brain kicks in and tells me to go back for them. I do eventually go back for them, I could not imagine my life without Dave, Kryten and the Cat.

Family are the people you get stuck with, and that is not always a bad thing.

Updated 2 May 2017