A response

I don’t have much habit from reading on my house desktop, and I read very little on my laptop (mostly because I play online games, and oddly, the screen is too big for me to want to read). Thus, I found out that I could read blogs and stuff via Google Translate at work, so I took the time and translated http://aslongasitlasts.blogspot.com.

(Yeah, I typed this at work.)

While I don’t really want to comment on other people’s blog entries, lifestyles and stuff, these two particular lines caught my attention:

“I wonder who still even reads this blog (other than the spammers) anyway. I could be talking to myself.”

Now bear with me, because this is going to be horribly longwinded.

I don’t have a habit of blog hopping, actually. In fact, your blog is probably the only one I read now since I can remember the address. Even so, I admit to not reading it frequently. (It’s probably once in one or two months that I read it.)

If I may be allowed to be brutally honest, I personally see very little point reading up on other people’s lives. First, I feel cluttered with unnecessary information. Second, there is no action that I can take. Third, I make a natural assumption that everyone wants to mind his or her own business and I’m expected to mind my own. Finally, as long as no one is dying on me (physically or emotionally), I’m fine.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t care. It just means that I don’t know how to care in the way people want me to. I have never been apt to express concern with regards to others’ well-beings, and I’m misunderstood a lot for it. When I do start to express the concern, I’m tagged with being ‘weird’, nosy, and inquisitive and I should just stop minding in the first place. Some people don’t even realise that I’m actually expressing concern. In this regard, I almost feel like a handicap.

Plus, after a horribly honest assessment of the way I experience things, I have now conceded to the fact that I suck at sympathising and empathising. Somehow, it seems, I have a powerful air of showing that I don’t care, such that whomever decides they want to try their luck talking about their emotional experience with me all end up wondering if I even felt a thing or whether I’m just pretending to care.

Thus, if what I’m going to say or not going to say is going to end up causing people to think that I don’t understand and care, then I’d rather not inflict upon them the misery of the knowledge that I don’t seem to care, regardless whether I care or not. In a way, I feel I am not given the right to care, but perhaps, I didn’t earn the right to care.

Does the entire thing above make any sense?

Despite everything I said, I am not taking what you said personally; as in, I don’t feel offended whatsoever. I’m just offering a perspective that may help you to see that it’s not that people don’t care; they probably have their reasons to appear as if they don’t care. Or at least, I feel that you feel that nobody cares.

In another possible scenario, most people probably don’t know what to say about your experiences either. They either feel they are not in any position to comment since they aren’t you, or they haven’t had such deep feelings about the same things as you do to be able to empathise with what you’re going through. I’d stick with ‘not knowing what to say’ as the most common issue, but I could be wrong.

To be honest, I’m wondering how my words would be or are taken as you read. I know of people who blatantly skip an entire chunk of what I said and tell me that I’m too longwinded so they didn’t bother. I used to be left wondering if I should get angry, but now I pretty much accept that my words are like Kopi-o-siew-tai: Bitter coffee with no sugar. (I like teh-o better though but that’s beside the point)

If you’re still reading up to this point and you feel you can take what’s gonna come, then here’s finally my response to your entries. (I can’t copy and paste your entries to make references, so I guess I’m going to be really vague now.)



I don’t know if I’m getting it correct, but this is the impression that you’re giving me. Are these what you feel or think?

1. I know that it doesn’t seem ‘right’ that I’m openly and blatantly depicting my parents negatively, and I wish I didn’t have to, but right now this is what I honestly feel. The feelings would probably change if my parents changed.
2. I know it’s not right to blame my parents for who I am, but I can’t be who I am without them, right?
3. Why don’t they look into the mirror and manage their own lives before managing mine?

Again, I don’t know if I’m right in this but I feel that you’re trying to find a reason to forgive your parents for the hurt they might have caused you?

The rest of what I’m going to say is probably not going to sound nice. Or at least, after much conditioning, I think they don’t sound nice. I have no idea if anyone has spoken to you about similar things, but I feel that it is a disservice on my part to say whatever I think you want to hear rather than a different perspective. (Then again, I don’t know what you want to hear.) I could very well be repeating a mistake in the past when I’ve been straightforward, blunt and honest, and told that they wished I never said a thing, but I haven’t done this in years. I hope it doesn’t come out as bad as they did in the past.

First, I have to say that I agree with what you said about your parents, and your feelings are valid, not because I say so, not because society approves or not, but simply because there is no point denying them.

When parents take on parental roles, they have made a decision. Let’s not go into whether 100% of the children’s flaws and strengths are their responsibility, but the fact remains: Once you decide to be parents, you will accept the flaws and strengths, the good and bad and everything that is related to your children. There is no such thing as selective responsibility; you do not claim merit for their good behaviour and shove the responsibility to someone else when there’s something that the child isn’t doing up to expectation. There is also no such thing as, “when the children grow up, they will automatically mature and understand things.”

However, I don’t personally know your parents. I only have fragments of impressions based on the minimum interactions I had with them, watching them while I was at your house, and mostly from your blog entries. I’m making a lot of assumptions and jumping to a lot of conclusions, so perhaps only a part of what I’m saying makes sense.

Anyway, now that I’ve said this much, here is where my opinions start to deviate...somewhat.

A little bit of my own experience, just to make things coherent: My mother was the capable, all knowing, strong and independent woman who probably could raise us alone if she had a crap load of savings and energy to work, apart from taking care of household chores and us. My father was pretty much the mysterious figure; I didn’t see him a lot. And I didn’t want to see him either. He was the antagonist, someone I swore I’d never come to understand. I had such blatant disregard for his existence that even when he went overseas, I didn’t know about it until I realise he wasn’t home for more than two days.

Okay, let’s skip the droning and jump right at the next point. Eventually, I started to see my parents differently.

My mother wasn’t as infallible as I thought, and she might actually be made of stone. And my father might be more human than I wanted to believe. And the whole lot of things that ensued made me wonder what the fuck was going on.

It became a necessity to reevaluate my parents’ impressions in my mind, because if I didn’t...well that’s not important to know, so, skip.

In another book I read, a certain line caught my attention: “They can’t give what they didn’t get.”

Thus, in the course of reevaluating, I started to trace their histories and backgrounds. What were my parents’ environments like? What were their parents like? What were their siblings like? What kind of upbringing did they go through? What kind of value systems were they subjected to? Who were they?

It’s just one day, suddenly, I realise that they’re humans too. Most adults don’t even know what they’re going through either.

In fact, at one point, I became my mother’s mirror for her to review her own thoughts. She thinks a lot, but she isn’t actually very self-aware. A lot of times when she was pouring her grievances that made very little sense to me, I realised that she too was looking for answers to the things she wished she could understand, but unlike me, she has no habit of searching for the truth if it appears impossible to find. She tends to be stuck in a loop of her own thoughts; sometimes I grow impatient and I defy her outright, but generally, her fallibility is now what I accept and understand.

A lot of times, when she’s complaining to me about me, she’s really just reflecting something she feels insecure about. (I’m not helping matters either haha. Too bad she has to live with it and put up with my nonsense.)

My father’s case is a little bit more complicated, but I don’t feel inclined to talk about it. Either way, his family has a very strange concept of family. My father and grandmother are actually rather similar; they would take their family members for granted, but treat outsiders kindly. My mother frequently calls my father his mother’s carbon copy. It’s true; he’s a lot like her. (As a kid, I couldn’t spend a few days more with my grandma lol)

Whatever it is, after going through some lengths of finding out what their backgrounds were like, I eventually realised that I had, on them, expectations that could never be fulfilled. And like me, they have, on their parents, expectations that also could never be fulfilled.

Although my mother’s been talking about it (sporadically) for years, it was only recently that I registered what she meant when she kept repeating that “her mother didn’t love her.” What she was looking for was an open expression, or even the slightest bit of affirmation, that her mother did love her. It was very strange to me, that when she told me about her interactions with her mother, I pointed out to her that her mother probably loved her in ways that were too subtle for her to see. I remember how she tried not to cry realising that.

She’s stopped talking about her mother not having loved her ever since.

(She’d probably kill me if she found out that I talked about her in this manner on an online blog)

To further understand them more as people, I even tried to figure out their MBTI types (lol, yeah). It doesn’t explain who they are of course. But it certainly explained part of the things they did. (Some types are prone to doing things in a certain manner simply because of their internal functions.)

Both my parents are extremely harsh--that was my opinion when I was young. Then I realised it was their very strong “TJ” preferences talking to me. Plus, both my parents are Sensors; they won’t entertain the possibility of another perspective beyond their own. It’s not that they can’t understand me, but it takes a hell lot of effort for them to even understand. (They can’t understand something unless they’ve been through it themselves.)

All these changes have felt pretty strange to me. This, coming from someone, who was frequently threatened to be severed ties with the family over what, MSN and caring about friends more than family? I’m always accused as one of the biggest troublemakers at home, but who’s taking the time to understand them now?

It’s so strange. I’ve never looked into my father’s eyes until recent years. Haha I don’t know what to say, it’s kind of weird now that I think about it.

So, I’ll relate this back to you.

How much do you understand about your parents? Is there something happening that you can’t see? Are they really as nonchalant and clueless as they appear? Is the problem them, you, or none of you?

There’s a world outside of yourself. I know it’s obvious, but we all forget from time to time.

I get caught up with my perspective a lot, especially when I’m in a state of mind that’s very difficult to translate into words, and very hard to understand for others, especially Sensors. It feels horribly lonely.

I don’t know if what I say makes sense to you, but I just feel that right now, you sound very confused about your identity, what you’re supposed to be doing, what you want to do, and all the boundaries that have been crossed.

Personally, I see no duty on my part to fulfill the unfulfilled dreams of my parents. All I know is that I just have to take care of them when they no longer can of themselves. It’s not out of duty either; it’s just what I want and what I think is right.

But I know of people who feel like martyrs and doormats when they serve their family. I always thought it doesn’t work, but apparently, some people do make it work. They have my respect, and I don’t think they are able to adopt the mindset that I have with regards to family. I view my family members as separable units that are living in the same household; others view it that “it’s wrong to leave your family members to die.” To me, both viewpoints are not wrong.

My mother is one such person. She gripes a hell lot about her entire life of...well, serving family. (She served her family, siblings and all, before she served the current one) I always thought that this was a matter of choice, so stop making it look like we’re torturing her! Then I realise that it’s against her value system to abandon her ‘duties’ to serve. She gripes, but she just wants people to see her efforts. In all honesty, I wouldn’t die without her in my life, but life sure is hell without her.

Away from subservience…

I don’t know how your mother regularly behaves. The last I remember, she’s been through a very difficult time because of her illness, right? I guess you probably have tried to understand her perspective, but it seems to me that at the moment, it’s not resolved. It’s probably hard since she probably doesn’t see things the way you do.

I can imagine. My mother rants about some stuff that I don’t feel like talking about, and accuses me for taking her matter lightly because “I’m not her so I won’t understand.” It’s not true at all; I can sense it. It’s just that she believes that I must go through the same thing as her. No matter how many times I assure her that I understand, she thinks I don’t--because I don’t react the way she does.

Is this my problem? No… Is it her fault? Not really. It’s just something that happens. It frustrates me sometimes, but because I understand where she’s coming from, she doesn’t bug me as much as it did in the past anymore. (We couldn’t even hang out without getting into cold wars at the end of the trip. At least we end our trips in laughter these days.)

As for my dad, well, surprise. The man who seemed inhuman once walked into our room to talk about his feelings--first time in the twenty-three years of my life. First time. He didn’t say a lot, but his face said a lot more than his words--he was in a lot of pain I guess. I guess...

The changes started I think in 2008. I think it was then. The changes were really slow.

Sometimes I wonder what it would’ve been like if it never crossed my mind to try to change things at home. The changing didn’t start from arguing with them. It started with trying to understand them. It was a rather natural process I guess--you try to understand, your attitude changes and your behaviour eventually follows. My sister took part in the change in a different way... I guess without her, things might have been significantly slower.

I’m just blindly guessing now, that perhaps, your mother is projecting her own fears onto you. I don’t know; I can’t claim to know what it feels like to have an illness that feels like a time bomb. I think it’s natural for mothers to fluster about their children, especially if they’re not doing what they deem as ‘secure and safe.’ My mother still nags at me for having the job that I do now. I know she has a constant fear of just dropping dead and I’m still not managing my life in a way that’s reassuring to her… but I don’t really let her affect me by acting like I’m fine with it, so she shouldn’t bother as much. She doesn’t nag as frequently now.

As for your dad…I don’t know. There are a lot of possibilities. He could be completely clueless to the state of things at home. He could be really good at concealing what he feels. He could feel horribly awkward with feelings, so he just throws them into a void and gives them very little thought. For all you know, he might feel like an inadequate father or he doesn’t feel part of the family, so he just stays out more than he wants to. Maybe he sincerely feels he hasn’t failed as a father so he doesn’t do anything to fix anything. Lots of people simply avoid what isn’t familiar to them or what they don’t know how to deal with.

I feel that your father is a man of little words, and even less kind words. On the average day, most people don’t say kind words after all. He does seem to me a person who is better at dealing with inanimate things (like objects) rather than people though. To be honest, I thought he was perhaps quite a nice father since he would agree to your requests to drive you around, just that he isn’t very adept with words. (My father makes it look like I just borrowed money from the loan sharks when I call him to drive me lol)

Or, we could just trash everything I said above, and assume our parents to have ill intentions or are jerks altogether. They aren’t…right?

I used to wish I could remain in the status of being the ‘child’ and shove all the responsibility of change to my parents. But it became apparent to me that my parents clearly needed help.

I don’t know. I don’t feel like I did a lot. It certainly empowers me, but…I still feel partly responsible for all the crap that used to happen. I don’t know, it feels painful to imagine coming home to two children who wouldn’t even look at me in the eye. I can’t imagine seeing my daughter deteriorate as a character, emotionally, spiritually and physically over trivial things like friendship.

Since I make no indication at all about what I feel about my parents, it’s only natural that they assume the worst of me.

What struck me as interesting is how you ‘call your father to drive you to remind yourself that you have a father.’ I’m very curious what he thought about and felt when you called him to drive you. Was it his duty as a father? Was he willing to do it? Was that his way to show that he would be there if you asked? Is that the only thing you ask him to come for? Would he actually feel that you just need him for his car? I won’t know. I know my father is willing to drive me if I asked him in a manner that showed consideration for his convenience, and he’d smack me upside down if I just asked him like I was just using his car lol. (I generally don’t ask because I get smacked more of the time.)

Now that I write up to this point, I do wonder if you mark your parents against your own standards, or some invisible standard that could be influenced by social expectations. (Parents should do this…parents should do that.)

Perhaps the main issue here is acceptance...

Everything said, I could only say that my words are limited to my experience. I’m not you. You’re the one who knows what’s happening at your home. I’d sooner take everything I said back than to impose on you. I just hope you found whatever I said relevant and maybe even useful.

I’m sorry if I misinterpreted your messages and puked out such a horribly long wall of text for nothing. I know I’m not exactly apt at mind reading. Don’t take it personally either.

Hopefully, you’ll find a direction to solve the problem at home.