On Parents

And I'm back with yet another uncomfortable topic for this week's newsletter: Parents: Sometimes a bit irritating but mostly low-key cute and wholesome people they are.

If I had to describe what an ideal and "mature" relationship with parents would look like, it'd be "friends"... more a horizontal relationship than a vertical relationship if you get what I mean...

Just like with friends, you can be transparent with them, you can drink beer and eat fish and chips with 'em, you can freely open up to them, you can ask them for advice and help. But you would treat their advice and opinions like you would treat any friend's advice, not like commandments that you need to follow or some gods that you need to please.

I think we often create these god-like images of our parents in our childhoods, the all-mighty, the all-giver, and the all-provider but what often happens is that we often end up carrying these images into our adulthood, when we have our own job and our own apartment with our own swedish plank furniture.

Breaking out of the gelatinous mould of this god-like image that we had formed in our childhood requires lots of conscious effort. To just see them for the human beings they are with their own flaws, biases and weaknesses.

I guess that's what Freud and Jung meant when they said:

"No man can become a man unless his father has died" - Freud

"Yes but that death can take place symbolically" - Carl Jung

And for this symbolic death of this god-like image to take place, means having lots of conflicts, not running away and avoiding those uncomfortable discussions (even the ones where you just wanna run in the hallway... screaming, and then pass out, and smack your head on the floor). It means not hopping away from topic to topic or taking extra long bathroom breaks in conversations.

And it can be a tough thing to do. And I guess that's why a lot of people just keep And the unwanted things hidden in the fog.

I'll tell you what... it's a horrible feeling not having the support of your parents in certain aspects of your life. It's honestly quite a tricky thing to navigate through because if you have friends who aren't as supportive of our dreams, and are being a bit toxic we can just pronounce them on behalf of the church as blocked and deleted.

But with family it's different. A family is forever and I guess that is both good and bad know that no matter what you do they won't leave you (granted you don't do something so stupid like voting for the other side, you're mostly safe).

For me personally, I think I spent most of my early adolescent years pursuing someone else's path, someone else unmet dreams, and trying to please someone else. And even if I did follow the path that they approved of, it didn't leave me fulfilled.

And there came a point when I had to choose.

Do I wanna continue down that path and one day end up resenting my parents...

Or

Do I choose to go down my own path and end up full of guilt and resentment towards myself for the rest of my life for not being able to fulfil their dreams and wants and wishes.

And being the catholic school girl type, conservative on the outside, rebellious on the inside I chose the latter, mainly because in it I would be the one bearing the burden of guilt and not them...

I think my teenage years were the ones where I had the best relationship with my parents... because I used to tell them nothing... all subjects were kept light and fluffy.

We talked about food and politics and the Iran-contra scandal and Tom Cruise and that's all. There was nothing of value, nothing of substance.

They knew nothing about the hell life and school was for me or the fact I was basically doing all these gigs on the side. I kinda preferred things that way.

All they knew was that I finished the broccoli in my lunchbox, got good enough grades, didn't get into any kind of fights, heard nothing of any trouble from school... and came from school and spent most of my time clickity clackting on the computer and as long as I wasn't playing fortnight and stuff... they didn't care much about it.

They only knew and saw what I chose to show or tell them.

And I did it mostly to avoid all the excessive questioning... Who are these people I work with...? Who are my friends...? Do I even have any...? Why did I choose this career... ? Why am I reading Moby Dick...? Does it have anything to with dicks...? and on and on and on and I just wouldn't be able to stop it and end up with me taking a six-hour bath just to escape the incessant nagging and questioning.

And I hid all that because I knew that even as happy they would be to know all the big things their son is doing, they would feel like they're losing me.

The truth was that I had grown too fast for my family to find out (or for that matter a lot of people to find out).

And they were not yet ready for me to leave their nest yet.

And maybe somewhere deep down inside me I still wanted to be their faithful lil innocent pooch I had been in my childhood. Maybe I too wasn't ready to leave the nest yet back then. That's why I kept it all under the fog.

But I knew this could go on forever and slowly and slowly I started to reveal that life little by little until they knew just enough. Deciding to willingly confront all those uncomfortable conflicts.

And it's not that things or their views changed and it was all sunshine and daisies and everybody lived happily ever after. Some things changed some are still the same. But what changed in that process of willingly confronting these deep dark uncomfortable situations is that I became braver... it's like the dynamic of the relationship flipped... it went from being vertical to horizontal.

I slowly started to realize that they really just want the best for us and sometimes this idea of what's best for us is based on their perspective and is subject to their flaws and biases, and that idea maybe be completely different from what we want for ourselves.

I still remember when I got my first big gig and I told them they were more concerned about what would happen to my plans for college and what will happen to my academics. There wasn't any acknowledgement or support in this huge leap I had made and those times really upset me.

But looking back I now realize that they were just looking out for me and this is was their way of showing love and tenderness.

I think it's about slowly moving to a place where you don't feel the need to respond or prove yourself.

It's about learning to become your own standard.

It isn't an easy thing to do but it does feel freeing in a way, if you know what I mean.

We can't change their perception of us but what we can change the response to that perception.

P.S. - Oh man, this was a heavy post. I'm feeling damn vulnerable tonight. Felt like therapy in a way.

Might delete it later.