My dysfunctional family

Originally password protected.

I feel guilty for shouting at my mom. For hurting her in such a way because I couldn’t hold my temper in check. Old people hide their emotions really well, but I’ve known my mom too long to miss the hurting inside of her. Can I really claim that I know my mom?

Rather, can I really claim that I know my family?

All too soon, we fell back to the routine.  Our interactions became routine, our attitude towards each other became routine. I became routine. And I thought I’ve changed for the better.

What’s not routine is the frailty of the facade of a perfect family that we are maintaining. I seldom raise my voice, but why am I all of a sudden doing that to my mom out of impatience? I think it’s about time that we drop this facade and start saying these things that we bottle up inside. These stories that we are too ashamed to say so we can start healing instead of letting the wound fester. There’s not much time left to enjoy each other’s company. When I ask myself honestly I don’t understand my parents at all and I don’t see any reason why I am uncomfortable telling them about my problems.

I worry about my parents, but often put it at the back of my mind because I am at the point of my life where I am just about to soar. The reality of life means that conflicting things usually happen at the same time and events don’t happen in a timely matter to suit yourself. The time is NOW.

The truth of the matter is, I worry about their happiness. They should be enjoying life and it hurts me to see that they are not and are instead plagued by problems. It also scares me to see their frailty, which puts into focus the fact that I have to take over and become the strength in their life instead.

I am scared that they’ll die. All these talk we had about how to take care of things in the event of their death, the preparations, freaks me out. It brings that reality that much closer and we’ve hardly shared any good memories. There are problems in our family and we just pretend that these problems don’t exist. I sometimes wonder, whether or not I should just tell them that I know and I still see them as my family.

A traditional Asian family is often one where it is hard to feel loved. My family is unfortunate enough to have seen and felt what family love should be by the western standard only to find ourselves totally lacking in facilities to love and reciprocate. Add the burden of being the landing immigrant generation and I feel the weight of loneliness and isolation that my parents endured in order to provide a semblance of family life for our first few years here. How can I not cry for them inside when I understand all these pain?

There’s a saying that goes: “Live life as if everyday is your last day”. After my quarter life crisis, I realized that I should live life as if it is everyone’s last day.

I will apologize to mom come tomorrow morning.