We are back with another post about my goals for the new year. In my last post, I was talking about Taiji and how much it’s helped me in my life. It’s not hyperbole to say that it’s saved my life, both during the medical crisis (literally) and before it (emotionally).
My family dysfunction runs deep. Of course, as a kid, I did not realize how dysfunctional it was. That’s the thing about being a kid–you think your life is normal because you have no touchstones to anchor yourself to. In addition, my father was a Taiwanese nationalist and did not want to be in America. I did not realize this until maybe two years ago.
He went back to Taiwan when I was twenty-two or twenty-three. I have a feeling that he resented not being able to go back earlier. This is what I figured out. My parents both came to America for grad school (individually)–in Tennessee. My moather for her MA in psychology and my father for his MA in economics. They went to different schools, but met…not exactly sure. Probably at a Taiwanese event? (More likely, called Chinese something or other. I am not going to get into tho complicated politics of Taiwan.) My father did the hard press on my mother, and she fell for his charms.
After a year, my mother was done with her program. That meant she had to go back to Taiwan because her visa ran out. My father wasn’t done with his degree yet. Much gnashing of teeth was had. My father’s housemother told them that in America, people just got married in their situation.
I really wish she hadn’t told them that. My parents should never have gotten married, and they most certainly should not have had children. Sometimes, I wonder how different their lives would have been (individually) if they hadn’t married. My mother was engaged to someone in Taiwan when she met my father (long, misogynistic, archaic story), and she might have gone back to him if she hadn’t become besotted with my father.
My father got his degree after another year. They moved to Minnesota so he could go to the U of M to get his PhD, and my brother was born soon after. I was born 2 1/2 years later.
I think this was the point when my father got really bitter. I’m working with the assumption that he wanted to return to Taiwan. With that knowledge, everything afterwards makes sense. Well, not all of it, but it at least puts things into perspective.
My father fucked around on my mother all their marriage. With women from our church. He always had one special lady and probably one in the wings. I knew this since I wsa eight or nine–it wasn’t as if he was trying to hide it. I don’t mean that he explicitly said that he was having affairs, but it was pretty easy to tell.
We used to play tennis, and there was always one woman who would be extra extra sparkly around him. She would preen and prance around, just basking in his glow. He, of course, would be completely oblivious. Or rather, he was aware of it, but he just took it as his due. He would stand there, his face implacable, but I could tell he was just soaking it all in.
My brother told me a year or so ago that he knew when a woman called the house and asked for our father. My brother said he wasn’t there. The woman demanded to know who he was. When my brother said, “His son”, the woman gasped and hung up the phone. My brother was not adept at reading signals or emotions, but even he could tell what that was about.
I’ve known for several decades that my father did not really want kids (or probably to be married), but did it because that was what was expected of him. He was very much about appearences and not losing face. That mattered more to him than almost anything. So he got married and had kids because he did not want to look bad in his society if he didn’t.
He was a terrible father. He provided for us monetarily, yes, but that was it. He did none of the child-raising or the chores around the house. I think he might have went to some of my brother’s and my activities, but only because my mother made him. He moved back to Taiwan soon after I graduated from college, which underscores the idea that he was just raring to go back.
I’m saying all this because it informs how my relationship with my parents devolped (or didn’t). I really wished I had known when i was a kid that my parents did not love me as a person. It would have made such a big difference in my self-confidence. By the way, this is not a ‘woe is me’ or ‘give me pity’ statement. This is a matter-of-fact statement that people do not like to hear.
I was talking about families on Twitter once, and someone said to me that the worst was hoping for approval, even after his troubled parent was dead. That really resonated in me. Through Taiji, I have made my peace (to a point) with my parents. I had to accept them as they were because they were not going to change. I know it sounds bad to say, “Give up hope”, but that’s what made our relationship tolerable to me.
Taiji helped me learn to set boundaries. I’m still not great at it, but I am much better than I was before I started my study of Taiji. I also learned how to disengage (again, not that I did it all the time, but it was better than before). That’s the benefit of Taiji, really, not the combat stuff. Ideally, I will never be in a fight, but I will always be in relationships.
Dying and coming back (twice) really clarified my relationship with my parents. It made me see without a shadow of a doubt how fucked up they were and how they were never going to change. I mean, if me dying was not enough to change them, then nothing would be. To be clear, I knew that intellectually before they came here for three months after my medical crisis, but nothing like dying to truly clarify things for a person.
Wow. I did not get anywhere near the point I wanted to get to. Oh well!