I realized a few decades ago that many people are not comfortable with plain speaking. I don’t mean brutal honesty because I am not into that, but I do mean speaking without euphemisms. I started saying I was fat because I am. I don’t like ‘plump’ or ‘zaftig’ or ‘fluffy’. I don’t hate them, either, but they’re too vague for me. ‘Fat’ is a good, solid word. There’s nothing hidden about it. To me, it’s a neutral term, though I understand that other people don’t like it. I only use it to describe myself, not other people (unless they are like-minded).
Another term is old. I use it for myself in the RKG Discord because I’m definitely on the old side. I don’t think 53 is that old, but it’s ancient in gaming. I mean, the kids are complaining when they hit thirty of being old, so, yeah.
A concept that I get push back for is something I mentioned in yesterday’s post: My parents don’t love me. I used to say that they loved the concept of their daaughter, but I’m not even sure that is true any longer. Heer’s the thing. They should not have been parents. I don’t think they actually wanted to be parents, but it was drummed in their heads (back in the last millennium in Taiwan) that they had to do it.
My father did it for saving face purposes. That was what real men did. Got married and have kids. Fuck around on the side. Provide money for the family, which was all he needed to do. In his mind, anyway. And if my mother pushed back on aynthing he did (like spank my brother), then he petulantly said that he wouldn’t do anything at all.
I knew fairly early on that he did not want to be a father. My mother, on the other hand, had stated quite plainly that she always wanted to be a mother, that it was the most important thing in the world to her. It was all she wanted (so she said out loud), but it isn’t reflected in her actions. Or rather, she did the shit that she thought a mother was supposed to do (cooking, cleaning, sewing). She also pushed my brother and me to do all the things she thought a kid was supposed to do. In my case, it was dance (tap, ballet, jazz), an instrument (first, piano for a few years and then cello for seven or eight, the latter which included orchestra), ping-pong, T-ball/softball, volleyball), and I did try to get into acting, but that was for me. It’s so stereotypically Tiger Mom that my mother didn’t think my brother or I should have a second to breathe.
Anyway.
My mother didn’t like doing the mother stuff. She did it because she was supposed to and it was what being a mother was. She has said wistfully that the best time of her life was when my brother and I were babies and she was able to take six weeks off from work. This was when I was a full-grown adult. That she told me, I mean. Maybe when I was in my thirties or forties. In other words, the best time she had in her life was when my brother and I could not talk back and she was pretty much in charge of everything. That does not feel me with good cheer as you may imagine.
About ten years ago, I just let go. I gave up on my expectations as best I could. They’re still not completely gone, but I know my parents are who they are. They are not going to change. They are not suddenly going to become empathetic and caring people. They are never going to care about me on a personal level beacuse they cannot fathom–me.
I’m trying to make this as neutral as possbible. This is mostly not a ‘woe is me’ post (about 7% woe is me), but it’s going to sound like one no matter what. For the first thirty years of my life, I thought my parents didn’t want to know me. I mean, it’s true, but the reality is that they can’t know me.
Side note: When I was thirty or so, my therapist said something to me that blew my mind. She said that I spoke on a level of 5 or 6 whereas most people speak on a level of 1 or 2. The argument I had wasn’t because I could not find the right way to explain my point of view to the other person, but because they literally could not understand what I was saying. (The second finding of the Dunning Kruger study–that those who are really good at something vastly underestimate how much better they are than other people in that thing.)
This sank in with my parents. They grew up in a different era in a diffrent country under very different rules. They had the opportunity to grow from that, but they didn’t. I won’t say they chose not to because I’m not sure they’re capable. My medical crisis made me realize just how lost cause they were, and it’s when I finally put that last embering hope down.
My parents will never know me. They don’t know anything other than the most superficial things about me (and I’m not even sure my father knows that about me now), which is that I like the color black and…I think that’s it. Well, my mother knows I write, but she did not like the one short story I showed her decades ago. I tried to find my cleanest story (no sex and very little violence, and it was set in the building where she worked for twenty-five years), but her only comment was that there was so much swearing.
This is how far of a chasm there is between us.
I have reached a point where I can say that my parents don’t love me and not feel a pang in my heart about it. Half a pang, maybe, but not a full pang.
It really makes other people uncomfortable when I say it that openly. It’s taboo, really, because every single parent loves their child unconditionally and without reserve.
That’s all for today.