The Lies We Live

family life

"we all suckerz for something."

It is unfair to say that we are bad people if we don't not love our parents. For all you know my parents could be abusive, evil, or just not even there. Understandably it is hard to tell people these things because sometimes we fail to realize that there is something wrong.

I grew up with an emptiness in my house. A space that could never be filled no matter how many people came and went. And sometimes when I'm crying, I can feel the walls close around me. A suffocating sensation where  this room turns into a pit, and I'm left in darkness, or silence, and it's hard to tell which hits me first.

My mother was depressed since I was too young to remember. It's almost sad thinking that you had such a great parent, but you never got to really know that person. Because she became the illness instead of having it. Embodying all its traits and leaving us to deal with the consequences.  Instead of giving me the genes of her beauty, she gave me the genes of her sickness. So you can't blame me, for being angry when all these things were in my reach, only to have it ripped out my sight.

My idea of love has always been distorted, it's from those God-awful movies and my parents. But truth is, it's neither of those things. Love can not be given or shown or touched. We just know sometimes. Not the smile they give, but what's beneath it. When they hold you so tight, it is not the proximity that we take comfort in, it's this warm buzz on the inside, because all of the sudden you remember, you're alive, and you're okay with that.

Love is not fighting. Love is not threats of divorce every night. Love is not praying that the neighbors don't hear your parents fighting at night. Of course sometimes arranged marriages do work, because people choose to kindle love after commitment instead of vice versa. And yes, with the right people, it might work. But my parent are a different story.

Raised the same way, in the same poverty, and yet still so different. Neither of them were over-intelligent thinkers, and for a while that concerned me. That maybe everything I saw and realized was a part of the illness, that it wasn't the more I had been hoping for. But my father did love poetry, and he worked against fate to get where he's brought us today. While my mother was a perfectionist, an over-analyzer. I like to think that I got the best and the worst of the two.

He doesn't talk about the poetry he used to listen to, but he doesn't stop me from performing spoken word or writing my book. He teaches me physics and get's mad when I mess up. Not because he's frustrated,  but because he  has this idea in his mind that I'm some kind of genius. This undying faith that I will do great things one day, regardless of where I go, or who I become.

He tells me I'm failing because I worry too much. Because I stress too much. I'd agree, because even my shrinks telling me about the damage depression does to your frontal lobe. If only I could be successful, then maybe our tiny, insignificant family, in this infinitely more insignificant town will stand for something. But I fear that people will not be ready to hear big words out of such a small girl.

Or even worse, I'll begin to believe it. I'll disappoint my parents, and I try to tell them these things, but they don't seem to hear it.

My father once said:

"If I ever thought about how poor I was and how rich other's were, today I would still be poor."

This hit me relatively hard because I understand that if you ever really wanted something, there's not much left to stand in your way. It's not a lie. You can do anything you put your mind to because the brain works in a funny way.

I read once that humans have the ability to bite right through a human finger, but the only thing stopping you is your frontal lobe and the messages it's sending to your nerves. I think the same mentality works here. The only thing between standing between you and a goal, is the idea that doing such a thing will cause you pain, more commonly known as a fear of failure. Most of it is mental I suppose. Your life may be paved by destiny, but it's you who decides where to walk.

My father wasn't smart, and he never had the option to be dumb either. He was the oldest son, and the duty fell on him to be the successful one in the family according to cultural values. So with the push of knowing that there was close to nothing to return to, he kept going. He got the grades. He never owned a computer until after he became a computer engineer. He got a job, got married, had kids, and did his best to make his parents proud. Sometimes I look at him and wish that I was well enough to do the same.

I was trying and still am. All these success stories float around me like passing clouds, and I hope one day I will earn my place in carrying the wind too. I'm not coming with the same privileges to school, but I promise myself and my parents, that I will be just as, if not more successful than everyone else.