From Here

Hey, it's been a while.
I have some grievances to air and with all the social media platforms I subscribe to this blog is the least visited. That is to say I don't really want people reading this, but at the same time I don't want to keep it for myself. It's complicated. And I thought at the age of 21 I'm well past the complicated period of teenage ranting and brooding. I thought wrong. Though I'm not really stuck in any kind of void again trying to claw myself up or out of the existential crisis that comes with it, I still feel a heavy weight unwillingly mounted on me and that weight keeps getting heavier.
For what's it worth, I'm doing this to take a bit of that burden away.


Maybe I should start with my parents. 

So ready?
Here we go.

My dad works abroad since I was three years old, mom is a self-employed homemaker. During the first few years of his work, dad always had two months of vacation for every seven months of work. Lately, it has been two to three months of vacation for five months of work. As far back as I can remember there hasn't been a vacation where mom and dad didn't have an argument. Most of the time it's because of trivial things such as differences of opinion, other times it's because of one or the other being unfaithful to the relationship. This family has come under siege plenty of times because the two opposing sides of that war share a single goddamn bed under one godforsaken roof.

There are a lot of factors coming into play, really. And, always, both of them are in the wrong.

It's a well known fact in our household that dad has an incredibly short temper. Like incredibly short, it's almost a superpower. Things don't go the way he wants to, even the little things like proper waste bag management, he flips out into a condescending fit of rage. But even in his calm/default setting, he thinks of others so low and of himself so high that it's mandatory for everyone to follow in his principles. He's like nazi Jesus jacked up on steroids hellbent on making the entire world his disciple, and in the process making a Judas out of all of us. He'll find and take every opportunity he could to insult us. It's textbook superiority complex. And to complement that complex is his impulsive nature to hand out monetary gifts to everyone. EVERYONE. Shouldn't Jesus be the one taking the money? Nope. This one, dad, he gives money and not in a donation kind of way but in a charitable organization kind of way. I'm guessing that if he could, he'd give trust funds to every toddler he comes across on the way to the nearest barbecue stand.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that, he's too hellbent in "helping" others to satisfy his need to be superior that he doesn't even recognize his own needs. It's a scam. And he's scamming himself.

Unfortunately, I can't fault him entirely for this. You know the saying of how it takes a village to raise a child? Or the culture surrounding a growing child is forever injected into his personality? Well that's how it was for him. Dad's parents live a few provinces away from us (thank god) so we only ever get a handful of chances to visit. None of those, let me repeat, none of those visits were the least bit pleasant. I mean, they have a nice house tucked far inside an alley that extends to an almost hidden community. They have cars, a well-kept garden, a freakin' mailbox, and a guard dog. You'd think inside the house are pleasant old people with younger-old people but it's really the perfect setting for a low-budget psychological horror movie.

All I can say is the grandfather on the father side has an incredible god complex. Scientists might consider him a milestone in the field of psychology. And that god complex obviously influenced my dad's superiority complex. And knowing that their genes most likely leaked into my very well being makes me question if I'd grow up like them.

I do hope not.
I don't pray anymore but if I had to I'll pray to be nothing like them.

Then there's my mom. She's always been there for me. She raised me and taught me the dos and don'ts of being a decent human and for the longest time I thought everything about her was right. Everyday she walks selling garments, frozen food, lifestyle accessories, and such. Why does she do it? To compensate for my dad's charitable impulses? Maybe. But that's how she was taught. My mom's side of the family has a history with their husbands. 

My great-grandmother lost her husband when their children were only two and four (or five) years old. My grandmother lost her husband when my mom was eleven years old, and she has two other older siblings. It's like a curse in the family to have a complicated marital affair. But all of those women my great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother are tough as nails and know how hard life can be. While I don't know much about her and only going from stories, my great-grandmother was rather business minded. She was the one who taught my mom how the handling of money from employer to employee works.
The employee does the exhausting part of the job but the lion's share of the profits goes to the employer. It's a case of who works harder, and who works smarter. Same goes for my grandmother. Same goes for me mother. But unlike my grandmother and great-grandmother, my mother has been conditioned to sometimes depend on her husband. But, again, she tries. She tries to be as independent as she can because she knows just how much of a slump a person can fall into when she's suddenly left with no one to lean on.

But she remains as positive as she can be. Smiling on difficult situations, or just laughing of her troubles. It gets annoying. She fails to read the situation and when you call her out for it she'll flip out. Saying that she's tired of all these perfectionists around her, when she herself tend to rage over small imperfections. And that's coming from a highly religious person. It's sad to think it, but yes my mom can be a hypocrite.

And that's probably why my mom and dad are always at odds with each other. Either one will always threaten to leave the other. They just can't seem to get along for a very long period of time. Or maybe they did but I just didn't see it. They've been together for like 28 years now. But why do they always take a wrong turn?



So where does that leave me? 
Here.
I'm still here. But it doesn't seem like being here isn't a good thing.

Wherever you are in life, the people around you will always be curious about where you're headed and how fast you're getting there. Your parents comparing you to your friends, your grandparents comparing you to how they were at your age, your nosy aunts and uncles comparing you to your cousins, they make it a race to see who's ahead. It's always a competition and the goal for them is to see who's the most disappointing child.

Just a while ago my dad gave a rundown of the people he knew from my elementary and high school days to see how they were doing. I know why he does that and it's has less to do with pure curiosity than to spite me. One friend already has a family, one already graduated and have a decent job, one is already a licensed engineer...what about me dad?

The closest question dad asked that's directly about me all day was how much were the things that I've been buying. The Nintendo Switch, my Legend of Zelda manga collection, my recently bought Intuos Comic. How much were those? He's auditing me. And I don't know exactly what to feel about that.

But it's not just my dad. Even my mom who keeps telling me to find other jobs. Go to the city, go to America, go to Canada, go work at the nearest well-developed town. I get it. 

Even I'm not content with where I am now but I'm not too keen on letting others dictate the pace with which I stride towards my goals. Because they don't know what I want to do.

I graduated BS Computer Science in what is considered to be the most prestigious university in the country. But people seem to forget that it took decades to build that prestige and that it doesn't rub on every student. Maybe I came out a different person than when I came in (calm your tatas that's not an innuendo) but people are really there to bring you down. Just because you're from that university you have to function on the upper echelon of society, otherwise you're just a waste. And if that's the case, then so I am. This is the real world our instructors warned us about. But I wasn't hoping for that real world to begin with my parents.

I was confused five years ago when I started to code my first "Hello World" program, and now having a below minimum-wage working as a web developer for our local municipality, I'm still confused. It's like I hit a dead end on my very first job. But that's why. That's why I'm creating my own path. Why would I want others to dictate where I go when I can carve a path to where I want to go.

These people only care about where you are. Your stature in life, the money you earn, the hearts you break, the gadgets you deserve to have, and the photos you can or can't take. It's exhausting, but more so disappointing because they don't seem to care if you've already made it to where you want to be.

Where do I want to be? I'm getting there. On my own pace, on my own direction. But right now I'm here. And I get to choose where I'll go...from here.