Everybody says that we should be thankful and have respect for our parents because after all we owe our breaths to them. Had it not been for my parents I wouldn’t be sitting here writing this article. Perhaps I could’ve been thrown away into some dustbin even before breathing for the first time had it not been my luck for being born into this family. I am really grateful to my parents for everything they’ve been doing for me for all these years and I guess there’s nobody on this entire planet who could have loved me more. Yet, a part of me is always in a mental-emotional conflict whether or not they feel the same.
My parents have really been so good when it comes to things like financially providing me with all the basic necessities to the best available education and buying me expensive gadgets. Yet, I feel my parents are not sufficient. I might be sounding really ungrateful right now, but I cannot help but feel this terrible ache in my heart while penning this down.
I come from a family where most of the children have received an average education, boys and girls alike. Here it doesn’t matter what educational qualifications a child has but entirely the financial and societal relations of the family with the rest of the community. In spite of that, my parents chose to put me and my siblings in the best schools that our town had. They paid good attention to us while we were in schools and made sure we made the most out of the academic facilities available to us.
But all these years, I’ve never felt that hearty connection with them that we know exists between a parent and a child. Long story short, they’ve succeed in providing us with all the financial help parents can, but when it comes to fulfilling our emotional and psychological needs, they’ve failed terribly.
There’s not been a single day from the time I can remember when they’ve been soft to us. Even if the day passes on smoothly without any bickering. By the end of the day something or the other pops up where they get a chance to smack us. With each passing day, it’s getting so difficult to live peacefully in this house. I don’t even see any hope of things improving in the near future.
I don’t know what’s to be blamed for this swirling divide between us, since there’s no communication between us since my childhood. Maybe it’s because of the fact that they’re both working and have a lot of burden upon their heads professionally.
Or maybe because they’ve been too harsh with us trying to inculcate the “sanskaars” in their kids that every time my siblings or I object to some decision taken by them and try to communicate about it, they abruptly ask us to shut our mouths.
And now, we fear our parents.
We fear talking to them about the most menial things that every parent and child does very willingly. We have their company yet we feel like there’s nobody on this earth to listen to us.
It’s really very strange for me when I hear my friends talk about the times when they have REAL conversations with their parents about basic things at this age like proposals from the opposite sex or discussions about their favorite movies. I’ve never done that with my parents. Everybody has either their mother or father who’d defend them whenever the other scolds over some small issue. But in our case, no matter how minor the mistake, if one parent is bashing us, the other in no way would try to protect, but would say more bad things, till we end up with red faces.
Barring all this, I even get to hear from my friends how they get huffed with their parents sometimes and the “pampering” that follows. I’ve never had any such moments with my parents. Not even once. Even if I do get vexed with them sometimes, they never approach me with the dinner to my room. Instead, they won’t cook for me that day and sometimes even the week that follows.
We’ve never had any good moments lately to cherish throughout our lives. We don’t click family photographs even on special occasions. We don’t celebrate birthdays and anniversaries. We don’t go out on vacations. I try to make myself understand that perhaps it’s me who needs to initiate the first move to build communication with them. But when I try to do that, either the television’s volume is raised, or they’d ask me directly to leave the room. Sometimes we even get a thrashing from them merely for the reason that we dared to open our mouths. I have felt the urge to silently go to my room and hang myself a number of times. I have attempted suicide in a moment of rage. I have even felt the urge to murder them and I know it’s not normal.
Communication is the only key to bridge differences in any relationship but what am I supposed to do if there’s nobody to listen to us, forget understanding. I try my best not to provoke their anger by living up to their expectations. I’ve always been an above average student throughout my school life. My teachers always praised me for being one of the most sincere students of class. I’m sure there’s no academic reason for this behavior. And I’m sure there’s no economic problem in our house. I help them with all the household chores, ranging from cooking to mopping the floor to cleaning the dishes, on a DAILY basis. Yet they complain about me not being obedient enough. These complain comes with a number of bad and irrelevant words.
I am ready to adjust and even help them out but only if they’d let me know about the problem. Sometimes I wonder if there’s any problem at all or it’s just the way they were brought up by their parents and this is how everybody defines good parenting. I try not to complain about this but it’s affecting my personality in a number of ways. I am always annoyed at the very little things that do not even matter to normal kids of my age. I have this feeling of anxiety of whether if I’ll ever have a normal parent-child relationship with my parents or not. If I’ll ever get to know the fun side of me and my parents. I feel so suffocated knowing that I’m becoming a hassle for my friends and family to tolerate. I pity myself that I can go on crying for hours and live without having food for days yet not succeed in finding a permanent solution to this permanent problem.
I have learnt to compromise a little and be thankful for whatever I have. But there are a number of real things that I want to talk to my parents and that can’t wait. Like the college I want to join in the upcoming month, when results would be out. But, there’s no point in even trying because they won’t listen. They’ve already made up their minds that I cannot leave the town for further studies. I can see all my dreams being crushed under this stigma of insufficient parenting and there’s no scope for help. I think this is going to be a life full of compromises. Because parents and their behavior do affect our entire lives, our decisions, our future. Reminds me of a quote I read somewhere-
Much as some of us fight it, our parents have a mystical hold over us, the power to affect our thoughts and emotions the way only they can. It’s a bond that changes over time, but doesn’t diminish, even if they’re half a world away, or in another world entirely. It’s a power we never fully understand. We’re left only to wonder that when our time comes, what kind of hold will we have on our children?
This post originally appeared here.