I think I resent my parents.
I dont want to say hate, it’s too strong of a word. But I dont think I can comfortably say I like who they are as people. I thought that with all the conversations I had with my mum I healed and I grew out of this. I grew up and I wasn’t the child that wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t the child that wasn’t smart enough. I wasn’t the child who wasn’t pretty enough. I thought I grew up and achieved all of that. But from the shore, it doesn’t seem so anymore.
I think I grew up and I hid myself. I grew up and I wasn’t obligated to tell them anything anymore. I wasn’t obligated to listen and I wasn’t obligated to perform to their opinion. I think in the meantime that worked great. But looking from where I stand now, I think my parents hurt me in so many ways I didn’t even realise I was carrying with me today.
The way my parents raised me, and as they proudly claim, an 'independent' and 'critical' person. Looking on it now, I think my parents abandoned me. Their idea of creating an independent thinker was throwing me into the deep end and waiting for me to learn to swim. I suppose I did learn to swim, but I think after a while I learned to float and when you float there’s this perfect level when you’re facing the sky but your ears are underwater and you can’t hear any more. After a while of floating I realised I was tall enough to get out of the water, but not old enough to leave. So I sat there and I watched other waters, I watched my siblings learn to swim and just sat by the edge.
I think watching how everyone else learns to swim and comparing it against the way I learned nestled something in me. I was jealous for a while, seeing how everyone else enjoyed swimming but to me it was conserving enough energy to stay afloat. But when I looked back into my own waters, and saw my parents jumping into the pool with siblings, giving them floaties and letting them hold the railing instead, that’s when the anger started to build.
And when anger comes it doesn’t leave as easily. For me, anger raised my ears out of the water and what I thought was my lack of ability to feel, to experience love, happiness, sadness and grief turned out to be my own coping mechanism of surviving the open waters my parents threw me into, instead of the chlorinated and temperature controlled waters my younger siblings got. As I was floating, it wasn’t just my hearing that I had given up, I gave up my ability to feel and replaced it with an intellectualised from of surface level emotion.
And now sitting on the shore, with my feet facing my sea and looking back at the pool my parents now prefer, I realise I am alone. And so now when they call me over to sit amongst them, to drink some tea or share their sunscreen I realise they will never know how the hurt and the damage they put into me, as independency and critical thinking.
It’s not that I’m just different and feel emotions differently. It’s not that I grew up faster than I should. Its not that i dont think i can ever learn to trust. It’s not that I didn’t have lovely sunny days on the beach my parents gave me. The hurt I carry with me is in the waves that toppled me before I could see them coming. Its the rip tides that caught me as I tried to rejoin my parents on that shore. The hurt I carry is in the waves that I tried to use to push myself back to their shores, only to reach their backs, or their calls to keep trying, and go for more!
As I watched their backs, I think that’s when I started to learn the dynamic of the people I call my family. My father only learned to be a father, as he learnt from his failure with me. And my mother? She learnt how to be herself with me, and a mother after I didn’t need one.
Raising their first child, my father took to the only authoritative figure he knew, a teacher. And so as he raised his first child, he taught her how to grow up in the most step by step logical method he could break it down into. And as my mother raised her first child, she did so on the puppet strings of my father. And so together, as they equipped me with all the skills I would ever need to successfully pass each stage, my parents did not yet reach the understanding that a child is different to student. A child needs love, and comfort and reassurance. A child needs a place of refuge and trust she can turn to so that if swimming becomes difficult there is always a shore she is welcome to. What my parents raised was a student, they raised me without a shore and so I became the independent and critical graduate they always envisioned.
When you think about it like that, it worked. Their parenting acheived the exact result they were after. But as the child, as I grow up I pray to never become who they were to me. I hope to be a mother who slips out the words “I love you” just accidentally instead of as a reasoning clause. I hope to be a mother who gives hugs just because and not in apology for who she was. I hope to be a mother who gets into the water and never let's go until I know for sure.
Feb 26, 2024
Feb 26, 2024 at 3:56 AM UTC
day in, day out
night in, till night out
with every sunset
and every sunrise
I watched their love
dance against the lights
their love went against the times
for in the black darkness of the nights
they made their own lights
a beautiful romance, defined by the
collusions of deep pinks and purple's
a light show joined with the deepest of reds
and the whimsical hues of orange
as they whispered to each other
confessions of their love
a sole, within each others arms
and when the twilight lights began
to light the skies
their love dimmed, fading to melancholy blue
their blue's, a sea of sadness
a sea of separation
in which the waves were too rough
for even a boat to sail through
and then when the sky
reached its happiest blue of noon
their love, isolated
darkened to the most numb of grey
their pain a stormy sky
with silent strikes of lightning
and no thunder to match
but when the suns began to set
time began to sync
with the colours of their love
the pinks of anticipation
to see the other again
and the cycle repeated day in and day out
night in and night out
with every sunrise and sunset
the romantic within me
cried at their spectacle
it tore at me so, to see the whimsical colours
of their tragic light show
fade into the most saddest of grey
so against the wishes of my master
I helped them whisk away
and prayed the perilous boat
would sail their seas
to land where their storm may cease.
Aug 24, 2019
Aug 24, 2019 at 11:49 PM UTC
The trails on her face
As if permanently etched
Falling from the ever-changing
Lights if her eyes
From bright to dim
To almost gone
Falling to the point of her chin
Sloping to a halt
The trails dewey in nature
As if permanently etched to her.
Dec 19, 2018
Dec 19, 2018 at 1:24 AM UTC
Not a painting for you to critic
Not an artwork to examine
Not a dancer for you to judge
But,
The calm before the storm
And the storm in all its works,
The hail.
The rain.
The thunder.
The lightning.
I am the wrekcage of the storm
In all its disaster
The destruction
The chaos
But,
I am the flourishing afterwards
The trees.
The water.
The blooms.
The life.
I am me.
In all my chaos.
With all my works.
A force
To be reckoned with.
Dec 19, 2018
Dec 19, 2018 at 1:21 AM UTC
She wanted to be the thunder
in all its deafening presence
but like the flower in wind
the thunder blew her away
swept her off her feet.
The boy despised thunder
Found it too attention seeking
For he saw it in the mirror every other day
But if
he turned his head
A fraction to the right
And looked out that looming window
He'd see a flower in his wind
And he'd smile
With all his thunder
At the girl below
The girl with the deafening ability
To coax out his thunder
for her to dance to
As they made their music in the rain
Dec 19, 2018
Dec 19, 2018 at 1:15 AM UTC
I think
what I found the hardest
was to love myself
if I wasn't even
one person
I was a different person
with different people
and a different person
to me
I think what I hated
was not being loved
or maybe I was
but just not for being
the person
that I see
I think what hurt
was the art of never knowing
what person I would be
with all these
different pictures
painted around me
But most of all I think
that if I want to love
I need to love me.
and to do that
I need to be the person
that
I
see.
and not who
you want me
to
be.
May 22, 2018
May 22, 2018 at 7:48 AM UTC
he never was alone
because his words had
conquered him
quite long ago
they tickled him
they tortured him
they controlled him
they
were
him.
they were his skin
they were his bones
his words
became
him.
Every passing second
every engraved thought
he must
delay
delay
delay
I must not think at all
too many words
will become too much
and too much
would shatter him
so delay his thoughts he must
but to not think
is quite harsh a predicament
it was a parasite
his words
for they controlled
but he controlled them
it was an existence
he fought to change
but an existence he fought to remain
because it was an existence
and that remained enough
May 20, 2018
May 20, 2018 at 7:37 AM UTC
I'm sorry
that I was never there
for you
as you were
for me
I'm sorry
that I lost you
Before I realised
I loved you
I'm sorry
that in this apology
I'm still as selfish
as always
But most of all
I'm sorry
for never being enough
May 18, 2018
May 18, 2018 at 4:18 AM UTC
Can you tell me
what its like
to fall
so very deeply
in love?
can you tell me what its like
to prioritise another breath
over your own
can you tell me why
i can't fall in love
or am a monster
born to observe
but never have
anything
that is
love.
May 17, 2018
May 17, 2018 at 8:11 AM UTC
I'm honestly quite tired
of this game of push and pull
where I'm always the pawn
and you're always the Queen
I'm really quite exhausted
of all your extremes
of this anticipation,
as to when
or if ever-
you'll love me again
because, I haven't always been
a pawn, a toy
I haven't always been
something only yours
I had something once before
where I determined
what I was
But once upon a time
I loved you enough, to let you instead
So please, love me for me
or give me back myself
Because honestly, I'm quite tired
of such a game
as exhausting as you
May 17, 2018
May 17, 2018 at 7:00 AM UTC