a family post

I want to talk about a few things real quick.

I was talking to my mom on the way back from my internship yesterday, and Father’s Day came up. We ended up talking about dad, and it was only really until then when I realized I need to put this down somewhere.

To be brutally honest, my dad is not my favorite person in this world. Yes, I sound like a terrible person and I cannot deny how I sound, but it is true, mainly because how my dad has been-or tried to be-a father. He has been the main financial support of the family, and I’m grateful for that. But what I want to talk about is the fact that he has been a huge emotional burden of the family. His temper, super hypocritical and pessimistic world view, critical impulses and thoughts, and incapability to communicate have caused countless of discord in the family. He has never solved any problems with words, wits, or patience. As a result, he has barely taught me anything valuable in life; in reality, I have grown up sworn not to be like him in so many ways.

It is my mom who has been to real emotional support behind the scenes, constantly putting up with my dad’s nonsense shouting and thoughts, his negative inputs of this family. She has always been the mental, emotional, and even spiritual support in this family. Honestly, I truly think that if it weren’t for my mom’s emotional strength, this family would have easily fallen apart.

Kinda sad, eh?

But that is just all background information for this post/rant.

So back in the car: we’re talking about my dad and I was once again reminded of his lack of a good childhood, along with an essentially malfunctioned family structure of his own (so my grandparents on his side). I won’t go into details here, but after about 15 mins of talk, I realized I have never really bothered asking about how he grew up, and my mom never really mentioned it either. It made me realize two things: 1) I have pretty much ignored his early life experience without knowing, and 2) after having that in the equation, he might be trying to be a good dad from scratch, all the time (in short, he had no real father figure).

While it was how I was brought up, and how I’ve grown to know him, I have learned to be less critical of him and how he talks and expresses himself, and to correct him and his thoughts whenever I can. A lot of the times his incentives are ill-driven, but sometimes he still has good intentions. He just…sucks at being a father, and I’d give him a bad rating.

But he’s my dad, and maybe with time, we can still change him.