I’m Sorry
After almost 24 years of living, I finally understood what my dad was all about – not thoroughly, but more like meeting him halfway in the emotional journey. I’m not entirely sure how I managed to come face to face with this realization – perhaps it had something to do with the way my parents were these days; whenever they got to see each other, which was usually every Monday evening, they seemed more like any other normal parents would. Especially last Sunday, as we went grocery shopping, I was struck by the beauty of the ordinariness of it – we were doing the idle chit-chat, saying funny comments to each other and just simply spending the weekend together, like any other normal family would.
The whole togetherness of us that I hadn’t felt since I was small made my dad seem a lot more relaxed and opened. It was as if we almost didn’t have any communication barrier between us. Then something made me realize that after what we’d all been through, my dad was simply just a middle aged man who’d seen his children grew up and went their separate ways. His inability to reach out to them was something he couldn’t fix, the same ways that I couldn’t fix my own neurotic side.
Having been living overseas for six years, my arrogance had belittled and disrespected my dad and made me think of him as an old fashioned, conservative man whose views would never apply to the real world, let alone about life and most importantly, my life. I refused to acknowledge that he was probably struggling with his own problems too, emotionally and physically. Over the years I had seen him suffer from many illnesses and diseases and watched him age, and somehow the image of me sitting on his shoulders pretending to be an aero plane kept coming back and it was devastating.
I never thought that he might’ve wanted to be understood and loved too, despite all the things that had happened in the past that might have disintegrated the love that a daughter could reflect towards her father.
As my own life’s experience became richer, it came to my realization that whatever it is that I’m going through right now, in my own life – my parents nevertheless must have been through worse.
And all those things that they’d been struggling for, they’d done them all for me. How heartbreaking it must be for them to see their own little girl growing up with such bitterness and cold exterior, invisibly developing and becoming hardened as the years go by, and as she’d lost her innocence and cheerful self, the image of the little me in her kinder uniform, singing and prancing around to the school mars with the smallest attempt of a pigtail on top of her head – gone.
I bawled my eyes as I wrote this, not because I am having just another “child guilt tears”, but because I kept thinking about the time when I didn’t speak to my dad for months, and for something that seem so insignificant it signified what a selfish, ungrateful daughter I’ve become. It never occurred to me that neither of my parents ever had the same support and privilege that I’d received, yet I, with my own selfishness, have forgotten how tough it must have been for them to provide me with all the luxury that I have around me, and seem to want more and more.
Sometimes our own self-centered ways of wanting to be heard and understood – the whole “I’m your child therefore you must love me unconditionally” way of thinking has prevented us to try to put ourselves in our parent’s shoes. We forgot that parents, like us, were just human beings too, because we tend to turn a blind eye to their weaknesses, mistakes and errors. We forgot that they have only tried to love us in the way they thought was best, and ironically, we seldom put our best love for them, or even make an attempt to reciprocate, because we have always believed that our parents were there to love us regardless, no questions asked.
We dismiss, or perhaps truly forget, that they’d raised us since we were powerless little beings and there is really no greater love than parents would have to their children.
I hope that in this 24th year of my life, it’s not too late to show to my parents how grateful and truly blessed I am for having them, and how sorry I am for not wanting to understand where and how they really came from, nor what life must have been when they were my age, and no matter what happen I wouldn’t want to trade them for anything else in the world.
4 comments
babe… i’m so happy for you.. i’m glad to know that everything is going better..
Told ya.. life will come around..
)
Love you sweetiiee…
Well, it’s not exactly perfect but I guess I’ve learnt to accept things just the way they are…
nice post
fanX