So sorry to hear it was a no go for changing your classes. However you are a champion, a winner that will find your way, you may not know that yet, but you will. Succeeding in the classes you don't really want to take is just one more step on a hard road you've already been traveling. Hopefully the rest of the journey will be smoother.
I sat and cried as I read your post. Our families are deeply connected to us, no matter if they were "good" or "bad". The emotional relationship is there. Children want and need to hear their parent say "Well done!". Your wanting that approval from your father is not wrong or weak or crazy or any other bad term you can think of. It's normal, as far as I can figure. You may never hear it or it might not come in the way you want it or the way you think it should. But, hopefully it will come for you some day. There was a time in my life when I thought I didn't have my fathers approval. Then one day while were having lunch at a resturant he says to me, "You know, I did worry about you and your sisters going to Indonesia with your Mom and step dad because I know you would take care of them." I wanted to reach across that table and slap his head off I was so angry. I wanted to yell at the top of my voice, "WHO THE HELL DO THINK WAS TAKING CARE OF ME!" It take me alot of years to realize what he was saying was he could trust me to take care of thing and be responsible. Yes, my father did all my life exspect more of me then my years should have thought was reasonable but in the end it has saved my life more then once. Just don't burn bridges with your family. You still have a lot of years of life left to live and as you become more confident you will find ways on your terms to interact with them. So right now you may not be able to deal with them directly, perhaps a nice card or a short phone call on a day that you can handled it. Or on a day that you know you'll get the messege machine.
How you treat your parents well help your children see how to deal with you.
But honestly to what end is it worth carrying on for?
Because we share a blood line? or because we are conditioned to continue to forgive parents?
Islamically I am conditioned to forgive my parents no matter what they have done to me. But if we look at the things they actually did to me, should I really have forgiveness for them?
I've been faced with the same choice they were, do I let the things that happened to me as a child repeat upon my own children, and in that small moment where I realised that I had part of them inside me, and I hit my own child, I knew then I did not want to repeat the cycle. I needed to change that about me. I needed to learn a new way.
We might be able to blame the fact that they were 1st generation, but my dad was educated. He can read. He can write. He was exposed to social services and the new model for raising children before I was a teenager. He had a chance to embrace a new way of behaving towards his kids, and even then he failed to take that chance.
He failed me. He failed my siblings. He let someone who wasn't even my natural mother, burn me and torture me for years, he let her forcefeed me babyshit mixed with chilli and watched her beat me when I threw up because of it. He beat me so many times himself.
I love my kids. I couldn't even begin to imagine what it must take for a parent to make their child bleed and continue to beat them even as the blood flies everywhere. I can't shake the fact that I don't believe they loved me.
I can understand a frustrated smack. I am a parent, I can understand how your children can drive you. My own son has been violent towards me, and the most I ever hurt him in return was because I had to restrain him, and I lost my cool I smacked him.......not with an implement, not with a knife that has been held over a fucking flame until the metal turns red, or listened as he screamed and begged for my fucking mercy.
Why.......why would I, or even do I continue to struggle with some pathetic desire to be loved by someone who failed me so badly?
I won't be making any phone call, I won't try anymore.
Talking about it on here in the blog helped me avoid making a mistake that I keep making, and that is giving into this conditioning that has made me believe family means something sacred. It doesn't. It is just the luck of the draw where you end up.
Thank you though, I understand why you maintain hope for me when it comes to them, but the truth is too much bad has happened and I'm too angry now.
My son will be getting out of prison in December. He hadn't spoken to me in years. Twelve years all of his adult life he has turned his back. I know it is opening myself to heart break to open the relationship up again. How though could it be any other way? If I ever stopped trying then I would for ever be plagued with the thoughts of "What has become of him?" or "How is he doing?"
Just my thoughts I hope you are well.
Wow lynna, that must have really broken your heart.
being rejected by my kids is one of my biggest fears. THIS family is all I have left and I don't want it to crumble into nothing like my parent/sibling family.
I wonder if they do, if I will forgive more often because they are my kids. Probably. I hope not.
My parents have paid a price for the things they did, for instance my brother, not the one who lives with me, has robbed their house I can't even count how many times. The house has been raided by the police for drugs. and yet they continued to forgive him and let him into the house over and over and over again.
he robbed them of their plasma tv, their mobiles, including my sisters, and my disabled sister, he stole their money. and the next day he was back home and my step mum just let him in. For years now she has continually forgiven him and he has continued to repeat the crime.
I don't want to be her. I don't want to let anyone treat me so badly and continue to forgive them because I am supposed to. I hope to whatever I can hope to, that I am able to turn my back on a child who behaves like my brother did towards my parents.
Not that I am saying that to you. I can totally identify with what you are saying right now. What if, how are they, will it be better. I hope for you it is better when he comes out. I hope you get the son you had when you held him in your arms the first time and felt all that hope for him.
Familial relationships are so hard.
Are we hard wired to love them naturally? or is the idea of family a social construct?
In rejecting my family am I liberated or unnatural?
No idea.
Topic: From the mouth of madness - My blog