My Dysfunctional Family

Many people have asked me how I could be so callous about my family. Indeed, I do feel somewhat disconnected from my family. My relationship with my family is somewhat complicated, especially with my life history and weird family dynamics. Out of my 20 years in life, I've spent 18 with my mom, 15 with my sister, and 9 with my dad. Even right now, my dad works in Thailand, my sister works in China, and my mom lives in Taiwan, while I'm in the US. I think my family's one of the most disjointed families out there (I have not yet met another person with every member of their family in a different country). We are also a very traditional patriarchal Chinese family, with power and control resting primarily in the hands of my dad.

In my earliest memories of life in Taiwan, the bad memories outnumber the good memories by a pretty big margin. In fact, when I look back now, some of the instances might represent child abuse situations. I remember being in gr.1, getting something like a 99% or 98% on a math test, and being beaten by my dad for it. I remember getting beaten by my mom for going to a friend's house after school (that one I could understand, I didn't tell her beforehand that I was going so she was worried). I also remember getting beaten by my sister for taking too long in the shower. In general, I remember getting beaten a lot. I was pressured to play the piano, do absolutely perfect in school, take on speed reading classes and mental math classes, and other crap as well. At the time, I wasn't bitter, I was just numb. Life was depressing, and I didn't have any real friends that I could remember (apart from 1 person that I met in piano class who I've known for 15 years and counting =D).

Even after I moved to Canada, my dad still controlled the puppet strings of the family. I hated talking on the phone with him, because he would always preface the conversation with "so how is math and science?" Never anything else, even today. He reminds me of the Communist Party in China...he was always one to shoot down any traces of free thought or nonconformity in the family. It never really was "my future", it was always "his future". So in my high school years, I did what he had done: study hard, be a nerd, and get straight A's. I went to the university he chose, and into the major he chose for me. In some ways, I love him for it, because it contributed to who I am today. In other ways, I hate him for it, because I can never know what would have happened otherwise, and I will never know now.

When I say that family doesn't mean much to me, that's not completely true. I love my family, and everything that they've done to get me to where I am today. When I say that family does not mean much to me, I mean that my family's opinion and thoughts really don't mean anything to me now. All thanks to study abroad and interning abroad.

In my entire life, my dad and I had one real father-to-son conversation, where he actually LISTENED to what I was saying instead of just saying what he thought. It was in my sophomore year, when I was thinking about going to Tunisia to intern with Shell. It was just a musing on my part, I didn't actually pursue it seriously. He attempted to shoot the idea down as usual, except I countered with rational arguments to every point that he had. At the end, we were both so mad at each other, and he basically said "ok you can go but you won't be my son anymore," at which point I started crying and I hanged up on him. From that point on, even after he called to apologize, I just stopped caring about what he thought.

My sister and mom tried to do the same thing a week later, except with my musings of semester-long study abroad in Germany. My sister threw arguments about me using up the family savings on my college education, and I threw back her incredibly wasteful purchase of a new 3 bedroom apartment just for herself. Eventually she said "hey here's a thought. Why don't you stop taking money from us and start earning your own way and see how you like it?" At which point I said "fine with me. I'll take out student loans myself and make it through college. But I won't be calling this family my family anymore." At which point my sister went silent, my mom started crying, and I hanged up the phone. And that was when I stopped caring about the rest of my family.

I've already seen the results of following my dad's path, in my sister. She's missed out on so much in life, and I feel bad for her, but I'm not going to make the same mistake. I know I'm justified in wanting to live life my own way, and not anybody else's way. If it were not for the Chinese belief of filial devotion to parents, I would have severed this relationship long ago. As it is, my current path is diverging with that of my family, but I'm tired of walking their money-centric path. I don't care about getting filthy rich like my family wants, I just want to live a full life, something which only time can buy. So there, that's my history with my family...do you think I'm justified in feeling what I feel?

-FCDH