Come on, let’s be real — it could be your mom, your dad, or your sibling (or maybe look in the mirror — can it be you?). Maybe not always, but definitely at a certain point, one of them has made you felt sh*t out of their own issues they did not resolve.
I used to consider my family somewhat healthy. My parents are still together after 30+ years of marriage, my brother lets me subscribe to his premium VPN account and pay for my Spotify for years without asking me to pay him back, I did lots of therapy and journaling to keep my brain clear. It was before I came back to Vietnam after 8 years living away from all of them. Through the phone and our short 1 to 2-month of summer break together, it all seemed great and easy.
Now, here I am, living in the same house with them, waking up to the noise of my niece crying asking for her mom, and going to bed after being shouted at for staying up so damn late. Actually, this doesn’t make them toxic — none of this usual family stuff. 80% of my time at home has been quite an easy ride, not having to cook, do my laundry. I even slept until 11 am knowing I’ll have a really good lunch waiting for me when I wake up. I’d say all in all, it was pretty good.
The 20% of the time, my father would snap. It’s not a violent snap, let me just put that disclaimer right there. He’s just a very defensive man. He would snap whenever someone calls him out on his unhealthy habits. My father smokes, a lot when he was younger, 3–4 cigarettes a day now that he’s 65. He also drinks, not heavily. He drinks a few shots every meal and used to take pride on being able to handle a lot of alcohol. That was before he tripped and hurt himself 1 year ago. That was when we realized he is no longer that fun charismatic father at parties like when he was 40.
I started feeling worried, we all did. In a way, that made my decision to go back home easier — I wanted to be there for him like how he was there for me when I was small. Yet at home, it was not that easy. You know when you care for someone so much you couldn’t handle them going down the wrong path without saying anything? That’s how I felt about seeing my father drink and smoke everyday now that I’m at home. I would tell him that I’m worried, that I feel like he will feel much better if he smoke less. I know I was being annoying, so I tried to only bring this up when he is about to go out for a gathering.
Most of the times I say something like that, I got a really bitter gaze, and some very hurtful things: “Stop acting as if you know everything”, “Go take care of your own life”, “Who do you think you are?”, “Minding other people’s business seems to be a new hobby of your huh?”. I tried to take these lightly — as if this is a cost of practicing my conscience and of trying to be a good daughter. But with this repeated throughout the last 2 months, I realized sometimes you need to ask yourself a few questions, and make a decision of whether you should continue trying to protect someone while hurting yourself, or not. These are the 3 questions I asked:
1.Where is he coming from? I know it sounds generic but in the beginning, it really helped me through the hard emotions asking this question. I realized, coming from a farm in the middle province of Vietnam, then making his way as the first generation in our family to go to university, my father probably had to be as rough as he could to pull through, hence the way he spoke. He was a businessman, and back in the Renovation era of the country, business was not something polished and well-pursued like in modern days. You have to shout and stand your ground and even be willing to fight to make sure people literally steal from you. Because he made it on his own amid this difficult time, my father has this firm belief in himself — meaning he knows best, he is right, and no other things or people can negate these facts. It doesn’t make the hurtful things less hurtful, but at least it made me less resentful towards my father, but more towards the things he said.
2. Have you tried to communicate this? I hate confrontation. And I hate confrontation with my dad even more. I used to have this conditional reaction where I start crying whenever I want to bring something up with him. It’s weird. I was not even that scared. In fact, sometimes I hadn’t even started talking about the topic yet. It was felt like how when I was younger, every time my dad tried to discipline me, he shouted and talked in such loud voice I always ended up sobbing for hours.
Now that I’m 26 and am somewhat financially independent, I have learnt to draw my boundaries and give feedback to others even though it is so hard sometimes. I would feel a bit shaky when I started confronting my dad at times, and even cried, but I slowly started getting better. Now I don’t cry anymore. I don’t feel like I’m shaking. I still take a long time contemplating what I want to say to him. I started to learn that he is quite accepting and understanding about certain things. If I don’t communicate, the default is him not changing. If I did, at least there’s a chance. Unfortunately, I also brought up this incident to him, but it has not changed, at all.
3. This brought me to the last question: Are you willing to continue protecting someone at the expense of your own wellness? In the Vietnamese culture, this might be something people say “yes” to subconsciously. I don’t think I have seen a culture as selfless as the one in Asia. The mothers, the sisters, the fathers, the grandparents. Everyone lives lives for anyone but themselves. As controversial as this may sound, I do not agree with this. Is this culture something beautiful and poetic and idealistic? Yes. Is this extreme and detrimental? Also definitely. The most common things I have heard from young mothers these days are: I wish I didn’t get married and dedicate my life to this family that early.
My mom told me one day: I wish I knew how to make myself happy and actually did that and not until you guys (her children) get married. And for myself, I used to be friends with this one narcissist, I was in love with a few takers — those emotional vampires. And while I know it’s not fair to compare my dad to them because he did a lot to me, I firmly believe that if I tried, I got hurt, and I communicated that hurt, and things still haven’t changed, I would like to circle back to my core value: self-love, and continue nourishing myself instead of putting it under the umbrella of hurt.
I have a friend whose father constantly question her decision to pursue a higher degree, even though she has the sponsorship to make this happen. It didn’t come as civilized as “Are you sure you want to do this?”. It came in the form of gaslighting, belittling: “You are not that good so just stop wasting other people’s money”, “you will not make it even after all these degrees” so on and so forth. She lives in the same roof as him, and because of that, she was surrounded by this sort of negativity day in day out.
The girl was questioning herself so much that when she spoke to me, she had not even tried to question the man who gave her all these thoughts in the first place. Seeing from his shoe, we realized it must have been belittling to the father himself, not having been able to provide for his child from high school onward and seeing that he was not necessarily fulfilling the whole duty of being a father. Could it stem from this part of his insecurity? Sure. Does it make what he say any less painful? Nope.
So yes, as unfortunate as it might be, the ones closest to us might just be the ones who know how to hurt us the most, doing it unintentionally yet so traumatically in certain situations. However, the fact that we can be hurt doesn’t take away the power in how we can decide to stop giving too much (in my case). No family is perfect. Maybe some are, but I find that quite creepy — like y’all are a bunch of sociopaths. Just kidding, one thing is I truly hope we continue to value ourselves, and only then, try to love and protect the people we love, a lot when they are as giving and loving, and reasonably when they are yet to be detoxed from that toxicity.
What a start to this whole week, happy Monday everyone :)
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