Hi guys, just a short post from me before I fly off tomorrow on holiday. I shall be starting a new job soon (provisionally my first day is the 1st September) and the job will begin with a trip to the company's headquarters which is in another country. I don't want to talk about that publicly yet as I've yet to sign the contact but it is going to be in a country I have never visited before and that would be country number 74 for me and possibly, I might nip over the border to yet another country and nudge that number up to 75. I thus faced the dilemma, do I go to Singapore in the month of August when I am between jobs or do I wait till I start the new job, get clarity on what the needs of the new company are and then go to Singapore in October with a clear sense of what I can do for them in Singapore? After all, if I got on a plane to go to Singapore now, I don't quite know what I could do for my new employers there but if I went after I had my training period in September, then I would hit the ground running there. Since I would be working from home for this new company (as they don't have an office in Europe yet), it really wouldn't matter whether I am sitting in my living room in London or in my parents' living room in Singapore so I can easily justify a longer trip to Singapore even after I start the new job as long as I am constantly available and working whilst in Singapore. Now there's a thought in my head that goes, "your parents are so very old and you're not working for the whole of August, you ought to go see them now!" Here's my response to that.
I recently had a chat with my father - I don't usually talk to him but I was on Skype with my sister, he came to join the call and she said something like, "now's my chance to go take my medicine" and so she disappeared for like five minutes, forcing me to speak to my father. I'm afraid my father has very poor social skills and conversations with him are weird. Let me give you an example: my nephew had just began national service (NS), so naturally I asked if he had spoken to my nephew, what he is doing, how he is coping with the new challenges. He didn't know any of the answers as he hasn't had a meaningful conversation with my nephew yet - why should I be surprised? Even if he has met me nephew since my nephew had started his NS, my father simply doesn't know how to ask the right questions. Instead, my father told me in great detail the meal they had together, down to a dispute he had with the hawker. So the story he told me was that he was getting a zichar 煮炒 take away from a local kopitiam - there was supposed to be a discount if you ordered a certain combination of dishes but the hawker told my father that this special discount was only available for dining in and not take away. Presumably that was so the kopitiam could make some money back from selling drinks and deserts to the diners there,but my father was upset at not having received the discount. So I listened to his rant about the food being quite mediocre and not getting the discount, whilst I was desperately trying to steer the conversation back to my nephew as I really wanted to know how my nephew was coping with NS. But clearly, I was speaking to the wrong person: my father has no idea at all how my nephew is doing. It has totally slipped his mind to ask his grandson, "so how is NS?"
On one hand, I should have just rolled my eyes as my father showed little or no interest in me when I was my nephew's age. He was either busy working or busy fighting with my mother - either way, he had lost interest in being a father to me a long time ago. On the other hand, after he retired, he had turned his attention to his only grandson and when my nephew was between the age of like 3 to 12, my father indulged his every whim. I remember how my father spent about twenty minutes telling me this story about how my nephew (as a 5 year old) started drinking a bottle of water but couldn't finish it, then took it home and put it in the fridge. And I was like, I've been listening to this long story for ages, where's the punchline? Why are you going into so much detail? I can compare this to something that happened in London recently, when Nicki Minaj tried to do a meet & greet with her fans in Camden (which is incidentally, the neighbourhood of London where I live). Thousands of fanatic fans turned up at the crack of dawn, many have traveled from very far away and some waited over ten hours for her in the summer heat with temperatures nudging over 30 degrees. Some fans were spotted hysterically chasing two cars down the road as she was in one of them. They did all that just to get a brief glimpse, maybe a photo or video of the star they loved Nicki Minaj so much. Yeah that's the kind of behaviour I would expect from her fans of course, but then my father was exhibiting that same kind of 'super fan' obsession with my nephew back then, which explained why he remembered every little detail of what my nephew did with that particular bottle of water.
A Chinese grandfather doting on his only grandson is kinda the thing we would just take for granted of course, which is why I was so surprised when my father seemed to have totally lost interest in my nephew's well-being. Yeah, like seriously. He was more upset about not getting the discount for the zichar meal than how his grandson was adapting to life in the army. I have always given my father the excuse that he is now senile, thus easily confused and quite forgetful. Yet somehow, he was able to recall every minute detail of what he bought from the zichar place and what he paid for it whilst he somehow just forgot that his grandson has start NS? Anyway, I was able to get a lot more detail from my sister regarding how my nephew is coping in NS and I'm pleased to report that he's fine. But my point is simple: if my father is more concerned about the price he paid for a take away than how my nephew is doing in NS, then is there any point in me visiting him? Note that my father didn't once ask about my situation as I'm changing jobs at the moment, but I'm quite used to the fact that my father has totally lost interest in me about 30 years ago and he has absolutely no idea what I have done in the last three decades. So even if I got on a plane tomorrow and flew to Singapore, he would probably show little or no interest in me; our conversations would probably revolve around some recent mundane event that he did and I would sit there politely nodding, listening to him recall every little detail whilst thinking, "you''re simply not going to ask me how I am doing as you really don't give a shit, do you? It's okay, actually I'm not that interested in you either."
This is why it is hard to maintain any kind of relationship with my parents - it is completely one-sided. They expect their children (and grandchild) to shower them with love, affection and respect whilst offering absolutely NOTHING in return. I can't stress this enough, NOTHING. This is not normal of course, I have seen other parents who have a normal relationship with their children and at least there is a two-way relationship. My father hasn't shown the slightest bit of interest in what I do in the last 30 years so I am practically a stranger to him. What really fucking stresses me out is when kind people with the best intentions say shit to me like, "oh I am sure deep down inside he really loves you." And I just wanna slap their fucking faces and say, "on what basis can you make that claim? Do you have any real evidence to back that up? Why do you say shit like that when you know you have absolutely no evidence whatsoever to back up that claim which is totally false? What makes you think that saying that will somehow make me feel better instead of making me so fucking angry?" I have a friend Stuart who has very good social skills and this is what he said to me when I told him about this, "yes I know what you mean, my wife has a very difficult relationship with her own father and I empathize. It was so hard for her growing up with a father like that and I have to remind her everyday that I love her, that there are other people in her life who love and cherish her, who appreciates her for the wonderful person she is even if her horrible father doesn't. Even if your father doesn't appreciate you, then please know that friends like me think you're a wonderful person Alex." Thanks Stuart, he made no effort to defend my father, he just focused on offering empathy and kindness.
In fact, the correct response would be, "your father is a piece of shit - it must be horrible to have a father who isn't interested in his own children, but you don't need him." Please condemn my father, please insult my father, please say horrible things about my father - that would truly please me. What would really upset me though are people who are culturally conditioned to defend my father despite never having met him or having any real evidence to back up their claims. This is when I have to really try hard not to get angry and I have to remind myself that they are responding incorrectly because they have very poor social skills, rather than because they are trying to insult or upset me. If you said nice things about my father with no hard evidence to justify why you're doing so, then that's just bullshit, isn't it? Anyway, you can see why I get upset over this - on one hand, I've not visited Singapore in four years because of the pandemic. I was due to go in 2020 but we all know what happened then; I knew I wanted to go sometime this year but I am trying to prepare myself for what is inevitable. I'm going to show up and my parents are not going to be the slightest bit interested in me. I give them an excuse of course, I tell myself they're senile, the lights are on but there's no one home - they're mentally disabled by that token so you can't have any kind of relationship with mentally handicapped people. That's how I lower my expectations to the point where I spare myself any kind of disappointed and to see my father completely lose interest in his only grandson has prepared me for what is to come - it is inevitable, it's not going to be pleasant at all.
Allow me to use an analogy to make my point about empathy when someone is in pain - I'm in pain, the fact that I'm writing all this now is me screaming out to anyone who will listen, informing them that I'm in pain over my terrible relationship with my parents, that I feel pain because I never had any love from my parents. But what do you do when you encounter someone in great pain? As a gymnastics coach, I have encountered many terrible injuries over the years and there was this incident where this gymnast not only dislocated her knee but broke a few bones in her ankle as well after a really bad fall. When the duty manager from the sports center first showed up to administer first aid, he wasn't aware of how serious the injury was or how much pain she was in - he was still chatting and laughing on his mobile phone when was looking at her knee. The gymnast grabbed the phone from him and yelled down the phone, "FUCK YOU! GO FUCK YOURSELF MOTHERFUCKER!" She then threw the phone against the wall to smash it into pieces because the center manager had ignored the fact that she was in so much pain. You cannot ignore a person in pain or say something like, "oh it doesn't look too bad, I'm sure it's just a sprain and you're kicking up a big fuss over nothing." I've broken my leg before and if you said that to me when my leg was broken, I'd probably punch you in the face so hard I would break your nose. My point is simple: if you tell someone who is in pain that their pain isn't real or that the problem really isn't there (for example: by suggesting that my father loves me), oh then you are going to get a punch in the face.
I don't know how to deal with this situation to be honest, one reader has suggested that I simply cut all ties with my family, like just don't ever speak to them again, don't go to Singapore again - I have plenty of friends in England and I don't need my family anymore. There's no point in trying to make that relationship work if you're getting so little out of it, if it is simply causing you angst. On the other hand, I'm not just going to Singapore to see my parents, I actually have loads of friends there and I do cherish those great relationships I have with them. I suppose the whole point of this post is for me to get my side of the story out in the open, for the record and for the record, I don't know what to do about my father when I go to Singapore. He has never been a father to me, he has shown no interest at all in what I do since I was a teenager and no, for the record, he doesn't love me. I have this friend at the gym Nick, I always nag at him for not training often enough, he shows up like once or twice a month for the gymnastics classes but even someone like Nick knows far more about what is going on with my life than my own father. I wouldn't call my friendship with Nick 'love' per se, but at least I'm a lot closer to someone like Nick than my own father. There's no love in my relationship with my father and no, there has never ever been any even when I was a child. Most people would think, "what's the point in bothering then?" But as my father is in his 80s, a part of me realizes that the next time I see him may be the last time in person, that I should just go and do my duty as a son and expect nothing in return - I have to go there with absolutely no expectations.
My sisters cope with it by going into autopilot mode whereby they are culturally conditioned to give their parents unconditional respect. I have been trying to cope by telling myself that they're senile and thus mentally handicapped, they have a valid excuse as it is a medical condition. That's of course an easy way to deal with the situation now but it can be painful to think back to my teenage years where they really couldn't be less interested in me. Thus I'm putting off this trip, at least for now. I can no longer use Covid as an excuse to not see my parents but then again, they've not even asked me to go. I don't actively hate my father anymore, I just see him as this pathetic, pitiful senile old man who doesn't know what the hell is going on, what day of the week it is or even remember if he has had lunch. No, instead my anger is directed at the stupid cunts who have the audacity to ignore my pain and tell me that my father loves me despite the fact that they have absolutely no evidence to make such a claim. Thus I conclude with two points: firstly, if you have bad parents the way I do, then it's okay to say, "I have bad parents, I don't like my parents because they were awful to me." The second point is simple: if someone tells you that they have a bad parent, you need to say, "your parents sound like total fucking cunts." You're not being disrespectful, you're showing great empathy and your friend will probably feel an incredible sense of relief that someone has acknowledged their pain. And on that note, please make my day by calling my parents cunts in the comments section below. Thank you guys and I'll catch you after I get back from my holidays.
Your father is emotionally unavailable, narcissistic, self-absorbed, and clueless. Expect nothing from him. NOTHING.
ReplyDeleteThank you Di. You have kindly acknowledged my pain and that's all I wanted. I get so fed up when people think they can make me feel better by singing praises of my father and I'm like, "you've never ever my father, what makes you think saying such nice things about a person you have never ever met is going to make me feel better especially when I have just told you that my father is a horrible person?" I chalk that down to very poor social skills, an inability to know how to say the right thing and come up with the appropriate response. If I said to you, I have a very bad headache, I'm in pain. The right response would be something along the lines of "where does it hurt? How long has the pain been going on? Do you need a painkiller? Do you need to see a doctor or shall I get you to the nearest hospital? Are you dehydrated and do you need some water?" Any of those responses would be right as it acknowledges that the headache is very serious and that I'm in pain. What kind of idiot would say, "ignore it, that pain is nothing." And I'm like, hello I'm the one in pain here, who the hell are you to tell me that the pain is nothing or that I'm somehow pretending to be in pain when there's nothing wrong with me? Well that's what these people have done to me over the years by telling me nice things about my father, it's the equivalent of saying, "ignore it, the pain is nothing, you're actually fine and everything is actually alright" despite the fact that I'm clearly in pain. I know exactly what I'm dealing with when it comes to my father and how flawed he is as an individual - it has just hit a new low with him because I know he cared about his only grandson but clearly he has stopped caring. He fussed so much about my nephew when my nephew was a young child, but now he is 18 and in the army, my father has totally lost interest. He's like a child who plays with the puppy for a few years then loses interest in the dog when the novelty has worn thin and can't be bothered after a while. I actually looked forward to my nephew turning into an adult so I can have a different kind of relationship with him, where we speak to each other as adults rather than with me being this uncle speaking to a child. But my father has plain lost interest in his grandson and I should have seen that coming, this didn't happen overnight but it was a gradual process over the years.
DeleteSadly, 愚孝 (blind filial piety) is still very common in societies influenced by confucianism values. I believe your sister is one of them.
DeleteI actually have two older sisters and they're both guilty of that - I don't know how else to respond. I've basically ignored my parents for the last 30 years or so but my sisters have not done that. What do you do when your parents are not just uneducated but morally flawed in so many ways? Let me get this off my chest: this is how impossible it is to talk to my father even over something really straight forward and simple. As you know, we had a massive heatwave in London and temperatures exceeded 40 degrees for the first time not just here, but in many parts of Europe. My father doesn't get it, I tried to explain to him in the simplest way possible that we had two extremely hot days last week on Monday and Tuesdays when temperatures for most of Europe was around 40 degrees, so even if it didn't hit 40, it was like 38 or 39 degrees - very hot indeed. My father then claimed that it wasn't possible as the temperature in London today was 26 degrees and not 40. And I said yes it is 26 today but it was 40 on last Tuesday. I'll explain where my father went wrong: he imagines for some crazy reason (remember he is TOTALLY uneducated yeah?) that in countries with four seasons, when we have summer, it's like a setting on your microwave. You get the same summer weather every single day like clockwork, so if your setting is minimum 20 maximum 30 degrees, that MUST be the weather every single day without fail and you CANNOT have variations. I just shook my head and said, that's not how weather works. You can have wet days, cooler days, hotter days, heatwaves etc. You have variations in weather especially in a place like London - you're wrong and I'm right, I live here will you just let me explain to you how it works? No, he refuses to listen to me and accept that he is wrong over something like the weather. In his head, he has his own theory which is of course, totally wrong given that he is completely uneducated and has no concept of how climate/weather works. Listen, I know I have a completely uneducated father, I don't expect him to know anything, I have completely accepted that he is a complete idiot who has extremely low IQ. That's fine by me. But what is not fine by me is when he insists that he is right when he is spouting utter rubbish over something like the weather for crying out aloud and he refuses to accept that his children are well educated and better informed about things like that. He then stormed off and refused to talk to me about the weather because I was trying to explain how it worked to him. He wants to live in his little world where his doesn't want to be challenged ever that he is wrong and that's so frustrating given that he is a COMPLETELY UNEDUCATED idiot who knows absolutely nothing and thus he is wrong about practically everything. Like I said, I don't mind the fact that he is a complete moron, the stupidest idiot I've ever met, I'm fine with that. It's the stubbornness I can't deal with.
DeleteHi Alex, havnt posted in awhile but I'm still keeping up. First of all, how are you coping with the crazy 40'c heat so far? I used to get my fair share of 40'c heat in the Australian summers, it is brutal. Hope you are keeping cool.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I feel ya. My parents are cut from the same cloth as well. Like you I have sorta given up on any expectations of them. Well, it is nice you considered looking into seeing your parents but don't let them get you down too much. Use this chance to see your parents, yes, but mainly do catch up with your sisters and your nephew. Talk to him in person about his NS experiences. After all, don't you wish there is someone like the future you who can talk to you(the NS you) when you are in the army? I know I do, we both have to be street smart and wing it thru NS. Have a good time with your sisters and nephew. Whatever your parents say, just smile and nod at them. Don't lose any sleep over your parents ok? They are the way they are, just focus on those that you can help and relate to. I'm sure your nephew has heaps to catch up to you.
Speaking of family, I too have sister with a nephew like you. He lives with my parents and I, as he attends school here during the week. Just finished his 'O's last year and went into polytechnic this year. My parents are kinda hopeless too, left him to his own devices to deciding his future education. When I found out he was just anyhow filling in his applications, I had to sit him down and go thru the prospectus on the courses with him. Had to ask him, you pick this, do you know what you are getting into? As suspected he is just randomly filling the applications. I took the time to explain the respective courses and what he will learning in them. My family just have no concept of higher education to advise him on anything.
Anyway my point to this ramble is don't underestimate yourself in making a positive impact on your family. Pls do consider visiting your sisters and nephew in person. Don't get too focused on your parents. It will make you toxic like them, be positive and happy like your nephew and sisters. I wish you the best in finding happiness with your family.
You may decline to publish this, I just want to commiserate with you on your parents and encourage you to be positive and happy in other aspects of family. I understand what you are going thru, it is toxic and bad for your mental health. Take care
Hi Seba, thanks so much for responding. Well the thing about weather in the UK is that is it changeable, the heatwave is over and it is currently 18 degrees today but it will be hot again this weekend. Anyway, any kind of conversation with my parents even over something as mundane as the weather can lead to frustration - it usually ends with me thinking, "and that's why I have moved to another country to get the hell away from you".
DeleteI'm not that close to my nephew to be honest - to be fair, that's tactical because I want to avoid conflict with my nephew's parents (ie. my sister and bro in law) as I have already seen situations whereby I say, "yeah go ahead and do this." Then my sister says, "who the hell told you to do this? Are you mad?" And my nephew then says, "but uncle Alex said I should do this!" Aiyoh. Imagine the conflict. Parents always trumps uncle in the authority hierarchy so I just back off. I don't need or want more conflict with my family lah, that's why I have a hands off approach with my nephew even when I really feel the urge to say/do something.
I do have other friends who are slightly older than my nephew whom I have gotten to know through my gymnastics club and I have that nurturing older uncle type relationship with them as there isn't that risk of conflict with their parents - so I am performing that role, albeit with people who aren't blood relatives to me. I appreciate your kind words and support my friend, many thanks again.
I will be writing two more posts on the topic soon, in a far more analytical manner rather than an angry rant to get stuff off my chest, akan datang.
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