In Our Family Portrait, We Look Pretty Happy, We Look Pretty Normal

There comes a time in every self-respecting person’s life when they are faced with jarring news. Jaws drop, tears are shed, and everyone comes out of the exchange thinking they are better than they were.

The news?

That the biologically-inclined, sexually charged [gross!] human beings we call “parents” are, in fact, human.

Gird your loins children! This is going to be a bumpy ride….

As of the last year, I have been forced to accept the humanity of my parents. I have fought it, crying over the inevitable “spilled milk” that is a cross-continental parent/child relationship. Feelings have been hurt, phones have been hung up, hate [e]mail has been sent. In short, my parents and I have fought tooth and nail through all of the growing pains that have torn us apart. Of course, both take separate approaches. My father, the emotional paraplegic, uses email as his weapon of choice. Barbed comments and emotionally exploitative word play take the place of actual parenting, - in my father’s eyes, a well worded “subject” tab can replace any and all need for actual confrontation or discussion. My mother is the complete opposite. As touchy/feely as Oprah, my mother is the patron saint of Kleenex. Every conversation results in tears and heartfelt declarations –or conversely, hurled insults and comments that cut deep. Ours is a relationship that is as toxic as it is medicinal – when you are so similar to someone, you can love them in a way that you can love no other. What this also means, though, is that you can hurt them far worse than any enemy.

Together, my parents represent everything that I hate and love about myself. This is the true realization, methinks. The minute we realize that our parents are the reason that we are who we are, and that their mistakes/downfalls/character flaws might just re-appear in our own storybooks, we freak the FUCK out. How could they be people too? How dare they mess up, have a bad day or put themselves first? They’re supposed to be all the things that we want to be, and none of things that we can’t be. The day that the parent is bumped off of the pedestal is the day that we’re forced to stop looking up at them and look them dead in the eye. The scariest thing about this is not the jarring speed and force of their fall; it’s that when we look at them, we usually just see a reflection of ourselves.

We all want to be superheroes. Save the day, change the world, all that. Childhood is about building the dream, adolescence is about chasing it and adulthood is about slowly giving up on it, in favor of the “practical.” That’s what’s terrified me about accepting my parents as parents. I saw in them all that didn’t happen, all that could’ve been better. I wanted to hate them for it, for accepting life as what it was rather than what it could be. But, I realized that that is really the easy way out . To hate my parents, to blame my parents, is to spend another year in denial, another month in delusion. My parents are me – I am a figment of their upbringing (and a few bodily fluids). To deny them is to deny myself. And why in the hell would I want to do that?