That's it. My parents are almost gone. They will leave tomorrow morning, early, while I will be sleeping.
I am sad and relieved.
Maybe it can be explained like this: I am sad that my mom is leaving and I am relieved that my dad is leaving.
Besides, the two of them together are even more unbearable, because when I am alone with my father, I can keep him in check and keep the conversation limited. We're like two colleagues at the bank, interacting only little, and working most of the time. When my mom is here instead, she forces us to interact more, with meals and such, and also because if she's here, my dad is home much more often. And usually they side together against me.
My dad is incapable of having a pleasant interaction with me. He is a control freak all the time. He has to be negative, control the situation, control the conversation, ridicule his interlocutor (whether me or my mom). It's a frustrating experience even after decades of knowing him.
In a sense he makes me build up the desire to destroy him, since he's always been in control of me and everything around me. He makes you feel like rebelling.
The typical conversation goes like this: he talks, you listen carefully and ask questions. You talk, and he doesn't reply anything and lets your topic die. He looks at you without nodding nor saying anything, until you stop or take a break. At which point he resumes his monologue.
I know I wrote about this just a few posts ago, but summarizing it is good: I learn to say it better and more quickly.
My dad is profoundly unfair. For all our lives my mom and I have had to put up with a family activity based on what he wanted to do and discuss at all times. He sabotaged in various ways anything we wanted to do or say. We felt very oppressed and reacted in different ways. My mom rebelling once in a while, like dropping some dishes and breaking them. I rebelled by skipping classes, failing grades... being a bad student and not caring about a business career. I connected any kind of authority with my father. Because he was the one telling me to study, so the teachers and him were one single block I had to rebel against. The problem is that he almost told me about every single subject in the world. So if he told me to tie my shoestrings for example, I'd feel like I'd have to rebel against that as well. If he told me to shave, I would not shave even if I wanted to shave. It's been terrible being told so much stuff and being criticized so much, so much that I had to reject even things I agreed with.
And I can't help but feel resentment towards my father. Especially since he never apologized and since there were no radical changes, and, as soon as he's comfortable again or he sees someone not opposing resistance, he resumes being himself: critical, sarcastic, negative, control freak, unpleasant.
And even his monologue are boring. At least, when he was in power he told us about what was going on in the country. Now that he's in the opposition, things are less interesting. On top of it, I grew tired of having to hear him lecture me about politics and about everything else. Now I feel like it's about time that he starts hearing about what I am interested in and listens to me and interacts and asks questions.
Throughout these holidays I have forced him to listen to me and even to ask me questions and give me some feedback. Today for example I told him about how the systems made a lot of money and that I was very happy, and he maybe listened, but he was quiet, didn't say anything, didn't nod, and, once I stopped, started a different topic. This is not what I call conversation. It's the succession of two monologues.
Does he want me to act towards him like he does with me? Not at all. It's just that he's spoiled and used to having his way. This is a big problem also caused by my mom and everyone else around him. But primarily my mom.
He chose her because he wanted a wife who would let him have his way: she was very insecure from the start and he treated her and treats her like an idiot. Then I was born.
I wasn't as happy to show the other cheek as my mom is, also due to her religious beliefs.
I rebelled, but not enough, and to this day I feel like I still want to rebel because he's still having his way too much.
The problem then expands throughout the world, because everyone around him is less important than him (in some social way) or in a few cases equal, so, especially since they're not relatives, they just keep quiet and accept to play humble, at least when they're with him. Maybe they talk behind his back, like I do.
Anyway, today we were having this conversation. As I was talking to him about my systems, not only did he not show any signs of interest, but when my mom asked him if he wanted some salad (she does that on purpose, and because she doesn't listen either), he took the opportunity to change the subject or rather to shift the focus on the food and stop listening to me - because he obviously did not care. But I cannot accept this. Why does everyone have to make efforts to listen to him and follow what he is saying and he can disregard what others say?
But don't get me wrong. It's not just the systems that bore him or that do not interest him. Anything I can say. Anything at all. He just wants to teach - he cannot learn anything unless he's the one asking the questions. You can't say "today I did...". At best, you're lucky if he interrogates you about something you did today. But the interrogation starts and stops when he wants to, and he regulates the speed of questions and decides how long your answers can be.
My mom and I can only talk when asked, as if he were the boss or something. If we talk when we're not questioned, then he ignores us.
No wonder I don't show any affection for him. He never showed any for me, no affection, no interest for what I was thinking. Just criticism and ridiculing towards my mom and me.
He has always been busy glorifying himself. He was always thrilled to be the center of the attention and the one being asked questions. But that's ok when you're someone important, it's ok in the sense that people let you do it, even if it's still unfair. But in your family you can't always act like your family members are your employees or admirers. You could even do that, if you paid them back with an equal affection and admiration. Instead we glorified him and got criticism and contempt and yelling in return.
What's even worse is that if you ask relatives and friends, since they don't have to deal with him very often, he's the greatest man on earth.
I guess the recipe for happiness running generation after generation is as follows. His father died when he was six, right after the war because of wounds from bombing I think. He was sent to a military school as a teenager, and was asked to be an adult ever since he was five. Then he spent the rest of his life trying to show everyone how much of a man he was and trying to impress everyone, and forcing his personality on everyone around him, especially of course his family. My mom was too weak to oppose any resistance, so I grew up hearing my dad say "don't be silly" to her several times a day, yelling, and condescending behaviours all the time, all lasting to this day.
Then in turn, I didn't grow up happy at all. My mom didn't exist, she was like a sister to me, a younger sister. I didn't have any real brothers or sisters. It was just me versus my father, ever since I was born. Of course I didn't win.
All I could do was fail classes and stuff like that. I could rebel but I could not rebel in any better way. I tried to win his approval by studying at first, but no grades were good enough to be told "good job".
I tried to impress him with sports, but I was not considered excellent, because he even told me that the least I could do was be the best at everything, and that should be normal for me.
So pretty soon I stopped trying, but i wasn't serene about that attitude either. Not just because he kept yelling at me all my life, but because he had instilled in me deep-rooted feelings of insecurity and guilt.
Then when you're insecure like that, and so frustrated from having put up with such an ordeal, other things go wrong. Or rather, a lot could go right, because how hard-working I was, but you don't even enjoy it. You could work your ass off at the office, but you won't go to the boss and ask for what you deserve in terms of position or salary. You could be good-looking, but you won't go up to a girl and ask her out. This is what happens when you grow up with someone telling you several times a day that you're worthless, no matter how well you do something and how hard you try. Regardless of my good performance, he kept telling me I was worthless. So whether you stop trying, like I did in some cases, or you try even harder (like I am doing for trading), your life is not going to be the same as everyone else's. You're going to be frustrated and discouraged. You're not going to be a happy go lucky person when you grow up with a father like that.
This explains why, after so many years, I am still resentful and still have not forgiven him. He may be just a sick person like many other sick people in the world, but I can't see him objectively, because he is my father, and I am the one who paid the consequences of his sick behaviour, and also because everyone else is still worshiping him and he hasn't apologized to me. I can't forgive someone who hasn't even apologized.
