My father can never admit that he is wrong nor can he apologize. And I can’t help but hate him.
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We had an argument this morning. I had got up early to pack for work and he was going to give me a ride.
Him: “We need to go!”
Me: “You said we were leaving at 7. (It was 6:30)”
Him: “I am going to be late!”
Me: “Then why did you tell me 7? You should have told me 6:30.”
Him: “NO! YOU HAVE TO THINK OF ME.”
I’ve learned that such an argument was not one that I could win. His mode of thinking seems to be stuck somewhere in a place of primitive selfishness. I just grabbed what I could and got in the back of the car. As he drove, we sat in silence. I was extremely conflicted. I always avoided arguing if I could but I knew that in being rushed out, I had left some essential things at home so I was stewing in anger. I couldn’t sit quietly in the back of the car like that. To be silent was to concede. To concede was to allow him to think that he could do this to me again.
Me: “Next time you want me to leave at 6:30, you say 6:30. Not 7.”
Him: “I said before 7.”
Me: “No, you said 7. I asked you if we would be arriving at 7 or leaving at 7. You said leaving.”
He paused too long before responding. He had given away that he knew he was wrong. We had discussed this less than seven hours ago. But like always, he started to divert the blame. He told me that I should have woken up earlier to pack and that I should have told him much earlier in the week that I needed a ride. It was my fault. I suffer at my own hands.
I just told him as I had always seen it.
Me: “You’re never wrong. It’s always my fault. You can’t admit you’re wrong.”
His response was that I was disrespecting him. It was his default every time I pointed out this critical flaw. He started to list to me all my supposed failings, anything to move the focus off his own. I don’t know how to appreciate my father. I don’t speak to him nicely. That I don’t deserve to be driven at all. I didn’t acknowledge any of these claims. I just let him know one more time before I shut up for the rest of the ride:
“You can never admit you’re wrong.”
For my parents, having children was a pragmatic decision. Who is going to take care of you when you’re old and crippled? How will you reap the pride from achievements of kin unborn? Forget about anything else. Whether or not they were conscious of their approach, that’s how they treated us and we took the toll.
I was socially inept and unaware of myself for a long period of my life. I completely understand why I was bullied and why I didn’t have friends until my early twenties. It took me a long time to learn simple things like understanding social cues, how to speak to people and how to carry myself. I blame it on the way in which I was brought up and ultimately on my parents. I’m sure that a lot of people can relate with this: all the interactions that my parents had with me were all for maintenance. Eat this. Stop that. Why aren’t you the best in class? They didn’t speak to me outside of teaching me, berating me, and telling me what to do. In other words, we didn’t have conversations. My parents had no interest in knowing who I was as a person. They didn’t know what my interests were or what my days were like and I grew up thinking it was normal, not ever talking to people about those kind of things. My siblings, even. I spent a lot of my childhood around my brother. We had to share a lot of things together like the TV, the Playstation, the bunk. But we never discussed anything because, like conversing with our parents, that very notion was unknown to us, or just me at least.
To this day, I have never had a conversation with my dad. But to be honest, I don’t have any interest in having one. His vacant and listless life requires no discussion but what more is that I do not like him as a father or as a person. We are persistently reminded by proverbs like “blood is thicker than water”, that family relationships are more important than friendships and that familial love is unconditional love. But why? And is this right?