Tina (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
wickedcherub) wrote2007-06-27 12:40 am
wickedcherub) wrote2007-06-27 12:40 am
moving out... or not.
So I told my parents I wanted to move out.
My mother started crying almost immediately and said that I couldn't say something like that, and that she'll forget I said it if I just went to bed.
Dad took it personally and said that I really hadn't thought it through and that it was the largest example of a lack of filial piety (a very very loaded word in Vietnamese) he'd ever heard of. Then he said that he gave me three days, if I still wanted to move out, go ahead, but I was never to come back.
Anyway, mum, understandably, asked, 'What made you want to do this?' to which I started explaining, but really, my father should have been a lawyer, not a guy that sorts the mail.
He is KING of rhetorical questions.
Dad: "Tina, let me help you think this through. Do you care about your family?"
Me: "Yes."
Dad: "And when your mother is alone in the evenings and needs help, how will you care for her if you are not at home? How can you look after your family if you leave?"
Dad: "Who looks after you better than me and mum?"
Me: "No one."
Dad: "Then why are you wanting to leave?"
Me: "Because I want to look after myself."
Dad: "You can do that here."
Anyway, Dad took it very very personally. Mum tried to tell me that I could rethink it after I graduated university in a year and a half, but it'd be best to wait until I was married.
I got a lot of 'the outside world is harsh' and 'you cannot abandon your family.'
The biggest sticking point is this notion of filial piety. I've been brought up on the stuff - and I asked for a formal definition tonight, and Dad said, 'we brought you up, and gave you everything, you have to please us.' And it's SUCH a cultural sticking point, where they can't comprehend that I'd not want to please them, and I can't imagine that they'd want that from their children, but it's like talking to a retarded child, no one's understanding what the other person is talking about. Dad tried to explain that by 'pleasing him' all I had to do was study, but that was another point altogether.
Anyway, this whole, 'you leave, you can't come back' thing is really sticking with me because I know he's serious. My father holds some serious grudges. I ask him why he can't still be my father if I left the house, and he asks me how I can still be his daughter if I have.
Then came the big explanation of, 'we tell you off cos we care. we restrict you because we care.' etc etc. As if I didn't know that.
Hmmm.. good things DID come out of this, however. Mum's on major good behaviour now. She's promised not to be emotionally abusive. To stop the sniping comments. She just wants me to stay.
I think I hurt my father a great deal and I feel like I should apologise, but am wondering how to do it so that I'm only apologising for the parts I actually feel sorry for.
That, and my parents eerily know me better than anyone else, my faults and virtues, which is odd for the fact that I never talk to them.
I've yet to decide what to do, but I guess I'll have to leave off the moving out, just for now. At least they now know I was thinking about it. I still wanna keep my dad. I do love him lots.
My mother started crying almost immediately and said that I couldn't say something like that, and that she'll forget I said it if I just went to bed.
Dad took it personally and said that I really hadn't thought it through and that it was the largest example of a lack of filial piety (a very very loaded word in Vietnamese) he'd ever heard of. Then he said that he gave me three days, if I still wanted to move out, go ahead, but I was never to come back.
Anyway, mum, understandably, asked, 'What made you want to do this?' to which I started explaining, but really, my father should have been a lawyer, not a guy that sorts the mail.
He is KING of rhetorical questions.
Dad: "Tina, let me help you think this through. Do you care about your family?"
Me: "Yes."
Dad: "And when your mother is alone in the evenings and needs help, how will you care for her if you are not at home? How can you look after your family if you leave?"
Dad: "Who looks after you better than me and mum?"
Me: "No one."
Dad: "Then why are you wanting to leave?"
Me: "Because I want to look after myself."
Dad: "You can do that here."
Anyway, Dad took it very very personally. Mum tried to tell me that I could rethink it after I graduated university in a year and a half, but it'd be best to wait until I was married.
I got a lot of 'the outside world is harsh' and 'you cannot abandon your family.'
The biggest sticking point is this notion of filial piety. I've been brought up on the stuff - and I asked for a formal definition tonight, and Dad said, 'we brought you up, and gave you everything, you have to please us.' And it's SUCH a cultural sticking point, where they can't comprehend that I'd not want to please them, and I can't imagine that they'd want that from their children, but it's like talking to a retarded child, no one's understanding what the other person is talking about. Dad tried to explain that by 'pleasing him' all I had to do was study, but that was another point altogether.
Anyway, this whole, 'you leave, you can't come back' thing is really sticking with me because I know he's serious. My father holds some serious grudges. I ask him why he can't still be my father if I left the house, and he asks me how I can still be his daughter if I have.
Then came the big explanation of, 'we tell you off cos we care. we restrict you because we care.' etc etc. As if I didn't know that.
Hmmm.. good things DID come out of this, however. Mum's on major good behaviour now. She's promised not to be emotionally abusive. To stop the sniping comments. She just wants me to stay.
I think I hurt my father a great deal and I feel like I should apologise, but am wondering how to do it so that I'm only apologising for the parts I actually feel sorry for.
That, and my parents eerily know me better than anyone else, my faults and virtues, which is odd for the fact that I never talk to them.
I've yet to decide what to do, but I guess I'll have to leave off the moving out, just for now. At least they now know I was thinking about it. I still wanna keep my dad. I do love him lots.
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