Warning: Angry rant about said parent up ahead.
My mother is not what she appears on the outside. To the family friend or acquaintance, she seems like the perfect parent. Being her only child, though my point of view may be subjective, I disagree. However, when looked at and compared to children whose parents beat them and abuse them, I probably have it easy.
Now I don’t want to seem ungrateful, because I appreciate the fact that I still have a parent remaining. Some kids are orphans, but you know, everyone has their ticks and vices that will inevitably get on your nerves if you’re constantly around them 24/7.
So without further ado, I shall now get down and gritty to the reasons why it’s hard having my mother as a mother.
First of all, she is so freakin’ over-protective and uptight. I am 18, my curfew is 11:30pm. I am not allowed to watch movies she deems too violent or sexual. She constantly thinks I am going to get raped or murdered or kidnapped or all three, so I am never allowed to bus home by myself after 9pm. She does not trust my friends who give me rides home because she thinks I’m going to end up in a car crash. Instead, she picks me up most of the time, and then later complains how she has to pick me up from places. I understand that she’s looking out for my well-being, but is it really helping my well-being if I’m always sheltered? How the hell am I supposed to learn how the world works?
Secondly, she puts me down all the time. Gee, thanks mom for the dose of reality, but whatever happened to supporting your kids and making sure their self-esteem is okay? She constantly calls me “fattie”. I am underweight by BMI standards. I am 5’4’’ and 107lbs. Just because I am not 5’4’’ and 100lbs like her, I am labelled fat. She is one of those really healthy people- the kind that goes for a sauna every day, and then for an hour swim afterwards. On the weekends, she plays table tennis at her club for 5 hours straight, and during the summer, she has day long biking marathons. How am I ever supposed to compete? If I don’t make it down to the gym at least three times a week, I get accused of being “lazy” and “hopeless”. It’s nice to know that she cares about my physical health, but clearly, she disregards my mental health.
Third, her way of teaching involves making “the right decisions”, and those “right decisions” are always her decisions. There is no other way around it. This is her way of controlling me. I can’t reason, or even try to explain my side. And even if she understands, there is always the pride issue. She won’t change her mind about things she’s already decided on even if they make no logical sense simply because in her eyes, she is always right, and I must always think she is right.
It also doesn’t help that she is the only parent, so there’s no one else’s opinion. Her opinion is the only opinion that matters in our house.
Take for example my university courses. She actually picks them for me! Every start of the semester, she’ll go through my course calendar, and make suggestions (yeah right, more like orders) that I should take whatever she thinks I should take. I mean, come on, mom, I’m in a post-secondary institution, I’m 18, don’t you think I can make my own choices and not screw up my future? Do you think that I’ll deliberately try to screw up my own future? And apparently, she does. Or at least she thinks I’m making the wrong choices, because remember; only her opinion is correct! For my Journalism major, she thinks I should take all history courses, so I’ll have a good background knowledge. However, the problem is I already know this history stuff. I took a similar course back in high school. Instead, I decided to take a bunch of arts courses, since I want to become an arts writer, and I should probably get to know the names in art if I want to seriously write about it. You know, Beckett, Mamet, Monet, Godard, Beethoven, etc. As unrealistic as it is, I’d rather write with passion about my subjects, and live paycheque to paycheque, than do some boring, unchallenging job writing about laws or politics.
Finally, her standards are damn near perfect. Back in university, she was at the top of her class. And she somehow expects me to emulate those standings. When I come home with a B+, she thinks the world is going to end. Do I get yelled at often for my marks? Yes. However, personally, for me, marks are only numbers. They don’t really show how much you’ve learned in a class, or how smart you are. To an extent, they do, however, there are plenty of innovators out there who did poorly in school. Take for example Einstein, or Mozart. Yet, they are still remembered today because they didn’t follow curriculum, instead, they thought outside of the box, and thus have revolutionalized the world.
Parents and families are strange phenomenons. You can’t choose them. Instead, you’re born into them, and you’re stuck with them for the rest of your life. I suppose it could always be worse, given my situation, and comparing it to others.
I realize that my mother is my finances, so no matter how frustrating it is to deal with her sometimes, I’ll have to listen to her otherwise my money supply is cut off. It sounds harsh, obeying your parents for money, but sometimes, that’s the only motivation.
The solution to dealing with your parents is to know what they expect, and try to live up to their expectations, or at least appear to live up to their standards. In return, life will be easier for you, and they’ll get off your back, and they’ll be less likely to kick you out of the house.
What are your parents like? Do you have it worse or better?
