The all-pervasive stasis

Ever had that feeling when you feel so comfortable with where you are in life you kind of stop growing? Well, this is where I am now.

It sucks to know that I have sort of become dependent on an identity crutch of sorts and fail to see my life beyond that. I have fallen for the hipness of the student lifestyle even though I am not living it to the full extent I should be, just the idea thereof has me quite mesmerized.

When I started university, I thought I would just go with the flow of things and get involved and participate in wonderful artistic things around me. Most people around me had completely different interests, and more so were non-adventurous and stagnant, unless you count the weekly clubbing trips as novel and adventurous.

I am determined to get the most out of my life right now, the student life, yet somehow I feel it will hold me back from really facing the future one day.

But I know why I have been holding on to this world so dearly. It is, honestly, my only sanctuary. Academics have always been the thing I obsessed about just to hide from the emotional scars that my parents would inflict on me.

My parents themselves have had a shaky relationship. It would be much healthier for all of us, if they divorced, at least I would have known and felt that there was some sense of justice in the world. But they, especially my mom, holds on to dear self-destructing idealism, which has ruined her talents and creativity, and then she blames me for her sorrows, because I left her for university and I don’t want to ever become like her as a person. Don’t get me wrong, she is a smart, intelligent professional woman, with the gifts of human kindness and everything pretty much that makes for a generally pleasant person. I feel like I am writing about a Shakespearean character as I describe her here, but she does have a fatal flaw, and that is she is too much faith and not enough knowledge about human nature. Most of the times, when she does have fights with my father, I do side with her, but it’s only so long that I can put up with dire irrationality. Sure my father may have been a terrible person with extreme apathy for other people’s feelings, but at least he tries to be rational. Abusively rational. I just cannot sympathize with women like my mother, who have seen the freedom of the so-called post-feminist world, yet choose to live in the cave of their misled idealism and self-denial. It makes her no saint in doing so, despite what she would like to believe. She apparently has no problem passing down emotional baggage to me willingly, and then scarring me further by saying I am making her unhappy.

You know what? It’s time she started taking responsibility for her own happiness. I can’t reason with a maniac.

I have told her this many a times, but she is also one of those people who are too comfortable where they are in life. I refuse to be that way.

It’s been only one day since I finished exams. I was happy yesterday, being tipsy with all my classmates not all of whom I am totally familiar with in a big sketchy house downtown. It felt real and natural, and I felt a sense of unity with everyone there, something I have seldom felt about my family. I have had only a half an hour conversation with my two respective parents, and I already feel emotionally drained and I would really rather be writing more exams.

Despite what may come through in this blog, I am utterly optimistic and rational at the same time about where I want to be in life and who I want to be with. It bothers me when smart people such as my mom bring themselves down.

I can see myself, in another 10 years or so, becoming one of those career-obsessed women, but to me that is sort of a pretty awesome place to be at, knowing that I wouldn’t have to stop being progressive in my personality and thoughts. I have had enough stasis in my life as a mere 19 year old.

I sort of sometimes feel that I am at one of the worse situations in life one can be at. I am broke, with few close friendships, a craptacular family dynamic, no boyfriend. The list go on much further. However, in the last year, I have learned to be grateful for what I have and love myself nonetheless. At harsh times like this I am glad this is the way I am. It can only really get better.

In the last week, things have looked up for me.

I got one of those sexy research jobs at my university, which I totally wasn’t expecting to, but some prof saw how giddy I get around experimental apparatus and hired me.

This weekend, I am moving into a house full of random people I have never met, which I am quite excited about.

In conclusion to this academic year, I have learned a few important things or have had reaffirmations about certain things in general.

1. You are responsible for your own happiness.

2. Be nice to everyone around you, but know that nobody is as awesome to have a billion best friends. Stick with those who know and appreciate you best, but don’t get tied down to that circle of friends.

3. Do random crap that put you out of your comfort zone, but be safe.

4. Start conversations with people. It makes you seem almost human.

5. Dress well! It goes a longer way than one would expect.

6. Don’t lie to yourself, it only complicates things further.

7. Live organically and naturalistically rather than a machine programmed to complete tasks.

8. Make use of free will. Nobody can ever make you do anything.

9. Take opportunities to express yourself with art.

10. No matter how crappy things get, life goes on, for better or worse, but usually better.

I promised myself last November that I would reemerge as a better stronger person in the spring, and I think I have gone beyond the standards I set for myself. Heck, I am even ready for a relationship? Or casual dating, though that’s really not my thing. I mean, I feel much more social and less critical of every idiot boy out there. It’s just something that the change of seasons do to me, and I guess I might as well take advantage of it. Although I wouldn’t beat myself up about if I don’t get even a date this summer. There is much to rejoice about still due to the silent revolution that is ongoing inside of me.

Parents, and that big cliché about breaking away from tradition

I don’t think I have ever discussed my family situation at length before, right now would be a good time to clarify that before I get tangled again in this issue of family business.

I am an only child, but unlike the stereotypical only child, I am far from being overly dependent on my parents, and I am really nothing like them. For my culture, my parents are pretty liberal, but as I have been growing up, I am beginning to objectively see how conservative they actually are.

Despite having lived in North America in the 1980s for a long while, I feel that my parents are far from gaining an objective understanding of North American society and way of life. This partially has to do with the fact that the places in which they lived are conservative to begin with (i.e. the American south and small Canadian towns) and they never really got out of their immediate ethnic community. I have spent a significant time of my life in the home country, but after immigrating to Canada, I have found that I don’t get along with people of my own ethnicity here too well (because their values and beliefs concerning what it means to be from the home country is like from 30 years before) and I have only experienced unnecessary judgement from such people. Pretty much all the people I hang out with are thus not of my ethnicity. It never really bugged my parents that I had no friends of my own ethnicity, but recently they have made suggestions of me becoming like gringos/whitewashed/mangia-cakes (whatever racial term relating to white people you prefer). Truth is, however, I don’t find myself thinking long and hard about my cultural identity too often. I don’t feel the need to distinguish myself like that. I have taken things from my own culture (very obscure things) as well as other and contemporary cultures to define myself. I don’t feel the need to dress and act a certain way to show where I am from (it’s pretty obvious though, from my natural appearance). I am just a person, and I don’t want to be bound by cultural norms and just experience life with complete freedom.

I have been living on my own for the past year, and whenever I visit my parents, they have this nagging concern that I am becoming too different or that I am growing apart from them. Honestly though, I had become distant from them a long time ago, like when I was in grade 9. I don’t understand why would be naive enough to think that I was growing up exactly as they planned, especially knowing me. I ignore these concerns readily and focus on immediate issues but my parents are crazy and have serious issues and will bring it up whenever possible. It’s apparently not enough that I am financially independent from them, they need to have complete understanding and control over my life. In my culture, the only reasonable explanation as to why a girl is growing distant from her parents/demanding her own space is that she has met a guy who is making her do this. This notion disgusts me because it implies that a girl can’t do that just out of her own free will and I think it disturbs my parents because they know this is the case for me. However, when I try to relate these things to other people they have rather stereotypical notions about my situations (think Bend it Like Beckham or My Big Fat Greek Wedding). It kills me to clarify that no, my situation is not like that because firstly I am not readily dependent on my parents and my parents are absolutely not that traditional or religious. I’d rather not care about them, but it hurts me sometimes to think that I have come to a point where the lack of understanding between us is so large. My parents themselves are abusive to each other, and I often wonder why I even bother to make them understand anything. They are not supportive of my personality and never made me feel like I should be comfortable being myself and always seeked to point out flaws in me. It’s amazing how I am actually considerably self-confident and functional. Maybe I am just a really obnoxious kid.

The reason this post mentions the cliché about breaking away from tradition is because I feel like in a lot of ways, due to the the portrayals in popular culture, people like me have been programmed to be presented in a way. I am by no means like the stereotypical breaking-away from traditions people. I have in-depth knowledge on the history and literature of my culture and I was never brought up thinking of North American society as the big evil hedonistic west. This actually further complicates my situation, because nobody really takes my issues as they really are, and just puts the generic label of “immigrant issues” on them.

I am still content, but I find second-guessing myself and my very inherent awesomeness whenever I come in contact with my parents. Sigh.

And now just for fun, anybody here able to guess my home country?