I will never make fun of, berate, or belittle my child’s dreams or life goals in any way.
It’s funny. I tried to talk to my dad and he’s always so unhappy with what I’m doing. I have to tell myself some things to protect myself from getting hurt, because I don’t think he means to be hurtful. I have to believe he doesn’t realize how much it stings to listen to him say the things he does. I got off the phone with him a couple of days ago and he had been telling me that since I wanted to go to law school, the incredible internship I got for next semester (I mean really incredible), was a waste. A waste. He told me basically that going to law school was throwing away all my dreams in international relations. That everything I’m doing now is a waste. A waste of time. All the things I love are a waste of time.
I don’t really know how to deal with that, so I made the argument that I have, canned and ready, to explain why it’s not. I mean, I can tell myself any number of things. That he doesn’t understand how many different things you can do with a law degree, that I never plan to actually practice law, that I’m going to be doing international relations my whole life, except I’ll be doing it with a law degree… I told him what I tell everyone - that my heart is in activism not academics, and I need to be able to get my hands dirty in a way that an academic track won’t let me… I didn’t get more than a one-world, half-disbelief response out of him.
It’s better that he couldn’t hear the sounds of his words hurting me.
Now I sit at my computer trying to write final papers and wondering why I can’t focus. A waste?? Really? I’m working my ass off out here, following my passion on a path nobody in my family has ever followed, fighting so fucking hard every day, and that’s the best you’ve got for me? That I’m wasting my time and (here’s the real subtext) your money?
I’m 23 years old; every educated person in my family (both sides) is a medical doctor, has been that way for generations. Hard science is the only thing that carries any weight with my family - immigrant old world Eastern Europeans. So I’m treading a new path, and I’m cutting my way through a shitload of resistance (from the places I least expected it too), and it would be nice, it would be really damn nice, just once in a while, to hear, “Hey Lex, I think you’re doing a great job - I couldn’t do what you’re doing, I’m proud of you.” But I know I’m never going to hear that. At least not from him.
I wanted to tell him about this amazing chance I’ve gotten, to join this global social network of Burma activists - which is so incredible and so powerful, I mean, I’ve been studying global social networks and internet civil society and this type of activism since I was at SOAS 3 years ago, and I almost picked up the phone to call him and tell him out of excitement that I got invited in, but then I realized he’d have no idea what it was and wouldn’t care to learn, and would probably ask “Are they paying you?” and if my answer was No, then “It’s a waste.”
I think the best way for my to think about this, the best way for me to make this stop hurting, is to be thankful. It’s probably better that he’s like that, that he questions everything I do and makes me fight to establish any small sense of self; I think it’s good practice for the world. If I can’t stand my ground with my own father, I won’t survive the world out there; if he were nice to me about these things, I wouldn’t be prepared for the rest of the world and their competition, cruelty, and cutthroat attitude. Maybe he’s just doing it to give me good practice so I can fight a better fight against the people I’m up against in my daily life.
Still, it’d be nice just to have a safe place to go.
