Leaving for university at the end of August, ready for the 3yr-long vibe of freedom that's waiting for me outside Montreal, but more importantly, outside my parent's home.
I've bee having these very mixed emotions lately. Although there isn't a doubt in my mind that I will be extremely happy living in my dorm, meeting new people with all the freedom in the world, I sometimes wonder how I will be able to go through a whole day without hearing my baby sister complain about....something, anything... I will miss her.
Being brought up into a narrow-minded, relatively "middle-class" bengali family, the thought of studying away from home is ridiculous. Even if it is only a couple of hours away. But under the circumstances, the parents had to give in. However, they did not miss an opportunity to show just how much it angers them that I might even think about being my own person and finding some sort of independance... Yeah! it blows :S
Some days I tell myself that maybe if I took a year off from school, made some money and reapplied to a university close to home, I wouldn't have to go through the everyday tauntings of the mother or the life lessons about how the new generation of children have no respect or appreciation from the father. I know that like piranhas, the parents are waiting for the moment when I'll have something bad happen to me, when I'll make a mistake, to pounce on me and bring me back home. But all I think to myself now is : Why would I do that to myself? Get me the hell out of here!
How do I deal? I mostly ignore my mom; once you learn to do that, everything seems easier.
My mother has the most elaborate gift of crawling under your skin and making you feel like there is absolutely no reason behind your existence. Just like the old-fashioned villainous mothers in old Hindi Bollywood movies, my mother knows how to recall every single little mistake of your life, and bring them up everytime you make another mistake, in short, she's like the broken gramophone that starts and keeps bickering about the same thing for HOURS, literally. God help you if you try to make her understand something, it's absolutely useless. You may think I am being hard on her. I wish I were, too.
Valuable thing I finally understood after 19 long years of staying with my parents: There is no such thing as learning from your children. Parents are meant to be respected and feared, understanding between a parent and a child is just a miracle. And sadly, miracles do not happen in every day life.
“Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.” - Mahatma Gandhi
Somethings my parents and I will never see eye to eye...
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