Theme Question - Switching Places w/ Dad
It seems I haven’t updated in a while. At least, that’s what it seems if you read my LJ and MySpace blog. I have posted more recently, but I kept my last entry private on those two sites; it was a very depressing entry that vented frustration (While down in Eastman, Dad overexerted himself exercising and injured his leg. Now, in addition to his vision problems, he has trouble walking, making his recovery and attitude much more difficult). Regardless, I do need to post more often. It’s not that I never ever have anything to write about, but after working, exercising, cooking, cleaning, running errands, I’d rather just spend my free time catching up on Bleach or Overdrive.
I know, I know. The more you try to make excuses, the less likely any of them are valid. Anyways, to do better about posting, I’m going to start answering Open Diary’s weekly theme question.
If you could switch bodies with one of your parents for a day, what would you do differently to their life? What would you make better or worse?
This entry will likely be a rehashing of my previous entry san angst, so OD friends can feel free to skip it.
This question is presumptuous; it assumes that just because I magically stumbled upon the ability to switch places with one of my parents, I would for the express purpose of helping them out or spiting them. I don’t see the benefit in switching places with my Dad for a day. A lot of his sufferings right now are his own doing. Not going into his choosing to do his own gutter cleaning; after being released from the hospital he insisted on spending six months alone in his house feeling sorry for himself and letting the house continue into filthy disarray. If he had been willing to go to a rehab center, move to Eastman, or accept an assistant, maybe his body wouldn’t have atrophied and he wouldn’t be barely mobile at this instant. He may have even made a full recovery by now.
That being said, I don’t see what I could do in a day to even begin to turn things around. Perhaps if I had six months, I could rehabilitate his body for him, but even that wouldn’t last. This entire ordeal stems from his unending grief of losing Mom. Even if I were able to restore him physically, he would likely continue on his path of isolated, inactive depression. It’s just like someone who addicted to alcohol or drugs. Any help you give him is in vain unless he wants to change for himself.
The only real reason I could potentially have to switch places with him would be insight. You know, the whole “walk a mile in someone else’s moccasins” proverb. Even that wouldn’t really have any purpose. Who we are at the moment is the culmination of our own unique lifetime of experiences. My dad is who he is because over the course of six decades he grew up in the country, fell in love with his future wife in the 9th grade, married her after high school graduation, was drafted to fight in Vietnam, worked his way through college upon returning, quit smoking, raised three kids, went through multiple jobs, spent years commuting to and from work in the dark, lost his wife after roughly 40 years of marriage, and so on. I’d need to have all of those experiences first hand to fully understand my dad better.
In my most cripplingly noble moments, I feel like I should sacrifice my life and dreams and devote as much time as necessary to helping him get better. At my worst moments of exhausted frustration, I wonder if I made a mistake coming home that weekend he fell and if everyone would be better had he passed away that day. I’m continually swinging from one extreme to the other. Perhaps such a switch may mitigate my moments of anger and frustration. Still, it’s hard not to be upset when so much of this is from his choices.
Nevertheless, if I were mystically able to inhabit my dad’s body for a day, let’s just say I would also be able to acquire my dad’s 61 years of memories and experiences. And let’s also assume that those memories and experiences were so vivid that it was as if I had lived them myself. I would have to be able to retain them upon returning to my own body lest the entire switch be useless. If that were the case, I’d be concerned about the experience destroying my mind. If his memories were to become so vivid to me that I couldn’t discern that they weren’t actually real, they might as well be real. I might as well have lived 61 years and jumped back to 26 just to do it over again. At the very best, I’d be exhausted on life. At the very worst, keeping my real memories and my fake memories separate would unravel my sanity. Then there are the memories I would absolutely need to repress, like Vietnam firefights. Or boning my mom.
*shudders*
Not to mention, I’d be concerned about what Dad may do in my life, even if it were just for a day. Well, that’s not true. Knowing my Dad, he’d probably call in sick to my office to avoid the embarrassment of not knowing what to do, which is basically what all my work days are like ; P. More importantly, in as much as I don’t want access to his memories, I don’t want him to have access to mine. Now, I don’t have any skeletons in my closet, but I have had certain embarrassments and failures that I either don’t want anyone to know about or I only feel comfortable telling very close friends and complete strangers on the internet. As awful as this sounds, I wouldn’t want that information to be known by my family. The combination of my own family’s dynamics and being the youngest resulted in my parents (especially my mom when she was alive) and my siblings thinking they were better qualified to run my life. It comes across has horribly insulting when you compare their life choices with my own, but that’s a separate rant that I’ve already beat to death. If they knew more about my life, they’d likely feel all the more justified in trying to run it for me.
So, to give a succinct answer, considering how fruitless it would be, the potential of on going family drama, and the possible need of a lobotomy to forget my parents’ honeymoon, there is no way I would ever, ever be willing to switch places with my dad, or my mom for that matter. This is probably why God never makes that offer to anyone.
I know, I know. The more you try to make excuses, the less likely any of them are valid. Anyways, to do better about posting, I’m going to start answering Open Diary’s weekly theme question.
If you could switch bodies with one of your parents for a day, what would you do differently to their life? What would you make better or worse?
This entry will likely be a rehashing of my previous entry san angst, so OD friends can feel free to skip it.
This question is presumptuous; it assumes that just because I magically stumbled upon the ability to switch places with one of my parents, I would for the express purpose of helping them out or spiting them. I don’t see the benefit in switching places with my Dad for a day. A lot of his sufferings right now are his own doing. Not going into his choosing to do his own gutter cleaning; after being released from the hospital he insisted on spending six months alone in his house feeling sorry for himself and letting the house continue into filthy disarray. If he had been willing to go to a rehab center, move to Eastman, or accept an assistant, maybe his body wouldn’t have atrophied and he wouldn’t be barely mobile at this instant. He may have even made a full recovery by now.
That being said, I don’t see what I could do in a day to even begin to turn things around. Perhaps if I had six months, I could rehabilitate his body for him, but even that wouldn’t last. This entire ordeal stems from his unending grief of losing Mom. Even if I were able to restore him physically, he would likely continue on his path of isolated, inactive depression. It’s just like someone who addicted to alcohol or drugs. Any help you give him is in vain unless he wants to change for himself.
The only real reason I could potentially have to switch places with him would be insight. You know, the whole “walk a mile in someone else’s moccasins” proverb. Even that wouldn’t really have any purpose. Who we are at the moment is the culmination of our own unique lifetime of experiences. My dad is who he is because over the course of six decades he grew up in the country, fell in love with his future wife in the 9th grade, married her after high school graduation, was drafted to fight in Vietnam, worked his way through college upon returning, quit smoking, raised three kids, went through multiple jobs, spent years commuting to and from work in the dark, lost his wife after roughly 40 years of marriage, and so on. I’d need to have all of those experiences first hand to fully understand my dad better.
In my most cripplingly noble moments, I feel like I should sacrifice my life and dreams and devote as much time as necessary to helping him get better. At my worst moments of exhausted frustration, I wonder if I made a mistake coming home that weekend he fell and if everyone would be better had he passed away that day. I’m continually swinging from one extreme to the other. Perhaps such a switch may mitigate my moments of anger and frustration. Still, it’s hard not to be upset when so much of this is from his choices.
Nevertheless, if I were mystically able to inhabit my dad’s body for a day, let’s just say I would also be able to acquire my dad’s 61 years of memories and experiences. And let’s also assume that those memories and experiences were so vivid that it was as if I had lived them myself. I would have to be able to retain them upon returning to my own body lest the entire switch be useless. If that were the case, I’d be concerned about the experience destroying my mind. If his memories were to become so vivid to me that I couldn’t discern that they weren’t actually real, they might as well be real. I might as well have lived 61 years and jumped back to 26 just to do it over again. At the very best, I’d be exhausted on life. At the very worst, keeping my real memories and my fake memories separate would unravel my sanity. Then there are the memories I would absolutely need to repress, like Vietnam firefights. Or boning my mom.
*shudders*
Not to mention, I’d be concerned about what Dad may do in my life, even if it were just for a day. Well, that’s not true. Knowing my Dad, he’d probably call in sick to my office to avoid the embarrassment of not knowing what to do, which is basically what all my work days are like ; P. More importantly, in as much as I don’t want access to his memories, I don’t want him to have access to mine. Now, I don’t have any skeletons in my closet, but I have had certain embarrassments and failures that I either don’t want anyone to know about or I only feel comfortable telling very close friends and complete strangers on the internet. As awful as this sounds, I wouldn’t want that information to be known by my family. The combination of my own family’s dynamics and being the youngest resulted in my parents (especially my mom when she was alive) and my siblings thinking they were better qualified to run my life. It comes across has horribly insulting when you compare their life choices with my own, but that’s a separate rant that I’ve already beat to death. If they knew more about my life, they’d likely feel all the more justified in trying to run it for me.
So, to give a succinct answer, considering how fruitless it would be, the potential of on going family drama, and the possible need of a lobotomy to forget my parents’ honeymoon, there is no way I would ever, ever be willing to switch places with my dad, or my mom for that matter. This is probably why God never makes that offer to anyone.