Reality Check

[kneescar]

    They’ll pick a Sunday to remember that they have three kids besides the one who convinced them to move into her God forsaken desert of a back yard, and try to catch each of us on the phone.  If we speak any more frequently than that, it’s because I called them to ask a question or update them with some tidbits of information about my life or

Comments

[djmadadam]

Your candor and the willingness to be vulnerable in front of your 'friends', your readers shall we say, some of us your real-life friends, continues to enthrall me.

While you have a partner for this, I feel compelled to hold you for a few hours, hug and caress and kiss you and tell you how much you are worth, how lovable and desirable you are. From the bit I know about and have experienced of you, I think very highly of you.

But, it sounds like you need to convince yourself of this. That anyone else can tell you these things in reassurance, their doing so pales in comparison to the importance and effect of the ability to assure yourself that you are worthwhile.

You know what, though? OK, your Dad's health is ailing. Why not go SEE him this holiday? And, while you're there, tell him face-to-face just what you wrote above...

...but I would just like to hear him say, “Gee son, you’re really capable. I guess you’re not quite the idiot we had all resigned to you being.” ... I don’t really know if anything particular is missing (other than them knowing and accepting me as their gay son), but I feel that pang of dissatisfaction whenever I hang up the phone.

Could you validate me please?

I know my recent experience with the folks was a bust. I went out there with expectations, in spite of saying that I had none (typical me), and I came home with hurt feelings and expectations shattered worse than they'd ever been before. My folks, however, are mentally unstable people and are unreasonable. I don't suspect your folks are like that. It sounds as though you have room here to be just as candid with them about your needs as you are in your journal. Who needs to hear this the most? Us? No... your Dad does.

And, with your Dad's ailing health, how much more time and leeway do you have before having this conversation may be completely imposing, impractical, or just impossible?

Talk to him. Now.

Hugs and love,
Adam

[kneescar]

Thanks for the input. I know that talking with your parents went badly, and I'm sorry about that.
I did send my dad a letter a while back; it was kind of an edited version of this post:
http://kneescar.livejournal.com/71518.html

He really seemed to appreciate it. My youngest sister came out to them around the same time I sent that letter. It didn't go well. I don't know if Dad and her have even spoken in the last year and a half.

I have been out to see my parents twice already this year, and neither finances or my work situation would allow for me to do it now.
Also: I don't really believe that my dad owes me anything. It's not his job to pat me on the head and tell me what a good boy I am. It's more about my wasted potential and my dissatisfaction with my career path and the comparison of my path with that of my sisters. Two of my three sisters agree that I'm the smart one, and yet, I'm the one who's always broke. I'm the one with a thousand Ideas, interests, and wishes, who can't get anything past the concept change. I'm the one who hates my job and yet is too afraid or lazy to make any changes. I'm the one who can't stick with something, whether it's house cleaning or a fitness regimen past the two or three month time frame. I'm the one who can't seem to be satisfied with what I have and makes bad financial decisions based on always wanting more or better. My Parents did well for themselves, but always lived a simple life. They're doing well now because they were content. They would drive a car until it was so old that it really needed to be replaced, not until they discovered something nicer and newer. By the time they needed to replace a car, they had saved more than enough money to buy one. My dad tried to teach us how to work hard and to accept that hard work was a satisfying part of life, not something to be avoided. They do tell me that they love me, and in the past, they've told me that I could achieve anything that I set my mind to and was willing to work at. They have even told me they are proud of me in the past.
It has been a long time since I've believed any of that, though. I don't have dreams or delusions of grandeur any longer. I'm just trying to make do, and I hope I can learn from my mistakes and maybe next year, I can do just a little bit better than just making do.
I guess I should be learning that it's not my dad's job to validate me. I guess part of the point of my post was that while I was feeling bad about him not bubbling with enthusiasm and pride for my new found ambition and love for power tools and lumber, he was feeling the crushing effects of heart issues, and facing the Idea of having to close his business and just be a retired person (not a good thing)

Thanks for listening.

[djmadadam]

Thanks, Rob. It appears that you're cognizant of this on more facets of the emotional gemstone than perhaps you put across initially (plus, you have an unwitnessed lifetime that not even 100 consecutive LJ entries can truly reveal to anyone else).

But, unlike the pressure and heat that is needed to create a gemstone of beauty, you allude to the fact that you don't need to place that kind of pressure on yourself. What HAVE you achieved? Considering what I do know and what I have seen for my own eyes, your achievements are solid and diverse. You even say so, even though your lists of achievements are enshrouded in self-criticism and doubt.

I completely identify with the experience of starting projects and not finishing them. I finally threw in a load of laundry; I'm not working right now, so I can get away with wearing the same clothes 2, 3, 4 days in a row at only several hours each day because ~ they're still clean, right? I have a sink of dishes, even, that I should wash, that I NEED to wash, just so I can eat my next meal. I'm hungry. But, I'm sitting here with just a mug of coffee. This mindset ~ this depression, may we call it ~ grips like a vice. The choice to break free is a simple one, but what lies on the other side of that choice is a risk that you'll just have to deal with facing, even if the risk is merely another unfinished project. There are other loads of laundry I'll have to do. There will be more dishes to wash in that sink tomorrow. We just do these things, regardless. Else, the REAL risk we run is arriving at the point of being irretrievable.