I have always had a bad perception on myself and a low self-esteem. I have never tried hard enough to change, and that is one reason why I am stuck in a same pattern routine.
Recently, I looked at acquaintances' Instagram photographs and I came to realise how badly I am shaped. Comparing those pictures to my mirror image, I felt demoralised and weak. Why am I not good? Most likely, I believe that this happened because I was treated too well by my parents when I was younger. Or maybe the opposite, from a perspective that I wasn't treated well - my parents and other relatives think that I was treated well, but that's not what I think. Their views are on economic support. I'm on the view of familial relationship.
This isn't something that I should be proud to share, but I don't really like my family members a lot. That doesn't mean I hate them, however.
Talking about my paternal side, my father's family is a headstrong and conservative community (but in terms of politics, almost liberal). They are mentally very strong in a sense that they do not give up easily and have very stable occupations, capable of supporting their own families. The fact that my father is not capable (because of his way of operating his business). All my uncles there are quite reluctant to listen out for advices, and sometimes egoistic. When they visited Singapore recently, it was honestly quite stressful for me. My mother was stressed out because her own business was not going well, and my brother always was not at home for first few days. My aunt was extremely hot-tempered, and I suspected her religion view. That's when I started to think that I think I can be a better Buddhist than her even though I lived like one quarter of her life. However, some uncles were still better than my father in terms of personality. (Sadly, they're now economically as well. Sorry, dad! I love you!) I could talk about my career path to one of them because he asked me to talk about it, and told me in details about his family. I was reassured by one fact. Personality isn't heredity.
I had a lot to reflect on myself, but I could learn a lot from these aunt and uncles on my father's side during their trip to Singapore. (That's where I decided to stay as a free thinker because of my aunt.) To talk about my aunt, I would like to share one episode before I go to matters of my mother.
She has irritated a lot of people during this trip due to her uproar of hot-temperedness. I mean, maybe because of menopausal syndrome and her own health, she could have felt irritated as well. However, I think she was more or less aware of how she's making the whole situation worse by adding barrels of oil into already large fire, turning to possible conflagration. It did happen. One of my uncles asked her to stop complaining in the restaurant, and on that night, my mother, another younger aunt and uncle talked about that eldest aunt in the family. Even though they did not badmouth her, that discussion part was quite significant for me. Still, I also felt that it wasn't right for her to act that way, and I stepped up to join in that discussion, with a gulp of one cup of beer that reddened my face given by the usually calm uncle. With unsatisfactory answer, we concluded that we should just deal with her. Two days later, the uncles and the younger aunt left, but my grandmother and that eldest aunt stayed in Singapore for one more week.
Before I went for school camp, I woke up late and I went into a bathroom in a hurry to finish my urgent business(!) and keep my toiletries into my backpack. I turned the Wi-Fi on my mobile phone, but it didn't seem to work. Since I had no time, I didn't really have a luxury to look into my phone to update myself about entertainment news. As I scurried out, my aunt asked me if the Internet is working. I replied a quick "no", and could predict her next sentence at that moment. Every morning, she listened to monks' speeches (or some scripts read off, which I don't really know) when she arrived to my home, and without Internet access, it was impossible to play them out. She asked me something obvious at the next moment and I told her I was in a hurry and already late (but in the end, I was not, and I have never been late for school. I hope I can say this for next month as well.). I left my house and bade farewell to my mother, and saw my aunt's face from the closing door's gap in a little bit of displeasure. Without much thought, I walked briskly to the lift lobby and departed for the camp.
When I returned home, my aunt and my grandmother have already gone back to Korea. My mother asked me if I have done anything with Internet. Well, I had tried to use it but to no avail, so I replied her a quick "no", but just that it was my mom this time and I didn't know what she was going to tell me. Then, she told me that aunt blamed me for disabling the Internet before I left. I became some evil guy who manipulated this whole Internet system at home to confuse my aunt. My mother then tried to fix the Internet modem and router by plugging out all cables and, it still didn't work, coming to a conclusion that this time it isn't working because my mother touched it. My aunt must have thought that we are deities of technology, where contacting any machine becomes a miracle of dysfunctioning. Okay, sorry - it's a pandemonium. My aunt told my mother that there must be a bad relation with her and herself, that is creating this bad vibe. Halfway her narration, my mom then claimed to me that what the aunt said is basically to cut this relationship off and worst kind of thing to say to justify something that's not going well. I couldn't help myself but to nod my head in a jolt of agreement.
My mother is a good person but she is also hot-tempered in a sense, where she gets irritated easily as well. Just that she isn't as much as my aunt, but she is also inclined to that type. She's also very realistic that she doesn't think positive of me when I bring back discouraging results to her. Usual routine at home is that I get angry at her for not encouraging me but always criticising me with caustic remarks. She's sometimes very pessimistic (even worse than me) and I've not seen her sincerely apologising to me for any bad deed. I mean, mostly because I did more misdeeds to her, but sometimes, there are her faults as well. She can't admit mistakes. That's where I get angry, and I experienced it when I travelled to Lijiang last year with her. Even though she's a person whom I can really talk to about life, hardship and my older brother, she's still too judgmental that I can't take it when I'm not in a good mood.
Yes, I didn't say I have good personality. Personally, I feel that I am one joker who can't control emotions and always needing some place to rant over. Blog might be good, but since (I think) I suck at writing, I can't seem to de-stress. That's where I approach watching videos on YouTube when my mom is not around, and best of all, sleep. Emotions surprisingly use up a lot of energy and to save it up, I go to sleep and after I wake up and look at the clock, that's where stress comes in again. That was my cycle of bad personality. I didn't take things positively and here I am - a guy who is a free thinker and has a liberal view on politics, then lazing around typing on this phone on my reflection of my own and others' personalities. One thing to say is that personality might seem to pass down because of the environment. In my belief, people have different capacities that they can hold in emotionally, and I'm probably not very good, in that sense. My family isn't very bad as everyone is well-educated in both of my families. At the same time, this isn't very good because not only I feel demoralised when I underperform in my studies, but also the demotivated mind-set on why must I be trying so hard to achieve something higher. Of course, nowadays, I don't feel the same because I have set my own goal and I am striving to do so. Yet, seeing others whose families are in unison and always having time to have dinner together, makes me feel small and envious of them. Why is my family, even though we don't lack anything in particular, so separated? Yes, my mother has to work everyday and my brother always goes out of home to, from what he says, study. My father is in Korea. I'm always alone at home when I come back from school. Only weekends are the days when I see my family members and really talk to my father.
Even when I complained so much about my parents about their personalities, I start to miss the time when we were together for dinner. Why are we so hardworking in our aspects, but not doing so for each other? I mean, we are doing that, but indirectly. Showing love indirectly isn't very efficient, even though it's so much better than being indifferent. It's not that I hate my family members because I love them, but I've talked about some of their issues to reflect on why my personality isn't very good. In fact, talking about my parents on this post is already... Quite stupid. Yet, I want to say that I love my mom and dad. They are the ones who made who I am and I'll forever be grateful for it. Whatever issues they have, I believe very strongly that they can be resolved one day when we are less busy in the future. I just wish we can relax together, like what my father told us that we should go Indonesia one day to lay off burdens as a family, during the paternal side's trip. (My grandfather passed on at quite an early age, and this fact was used by my uncle to state that their family became independent from then on.)
I have always needed friends who could really talk to me because I didn't really have time to start conversation with my brother or mom in Singapore. Some don't even find me that significant and in my opinion, true friendship must be equal to each other. The thing is, it's not, for my most friends, whom I thought that they were my true friends. I only knew that when that guy spilled the beans about my family issue that he can never be trusted. Yet he trusts me somehow about his credentials. Well, when things get serious, I think that's a normal human behaviour. I'm not a type of guy who will do some revenge by pulling off notes from my friends' bank accounts anyway.
Recently, this friend called V made me feel so emotionally supportive. I guess this is what true friend is. True friends know what's going on even when they don't talk? Rubbish.
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