<p style=”text-align: left;”>Dear Tee,</p>
“Okay, so perhaps it can be said that the Caribbean community is more prone to sins of sexual nature (lust, adultery), while your community more to sins of financial nature: greed. And creating division among people (“turning people against each other”), which to me would be like sowing seeds of division and conflict, rather than love, mutual respect and understanding.” Yes that is 95% accurate, but of course there are exceptions in every case. Also keep in mind that these conflicts are also tied with religion, not just race, as most of the corrupt activities are conducted by Hindus. There are some corrupt Christians and Muslims too but the number is considerably small compared to Hindus, but also remember that Christians and Muslims are in the minority here. Even the government back home is so corrupt that they fuel this religious disparity to manipulate the Hindus into voting for the corrupt government so that they can be reinstated to continue more corrupt activities, and almost all of these activities are based on greed/financial gain. You will barely find any corrupt activities of the sexual nature among us, which is one of the reasons why my country has one of the lowest divorce rates.

“You believe you are not good enough because your parents believe you are not good enough.” I believe it is a cycle, where my parents’ insult decreased my confidence, and the lack of confidence caused me to screw up my communication skills and actual work skills, and the lack of those skills provided a reason for my parents to insult me, and so the cycle continues.

I am in the process of breaking out of this cycle, which is why I am trying to make sure my parents are not involved in my life. But no matter how hard I try, they find a way to wriggle back into my life and take control of my activities using their parental authority.

“But you keep pitying yourself, defending your parents and staying stuck.” I am not defending my parents exactly, I am just acknowledging the truth in their criticism. Even though I am the way I am cause of them, what am I supposed to do when I try to speak confidently but my peers shut me down and treat me like an idiot? I even heard one of my group members say that I was useless. Obviously that would affect my confidence too. How can I change the fact that academically, I am not where I should be despite trying so hard? That affects my confidence too. How can I stop people from abusing my kindness? It hurts when people take advantage of me you know.

What about the fact that I lack basic skills like cooking? I have been trying to learn it for the last 3 years and I still can’t get it right. I can’t even cut an onion properly. Do you know how embarrassing it was for me when I completely butchered an omelet when my dad was sick and I had to make him breakfast cause my mom was working? The only reason why I survived this long is cause I am mainly cooking for myself and not for others. But what about the fact that I can’t even tell whether I used too much seasoning on the food based on the taste? And academically, I can’t even tell the difference between different parts of the specimen. I can’t even identify the difference between the veins and arteries. I know the theoretical part, but I can’t get the practical side at all. Imagine how stupid I feel having to sit in those labs while everyone else is answering the questions but I can’t. I even tried attending extra classes and even had a private session with the specimen and myself. When my parents see all these things about me, they would view me as someone worse than a donkey.

I told u already, my scores were considerably higher than my guy friend’s scores in high school, but in med school, his scores are higher. He only failed one exam while I failed three. What the hell do I tell my parents when they ask me how in the world did I fail more than him? And obviously, that hurt my confidence too. And as a result of facing this evidence, it created doubt in me and caused me to get “stuck” in this “mental loop”.

“The end result of our every discussion (i.e. the message you want to convey) is that you are bad, they are good. And there is nothing that can convince you of the opposite.” No, that is the message you understood, that is not the message I am trying to convey. I am simply listing out all the facts, and I do not want to create a biased argument, so I tried explaining my side AND their side so you could understand both sides of the situation. It would just be wrong for me to blindly say my parents are abusers without properly explaining their side of things. Hope you can understand.

Paradoxy