Dear Kareem:

I just re-read through our communication in your two threads. The box incident happened in 2012 when you were a senior in high school. The box was full of t-shirts and some  other freebies from your “high leadership position on a regional level for a large student-run organization”.

You asked your mother to mail it to a friend from the organization, she didn’t and she suggested to you that instead of sending it to that friend, that you leave it for the family. But you chose to mail it to the friend anyway.

The friend’s response when receiving the box included: “I have no idea why you gave  me all of that other stuff though, I have like no use for it! Haha… thanks though!”

You suffered lots of regret for having sent that box to the friend, and you wrote, “Now these days, if I am ever given the opportunity or notice a free shirt, I will always be sure to grab it and  take it to my parents”. You expressed guilt and regret otherwise regarding your parents: “I was bratty/disrespectful despite them doing so much for me… I frankly was a soiled brat, and couldn’t see all they had done for me (driving me places.. ironing many clothes, waking me up..)”.

And you wrote: “My sister and I have a habit of saying sorry over and over again”.

This is my understanding today: your parents instilled in you (and in your sister) an intense feeling of obligation to them, owing them. You were instilled with a sense of guilt and debt to them. This is why you and your sister have been in the “habit of saying sorry over and over again”.

What motivated you to be a good student, to get good grades in school was to please your parents, to work toward making their lives easier, because you felt you owed them, because you felt guilty. But your work as a senior in high school with the organization, it was different. What motivated you then, for the first time, in a long, long time, was your personal motivation, doing something that you wanted to do as an individual. You wanted to do  that work and found joy in it as an individual, independent person,  not as a son/ brother/ family member.

You did that work not out of a sense of guilt and indebtedness. You did it because you valued it, because you felt valuable doing it and you found personal interest and joy in it. This is why you sent it to a  friend from the organization, not wanting to  give it  to your family. Your family has taken so much away from you already: your independence, your joy, your permission to yourself to explore what you want… you didn’t want to give away to them the box as well, the box that symbolizes a life not based on guilt and indebtedness, but a life motivated by your own interest, a life of a free man.

Your friend’s response upon receiving the box hurt you so much because he said he has no value for it when to you, this box carried the highest value- your value as a person and as a free person, free from guilt and indebtedness, who you could be if your parents didn’t… own your life.

In summary: I think you need to live your own life away from your family. I think you should go back to finding your value as an individual, not as a  guilty-son/brother/family member.

You suggested that you owe your parents for driving you places and ironing your clothes-well, I suppose you can roughly calculate how much money they spent driving you places and ironing your clothes since the age of .. 16 or 18 and plan to pay them that amount of money. Then free yourself from guilt and live your own life!

I think this box is about that, living your own life as a man free of this unjustified sense of guilt and indebtedness to your parents.

anita