Dear Tee,

“So let’s assume there is a tribe deep in the jungle who believes that cutting off their child’s ear will help them achieve great success in life. Would you say they are good parents, who care about their child’s happiness?” No, but you wouldn’t blame them for their lack of knowledge. And you would try to correct them too. Trying to correct my parents is a waste of my time. So I understand that they are doing what they think is right, but I will not tolerate the things they do.

“Yes exactly, that’s called fawning, as I’ve already explained.” I know it is fawning, but I am not affected by the things he say though. I am not LISTENING to his lies and insults, I am HEARING them. I let them enter one ear and leave the other ear. Besides it is not like I have a choice other than to avoid them, so I am protecting myself by not caring about the things they say and focusing on my priorities. They HAD me in the grasp of their abuse, but no more.

“I’ve explained in great detail how you transferred your longing to be seen and understood from your parents to B” And I am saying that I DIDN’T transfer my longing to be seen and understood from my parents to B. I expected basic friendship, loyalty and respect from her, and because I wanted her to be my future wife, I wasted my time hoping that I could get her to fix herself. It was my desire for her to be my one and only partner that made me keep trying to make her understand me. I may have had unmet emotional needs, but I did not force that on B. I just cannot simply leave someone over a mistake that could be corrected and fixed and I had hoped that I could help her be better. I do not want to be dating multiple girls before I find the right person. If I am going to date, I want to be absolutely certain that the girl is the right person for me. I want to make sure that whoever is destined to be my wife, should feel like the only special person for me. But because B is my first real relationship, despite what my aim was, I was too blind to see that B was not the right person for me, but my desire to love one person only caused me to try to help her become the right person for me, which was a mistake that I now regret and have learnt from. That desire did not stem from my unmet emotional needs. That desire came from my morals.

“Unfortunately it does seem you haven’t learned your lesson, because you are denying the main reason for your attachment to her.” And what are the odds that you are wrong about the main reason for my attachment? Your advice is based on a third person’s perspective, which means you won’t be able to understand certain things that are hard to describe through words. Some experiences and feelings that I had are too complex to simply give a verbal description detailed enough to make you understand. Sometimes you have to trust the speaker. Especially since it is my life that I am describing. That doesn’t mean that I am completely rejecting your advice.

I have agreed with you that my parents are cruel people that have emotionally abused me. So why are you arguing with my decision to forgive them for not realizing that what they are doing is wrong? God himself forgave us for our sins due to our lack of knowledge, so why is it wrong for me to forgive my parents for their lack of knowledge? Why is it that you cannot acknowledge that my parents’ ultimate aim was to ensure I have a successful career instead of being a slave? Why do you think that I am making excuses for those who have hurt me? I have every reason to hate them so why do you still think I am making excuses? Even before God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham asked him if he would spare the cities if there were at least 10 good people in those cities, to which God agreed. So why is it wrong for me to look for the good in people? What makes you think that I am eager to be making excuses to justify the cruelty that others have put me through? I lived under my parents’ roof for 17 years. I have experienced life with them for 17 years, long enough for me to decide whether they are actually the cruel people you describe them to be or actually people who mistakenly believe that they are doing the right thing. So what makes you think my understanding of their intentions are wrong? You can only understand the words that I am writing to you. You cannot understand the actual experiences that I have been through, experiences that led me to realize their real intentions.

“Well of course, having critical and abusive parents influences us in negative ways, e.g. it may influence the person to become an addict.” Did you not read the part where I said “observations and my application of psychology to various situations”? I am trying to say that I realized that I would still not be the ideal son-in-law because I know what other fathers want in their sons, because I OBSERVED and applied PSYCHOLOGY on OTHER fathers. This is because I REBELLED against my parents’ “harmful parenting style”. I am not mature enough to be proactive and take responsibility and be the man of the house, and I know this because I know what other fathers are expecting of their son-in-law. It has nothing to do with my parents’ parenting style being “harmful”. That is why I said even if I grew up with DIFFERENT parents, the outcome would STILL BE THE SAME.

“Even if you started dating a girl outside of your religious community, she still was/is a bully, similar to your parents.” I did not fall in love with B because she was similar to my parents. I fell in love with her because I saw her as DIFFERENT from my parents. Someone would had the capability to understand better than my parents. Someone who could empathize with me since B herself was abused by her own parents. I thought we could heal together. At the beginning of the relationship, I felt a form of emotional connection with her. That is why I fell in love with her. She just started to behave like my parents OVER TIME. And my dumbass self thought I could fix that because she normally does not behave like my parents.

“Does that mean you are considering quitting medicine?” Not sure yet, I am planning to continue for now until my music career buds.

“Well, you can do that without enduring their abuse and without even studying medicine.” Hell no, how is that even possible? They pay for everything that I have, and I am almost out of the money that I earned over the years. If I don’t accept their calls, they will just assume that I am in danger and call administrators to see if I am okay, and I can’t quit med cause then they would want me to come back home to them, so I need an excuse to stay here. And there is no decently paid jobs here as even B struggled to find one. So I am going to wait until my music gets better.

“Dear Paradoxy, your parents must have suspected that your mental health was deteriorating, if not earlier then when you attempted suicide. They knew you were suffering. But what did your father tell you? That you are stupid for being so weak and sensitive. That you should be tougher.” They don’t know that I am suffering, they just know that SOMETHING is up. That’s it. That is why they even had other parents try to lecture me. They all say the same thing because THEY ALL think that what they are suggesting is actually what is good for me. They don’t know that I am suffering. They never will cause they cannot understand the form of suffering that I am going through, because IT IS NORMAL to them.

“They purposely reject the whole area of mental health – not because they’ve never heard of it, but because they believe it’s bs.” Precisely, they consider emotional and mental health deterioration to be nothing important, which is why they are oblivious to my suffering because it is primarily emotional and mental suffering. They PURPOSEFULLY ignore my suffering because they are OBLIVIOUS to the fact that IT IS SUFFERING. They don’t even CATEGORIZE it as suffering at all. That is the issue.

“So that’s their main goal: getting their children into prestigious colleges, which will result in them getting high salary jobs. For them, that’s all that matters. Well, frankly, those are pretty materialistic goals.” YES because during the time they grew up, only these things were considered important because it ensures you live a peaceful life in the physical aspect of things. Nobody cared about their emotional and mental well-being. Achieving these materialistic goals are what was normalized and considered important because without money, there is no point in complaining about your mental and emotional health.

“They put those above love, care, compassion, mercy – the values that Jesus proclaimed.” They are aware of these values. But they express these values of love, care, compassion and mercy through strict discipline and materials. They will always be available to love, care and show compassion for you in most situations except the situations that require therapeutical caring. That is the difference.

“Where is your parents’ love and compassion for you, their own child?” What you don’t realize is that they do love and care for me, but they do not provide therapeutical love and caring. It is like loving someone because it is their DUTY to love instead of loving someone because they WANT to love.

“Psychological health is equivalent to soul health. But your parents completely disregard that part. And yet, they claim to be deeply religious. Where is the “logic” in that?” There may be no logic in it to you, but they can see the logic in it, especially since they are getting the results they wanted, and because other parents support their actions too. So in a situation where they are being encouraged to ignore emotional and mental health, they will obviously continue with their cruelty, because to them, it is not cruelty. I hope you understand.

Paradoxy