Posts Tagged ‘Family’
Posted under: Life
I need to remind myself of all that I have in my life. It’s unfortunate that I don’t do it enough and right now, I need to focus on the good things.
I have a family who loves me despite all the stress and pain I’ve caused them. I know that no matter what happens, they will be there for me. I may not have agreed with their decisions before, but I see now that they were just looking out for me, only wanting me to have the best that I could have.
I have good friends who do their best to keep me strong. Although I have faltered and may have responded rashly or inappropriately, I know what the bigger picture is. I cannot ask for greater people in my life than the ones that I have now.
I have my health that keeps me going everyday. I’ve seen people in worse conditions and I’m happy to be blessed with my physical abilities.
I have my studies despite how difficult it was to start. I want to try harder and push myself farther this year and the next.
I have my physical appeal that catches an eye or two.
I have my ability to start up a conversation with a complete stranger. As long as they’re friendly too, then why can’t we have a nice chat?
I have my memories of all the good times that I’ve had over the years.
I have my senses to enjoy all that is around me, to help me appreciate the flowers, food, music, sunsets, and skin.
Lastly, I have my faith in God because I know that He has a plan for me and although I may be hurting, I understand that this is what He wants. He wants me to be strong, to live, to thrive, and to be all that I can be. He is there to help guide me in the right paths and I can’t ask for more than what He’s already given me.
I’m still a little emotional, but I feel better. What are you blessed to have in your lives?
So I meant to post earlier, but I got so caught up in things, that I kept putting it off and off. Well, today, I spent my Saturday as leisurely as I could. I still had to attend class, but I survived for that one hour. My next stop was to take care of my shoe problem at the shoe store, but I’ll talk about that later. When that was taken care of (and also resulting in my buying two more pairs of shoes), I treated myself to a nice pedicure. When I got home, I realized that I have no shoe space. I am completely out of shoe space despite my already putting two shoe racks on top of one another. In order to accommodate my new shoes, I started cleaning out my bookcases. As I was cleaning that out, I realized that I have a bunch of textbooks and school papers that I honestly don’t need with me anymore, so I put those in bags. I then realized that it was a rather large pile and that I wouldn’t be able to carry it home, so I got the impulsive idea that I would drive my things back home.
I chose a relatively good weekend since my parents and brother are currently on a cruise and I thought that I could slip into my house, drop off my things, and then leave. I had to do this because I know that they would not approve of me driving such a long distance all by myself, so it’s much easier this way. I rented and loaded the car and was on my way to go. When I got to my parents’ home, I realized that a few things had changed in the last month. First of all, the outhouse now has a bed (for who to sleep in, I don’t know) and that the things we used to store in there have been moved to either the garage or inside the house. Second, my dad became super paranoid and decided to lock two bedrooms, one of which doesn’t contain too many valuable items. Knowing my dad, I knew that he didn’t leave the keys behind, which was a bummer since one of the rooms I needed to get into was my old room. It made sense to me to put my old books in my old room since I still have quite a few of my boxes in there. I could have hidden my things easily, but since he locked it, I had to resort to sticking my things in the shed.
I thought that it was only going to take a total of three hours to get it all done, but instead, I decided to call up my friend C, who I had been talking to earlier in the day. We both admitted that we missed each other and couldn’t wait to spend time together again, so I thought that this would be a perfect time to do it. We caught the last showing of The Other Boleyn Girl and then drove up a hill to take a good overhead view of the city. We had a good time together and it was nice spending the time with him since I hadn’t been able to do so in so long.
The drive back to my apartment was relatively uneventful. I made an hour trip into forty minutes, but it was much easier to do so with a lot less cars on the road. Now I’m tired and I really just want to have a nice lazy Sunday morning. Good night all!
For some reason today, a huge wave of homesickness hit me. Now I’m not the type of person to get homesick, ever. If I do, it’s a very, very rare occasion like this one. I honestly don’t know what set it off though. For the entire day, I felt hungry. I wanted something warm and something good. My solution? Progresso Clam Chowder. I ate the whole can too, which is a lot considering I normally eat only half the can at a time. But no, that didn’t work.
I kept thinking of different foods I could eat and all I could think about was my mother’s food. Of course, it’s usually not an elaborate feast or anything, but having a nice bowl of rice and some deliciously cooked meat sounded so wonderful. And since I have not learned the fine arts of cooking from my mother, I could not replicate anything of hers.
My solution? I went to a newly opened restaurant called Anh Hong (unfortunately, without proper accents) because they would serve Vietnamese food. I trusted them much more than I trusted the other Vietnamese restaurants because I know that they are a small franchise and have opened up in large Vietnamese communities.
Anyway, the food was delicious and almost satisfied my desire for my mother’s food. However, it didn’t cure my homesickness. While waiting for and eating my food, there was a large Vietnamese family in the restaurant and seeing them there just made me even more nostalgic. I decided that I had to call my parents and let them know how much I miss them and how much I love them. Hearing my dad’s voice on the other line? That helped cure my homesickness a little. It’s not enough, but it will last me until this weekend anyway.
I just don’t know what brought this on though. I normally don’t miss my parents this much and just this past week, I have been a lot more than usual. Do any of you have this level of homesickness? If so, what do you do? What is your relationship with your parents like? See, my family isn’t the most affectionate around so my calling them just to actually say the words, “I miss you” and “I love you” really meant a lot. Does your family have that kind of problem too?
Well, I’m just so lucky to have the parents that I have. I know that in the previous post, I mentioned that I may have picked up some bad habits, but that doesn’t mean I love them any less. I’m very grateful for my family and without them, I would not be the person I am today and I would not be in such a great college if it weren’t for them. My family always comes first and even now, I’m tearing up as I think so fondly of them.
Even if you aren’t part of an affectionate family, don’t forget to let them know how much you cherish and appreciate them every now and then. And yes, I do mean for you talk to them outside of the holidays.
As I was leaving my doctor’s session today, he brought up a very interesting point. He mentioned that what I was doing, it was similar to what my mother does.
See, I’ve always kind of looked down upon my mother’s actions to exploit and to get as much as she can. She always signs up for those Christmas toy drives in order to get the free clothes and return them at the stores for credit/money. She somehow got me a full year bus pass without having to pay a penny. She always signed my siblings and I up for the free lunches at school when we could afford it, and she knew it. When I got caught shoplifting, she just wanted to sweep it under the rug since I know she does it too.
What brought this comparison up is that right now, I’m not registered at UC Berkeley, so I’m losing out on a few benefits such as the gym and well, the wonderful bus pass that would have given me free rides until the end of August. My initial plan was to buy the bus pass from someone else for about the same price that they would pay for it through the registration fees, which is about $60. When I pitched that plan to a friend of mine, he told me that when he had lost his ID last semester, he ended up copying someone else’s pass and taped it onto his.
Now, to me, that sounds like a brilliant idea, right? I’m saving myself $60 and to me at least, I don’t feel as if I’m taking from someone else’s benefit. It kind of ties into the idea of Pareto efficiency where in order to make one person better off, another is worse off. To me, I don’t see that I’m making someone else worse off. In my eyes, I see that my mother is making someone else worse off. When she gets money from the government, it’s money that could have been used for someone else. When she goes to those Christmas toy donations, there’s another family more deserving than ours. When we get our free lunches, someone else has to pay for that.
I know that you eventually learn and pick up a few things from your parents, but I thought this was the one thing that I could run away from. Or am I just making excuses for all my actions so I don’t feel bad about it? So I can mask the fact that maybe I am becoming a bit like my mother? That I am picking up on the things that I once looked down upon?
Edit: I will not allow you to call my mother names, so refrain from doing so unless you really want to set me off. Yes, what she does isn’t the greatest thing, but that doesn’t give you the right to talk about my mother like so.
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