Well, how do I begin?
For those reading, I just want to say ahead of time that I appreciate if you read this all the way through, because I guess I have to go through my whole life to give you the best idea of what has happened.
I was the only child of a rich family, does that say a lot? Basically, everything has always been given to me my whole life. Really, my whole childhood I never learned what it meant to have a job, even worse to pay for anything myself. I got a BMW when I was 15 if you want an example (I did not ask for it by the way). But more staggeringly, my grandfather took out $10,000 dollars and put a down payment on a house. I was in a partnership, he owned 51% of the property, I owned 49%, and the day I was 35 it would all go to me. Over the 24 years that partnership existed, the investment grew to two duplexes and two houses, a total of four properties.
Really, all they ever told me they expected of me was that I went to college. Despite the fact I never made very good grades in High School, I got excellent test scores and was able to get into a really nice college. I was worried though, I have always known that I have been intelligent but it has at many times been a detriment. I have always had the ability to listen to a lecture by a teacher and be able to retain almost everything they taught. Of course, that also meant that I never needed to study to make As and Bs, so I never learned any study skills of any kind. So I was worried about going to a good college.
But I knew, and they didn’t let me forget, that for all the things they had done for me in life all they expected was that I went to college. I left for college and had a lot of learning experiences. The first was credit; I had never dealt with it of course and was completely new to it, so as soon as I got some credit I bought a whole bunch of furniture for our apartment. Later my wife (we were just SO at the time) lost her job and we lost the ability to pay for them, so my parents bailed me out.
So college began getting harder and harder for me. It wasn’t only because I didn’t know how to study, but the fact that more then 70% of my courses were outside of my major and I had no interest in taking them. I guess I didn’t care because I didn’t get to choose what electives to take, the university had a very strict plan that required I specifically take the classes they pre-choose for you. Anyway, to get down to it I didn’t care about college and the only reason I was there was because I did not want to fail in the expectations of my parents.
The stress was killing me, so I left college. But I was so passive, so afraid of confrontation with my parents about not meeting their expectations that I made a very bad decision. I had the Texas Tomorrow plan, so they weren’t paying for tuition or anything. However, they were paying for my books and living expenses at the time so I could go full time. My bad decision was that I did not tell them I quit school because I just couldn’t do it anymore. So for about half a year I lived off their money without going to school. It was a stupid decision made by an inexperienced teenager.
Of course, I got a job and we were soon paying for ourselves. However, the fact I didn’t live up to my parents wants was nagging at me. After about two years of work, I felt I had changed and that I could do college once again. But really, the root of it hadn’t changed, I was still going to college to make them happy and I really didn’t care about being there. I didn’t want to be there, I didn’t really deserve to be there.
So I got stressed again, and I got depressed again. For the first time in my life I secretly began thinking about suicide. I had been convinced that without a college degree I had no future and that my life was basically over. But I took acid one day, and during that trip something snapped, and change came over my thoughts. A third option came over me. Start over again.
There was nothing left in Austin. The reason I stayed there was because in my subconscious I was still attached to the idea of doing what they wished me to do. When I realized that college wasn’t an option, that killing myself wasn’t an option, I realized that there was nothing for me there.
But I couldn’t go back home, it would be going back and somewhere in my mind I knew that my moving back home would only put myself in direct contact with their ever-present expectations. In there mind, why shouldn’t they? So much money they had given me, is a little expectation too much to ask? I still don’t know the answer.
I moved to Boston, and although they begged me not to go they actually gave me some money to help me go there (I did not ask for it by the way). And I admit that without their help we would have fallen short.
But we moved here, we got jobs, we lived on our own. For the whole year I have been here I have not asked for their help once, not once. I never asked for money, never asked for anything. We made it on our own, and although I wasn’t doing what they wanted I was learning so much about life, so much about doing things on my own, separated by a great distance by my parents.
They came down a month ago, and they saw that I was trying to make it, trying to be responsible, trying to change myself, and it was working! So they made an offer, come back to Texas. We will pay for your wife’s college, and you can live rent-free at one of your own homes. We will even throw in a truck that your uncle is getting rid of to boot. Wow, what a deal. We had grown a lot, and realized a good opportunity when it came. My wife REALLY wanted to college, and this seemed the best way.
Then the first stroke came. When I called him a month later to accept his offer, I told him I wanted to trade in the truck for a gas efficient hybrid. Now, remember this is Texas we are talking about, trucks are a status symbol (at least that is my theory for his unhappiness). Of course, this did not go over well. He accused me of making demands, of not appreciating his offer. He accepted, but was not happy about it.
A day after I made some tentative plans with them. I found out from them that one of my houses would be vacant in 6 months, it seemed the best option though I agreed to nothing.
There was a problem though. Winter was setting in. The first year winter here in Boston me and my wife worked at the same place, we carpooled. But now we worked at different places, with different schedules, one car couldn’t work out. She was biking the whole Summer to her other job, but she wouldn’t be able to bike in a foot of snow. Already in autumn the temp was dropping down to the 50s in the morning and she was getting sick by biking in such weather. We budgeted our money, and found an amount that we could afford a month. We didn’t have any money saved up, my wife had just got her job and before that we barely scraped by. The only option was to buy.
We found a 2006 Chevy Cobalt with only 28,000 miles on it and made a loan on it for $10,000 dollars. The loan wasn’t official, we still needed to provide proof of income before they could verify it and it had to wait till tomorrow. I called my grandparents that night. I told them that we had budgeted out our money and we were making car payments on a new car we needed for the winter. They seemed cool with it, and agreed to register it in Texas since we were moving down soon and our other vehicles insurance was already based in Texas.
Then the second stroke came. That night, at 2am in the morning when both of us had to work early in the morning, my grandfather called me back. The whirlwind that came would prove to be the begging of the end of my relationship with the whole side of my family. He couldn’t sleep because he couldn’t believe how I had betrayed him. I had ruined all his plans for me. He didn’t just mean the car either. Now, he was mad about the car, or more specifically how we did not consult him first before buying it. In my mind, since we were doing the payments on it and since we absolutely needed it for winter it wouldn’t be a big deal. But it wasn’t about the car, he was angry that I lied to him during college, that I had spent his money during that deception, that I tried a second time and failed, that I moved away from my entire family to live on my own. They told me they did not want me moving back down to Texas, the deal was off. I told him that I would move anyway, but he told me he wouldn’t pay for my wife’s college, wouldn’t let me live in the house that was supposed to be mine one day. But since he owned 51% of the property, and due to the type of partnership the loan was under, he had complete control over it. He let me know it, and basically told me I could not live there.
But more then that, he called me cruel, that I had maliciously and purposefully deceived and took advantage of him in the past and I was doing it once again. I have made bad decisions in my life, I try hard not to regret anything in life but I did ask for their forgiveness. It did not matter. He could not trust me now because I had betrayed his trust in the past. I wrote this e-mail to them in response.
“I can’t believe you have done this. You falsely accuse me of lying, of being some kind of sneaky bastard that is only after taking advantage of you. I will agree that I have made bad decisions in my life, but who I once was I am not now. Your attack on me tonight was the last straw. I tried to go to college, TWICE, because I knew that is what you wanted of me, so I tried and tried until the stress was tearing me apart. I had to quit or die, never in my life had I been so depressed. Ever since the day I decided to move here I have tried to change myself for the better, try to live life on my own to learn from my mistakes. And I feel I have come a long way, I needed this to get my feet back on the ground, to really find out what I needed to do in life. And now that I have that goal in my mind I wanted to come back to Texas to try to right my mistakes. But I guess that has been ruined now.
I have only tried to change myself for the better. And now you accuse me of being a cruel and heartless person. Now just because we needed a car for the winter so that Michelle can get to and from work you accuse me of somehow trying to undermine or insult you or whatever, I don’t know what kind of elaborate story you have fabricated in your mind. I do know, however, that this is it.
Even now, even after the slander and unjust judgment you have placed on me because of your own twisted portrayal of me, I still love you. But I guess I now know that I will never earn your trust again because you have never forgiven me my past mistakes.
Perhaps one day, when you have forgiven me for what I have done in the past and you are ready to look at me as the man I am now, perhaps that day we can once again become the friends we were when I was a child. Until that day you do what you feel you have to do, I am sorry it had to come to this.
Ma, I love you deeply, I am sorry that I probably wont be writing or calling you for a while. I want you to know that I will always be thinking about you, that you will always be in my heart. Take care of yourself, and be happy.
Goodbye.”
Afterwards I could only feel pity and compassion for them. I felt bad that they miss-understood so bad they were willing to cut connections with me, I felt sad because I still loved them but that he had hurt me.
I called my mother a day later. The conversation started well, but it ended much more differently. I tried to explain to her everything I have mentioned in this post, but things got steadily worse. I could tell she was beginning to become emotional, so I tried to remain calm. That is one thing I did at least through the whole conversation, I at least stayed calm. I told her that the expectations that were put on me for all the money and everything they had done for me in the past still existed. That if I were to go back down to Texas that those expectations would only be placed once again upon me, my grandfathers reaction to such a necessary thing as getting a car for the winter had proved that to me.
She told me that life was full of expectations, that they had a right to have those expectations. That I was selfish for not thinking of her family like she had done when she had me at twenty. She knew that my grandparents (with money even in those days) had given her a lot and she had worked and suffered her whole life to pay them back and to raise me the best she could.
It ended with this, she told me (and I paraphrase), “You have caused me so much pain, and I can’t take it anymore. I never want you to call here again.” I replied, “I am sorry for causing you pain, if you disbelieve everything I have said at least believe this one thing. I never meant to cause you pain, that was never my intention. Though you may never want me to call again, the offer is always open for you to call me at any time. I love you.”
It ended there.
Now its time I send one more letter to them, both my mother and grandparents, one more thing to say. Here it is…
“To my family,
I am sorry for causing you so much pain, I am sorry for being deceptive in my past. I am sorry for those occasions I asked for your help and used your help differently then your wants. I tried to live up to your expectations then, and failed. Even now I have failed to live up to your expectations. But that is one thing I am not sorry for, because I have only tried the best I could in life. I have made a lot of mistakes in my life, but I have always done my best so I cannot regret what has happened. I cannot do otherwise.
If you believe nothing else I have ever told you in my life, at least believe this. I love you, I care for you, and I never intended to cause any of you pain. Though that is exactly what has happened, I never intended for it. My intentions have always been to try and balance my own happiness with yours, so that I could make both of us happy at the same time. But of course, things don’t end up as we always intend.
What is most important to me right now is that we come back to a talking basis. Things like this can tear families apart, parents and children can go decades without talking, and sometimes it follows them to the grave. I cannot abide by that, and since I still love and care for you with all a son can muster, I must do the best I can to fix this relationship. But since I must also consider my own happiness, I can only see one last resort to hopefully mend what has occurred.
The expectations must be dropped, on BOTH sides, from me as well. We must have a clean break.
I must first ask for your final forgiveness for the mistakes I have done in the past, I make no excuse but I hope you can see that they were the mistakes of a person trying to find out who he is in life, a person trying to learn. We need to forgive each other for any pain we might have caused each other for healing to begin.
Also, you have gone through a lot of hardship, and spent a lot of time and money to get the properties of the partnership to where they are now. I have done absolutely nothing for them so I do not deserve them. It is my wish to give my property to my grandparents and to my mother, because it is you who truly deserve them. It must be done legally, as (MY WIFE) will need a loan for college and they count as assets. Although I cannot give you the car back, as we need it for winter, I do want you to stop making insurance payments on it. I will be getting insurance here, but I will need to be registered and for that I will need the title. Finally, I would like payments stop being made to my Midlothian bank account.
There, I think that pretty much covers it. Perhaps now you owe me nothing, and now that I owe nothing to you then our expectations of each other can be dropped. I have the hope that, over time, this will cause the wounds of the past to heal, and we can have a healthy relationship once again.
Finally, I want you to know that I appreciate everything you have done for me in the past, I will appreciate your forgiveness, I will appreciate your understanding, and I appreciate your love. More then anything else in life, more then anything else in this universe, love is the most important and universal truth. Love for those you do not know, love for friends, and especially love for your family is of primary importance. I know that with expectations, obligations, indebt-ness gone, and with the healing power of time, this will come true.
I love you. Live happily.”
It’s done, the e-mail is sent.
Always I have tried not to regret anything. I have always believed that everything that has happened is exactly what needed to happen to get me were I am today. The only thing I can do is do my best and trust that fate and God know the rest.
But there comes a time in everyone’s life were they doubt, it happens to us all. Now a small piece of me doubts. I have trusted, relied on my family my whole life. If they same I am cruel and selfish, an Intelligent mind must admit those things could be true.
So I ask you, what do you think? I am asking for your opinion. Am I cruel? Am I spoiled? Am I wrong? I need an outside perspective on this right now.
I would also like to thank again anyone who made it this far in this incredibly long post. But I needed to get it out, everything, or at least as much as I could.
-onewhohasseen
|