Cafe Hitch-hike

2024-05-02

Just sayin’

“I guess people thought we could had done more with ourselves. They would say, ‘you’re just a [Name of Family].’ I ‘only’ became a teacher. My brother quit politics after being [a hot-shot politician]’s public relations head and then chief of staff for 2 years although [politician] was very abusive. Our family was smart, but everyone thought we could had done so much more.”

“They wouldn’t be happy with what I have now. They would ask why I’m not the head of the organization, or think should work for a top-tier institution. I should have a house in some exclusive gated community. They would think I should be 25 pounds lighter.”

“I was able to slide by. My favorite relative never wanted us to be without, so he paid for my prep school and college but I had a learning disability and my mother didn’t want to acknowledge it. I got into (one college), then (another college), and my mother even got me into (a third college closer to home) but I just couldn’t finish and I didn’t want to be there. I could see her disappointment in me.”

“So I accomplished [some extraordinary academic and industrial tasks], but I never gave my mother a grandchild.”

“When I went to see my auntie for the first time in ages, my sister told me what to say if auntie asked about her. She asked me to say that her business was thriving and she was working on buying a big house. Of course, those things weren’t true but even my sister knew what the expectations were at that point in our lives.”

“My parents were extraverted and lively, but I liked quiet times and to be with myself and a book. I knew they wanted me to be something else less embarrassing to them. Family gatherings were torture, and after a while, I learned to pretend to be someone else. I hated it, and hated myself after a while for having to be that way. That was why I moved far away from them.”

“It was expected that everyone in my family would go to [name of an exclusive college] and they gave a lot of money to the place. There’s a building or two named after them. My father went to Vietnam and then chose a different school funded by a GI Bill. He liked it alot, so I went to the same one. There were other reasons, but we were written out of a will or two.”

“I was supposed to be a CEO with a boat, a big house, and a pretty wife and children. I was supposed to be like him or his brother Tommy who knew everyone in town. I can see my father’s disappointment in me from time-to-time.”

downwind | upstream