Posts tagged with "children"

Canada Day '09

Playing with Oli

Thumbnail: Little shoes
Thumbnail: Mark and Jen
Thumbnail: Pecan Pie
Thumbnail: Phil and Oli
Thumbnail: Ryan

(This is how behind I am on post­ing my pic­tures.)

Canada Day is always a way for us to catch up with each oth­er once a year (for those from out of town), to see how every­one is doing over some bar­be­cue and baked goods. There are always new faces, famil­iar faces, and this time, it was a lit­tle dif­fer­ent, with three babies that weren’t there last year. My friends are start­ing to have kids.

Sometimes it’s strange to see Aaron with a baby. He’s what we con­sid­er an adult now, a grown-up, a father. Yet he’s still the same Aaron (which is a good thing), with the same styl­ish clothes, the same inter­ests, the same ebul­lient atti­tude, except he’s hold­ing a piece of him­self.

AND DID YOU SEE THE LITTLE PECK AT THE END? AAHHHHHHH SO CUTE1.

  1. Video tak­en with my iPhone, with no colour cor­rec­tion or fil­ters. Not bad for a cam­era phone. [↩]

Defining Myself Through Others, Revisited

A deep­er look at an old top­ic

Some time when I was a child, I asked my moth­er if she loved her nails more than she loved me. She had this kit full of nail tools — clip­pers, files made of met­al and emery, toe sep­a­ra­tors, fake nails sep­a­rat­ed in lit­tle box­es, even a small hand-held, bat­tery-oper­at­ed dremel with dif­fer­ent attach­ments used to grind, sand, and pol­ish — that she would car­ry with her around the house. When I asked her this ques­tion, she picked me up in her arms, and vehe­ment­ly denied it. I did­n’t believe her though, not in my heart. She had always paid more atten­tion to her nails than to me.

My dad was no bet­ter. One time I googled his name to find his work num­ber, and came across an audio/visual site where he had writ­ten a small para­graph as a review on a pro­jec­tor he had. I was crushed. It was more effort than he had ever put into my life, sit­ting in a cou­ple of short sen­tences in front of me. It would have been okay if he had been so unin­ter­est­ed in every­thing, but he was­n’t. He loved his car, he loved his home the­atre, he loved his karaoke, but me he had no inter­est in.

So, before I had become a teenag­er, I start­ed to look for some kind of approval from oth­er peo­ple. At that point, it was Andrew and Alex. They were my best friends in grade 3 and 4, but I changed schools in grade 5. Even after this, I tried to hang out with them but they seemed to be more inter­est­ed in school, and we lost touch.

Pretty soon, I real­ized that I was­n’t any­one’s “best friend”. I cried and I cried and I cried. I felt like I need­ed this to define myself. I need­ed be a pri­or­i­ty to some­one because I cer­tain­ly was­n’t a pri­or­i­ty to my par­ents. Without being some­one’s best friend, I was worth­less.

As an adult, you may feel inse­cure about cer­tain aspects of your life. You lack self-con­fi­dence in areas where you feel vul­ner­a­ble — inti­mate rela­tion­ships, social sit­u­a­tions, or work. Within your vul­ner­a­ble areas, you feel infe­ri­or to oth­er peo­ple. You are hyper­sen­si­tive to crit­i­cism or rejec­tion.

I still feel this way now. The prob­lem is that the need isn’t being met. Everyone puts oth­er peo­ple first, and the one foun­da­tion I believed I had in my life has crum­bled. I’m nev­er impor­tant enough.

Two things keep me from killing myself.

The thought that one day, I may mean some­thing to some­one. Or the thought that one day, I’ll be able to stop defin­ing myself through oth­ers, and sim­ply be con­tent with who I am.

Either way, some­thing’s got­ta give.

5 am vs. Acceptance

A while ago, I tried to under­stand the dif­fi­cul­ties I would face in hav­ing chil­dren. I see now that a very fun­da­men­tal prob­lem with the entire con­cept is that I haven’t accept­ed what I’ve become yet. Such an inabil­i­ty is rel­e­vant inso­far as the fact that I haven’t accept­ed who I am cre­ates fur­ther dif­fi­cul­ty in accept­ing some­one else.

The same sort of prob­lem aris­es out of rela­tion­ships, but in an inverse man­ner; how could I expect some­one else to accept me, when I haven’t done so already? I feel that such a dif­fi­cul­ty is prob­a­bly the most promi­nent obsta­cle in my rela­tion­ships. Another would be the fact that I’m not sure if I am strong enough per­son to prop­er­ly take care of some­one else. Relationships are sup­posed to be mutu­al­is­tic, and it feels as if I’m not ready for them yet.

I’ve been think­ing this for quite a while now. So many things seem to be point­ing me to this fact. I’ve been slow­ly accept­ing it, and it has very slow­ly been work­ing.

Yet some­one is tear­ing my rea­son­ing apart.