I got an email from my mother today. After imparting news, she informs me that after the ‘fun memories’ of my visit to Taiwan have faded, she and my father have gotten around to talking about me and my life. This is never a good thing. Never, ever, ever. She attached two letters to the email, one from her and one from my father. So, she wanted me to read her letter first, and then my father’s (because she’s a control freak like me, she has to direct the order in which I read the letters). With a sense of foreboding, I opened her letter.
In a nutshell, she talks about me becoming self-reliant, how I am grotesquely fat and negative in my outlook, and that while she is perfectly happy to continue our arrangement concerning the house, she would like to include as a stipulation that I spend an hour a day (or something like that) reading ‘life-affirming’ material, preferably the Bible. She closed with a Bible verse that she and my father particularly like. I will confess that I did not read the verse. I would also like to say that I don’t find the Bible to be particularly life-affirming, but that is neither here nor there.
Then, I opened my father’s letter. If I had a sense of foreboding before opening my mom’s letter, it’s nothing compared to what was going through me as I opened my father’s. His talked about our responsibility to society and the environment. Then, he basically called me a leech on society. He ended with, “We spent _______ money on your trip to Taiwan. A family in Taiwan could live ______ time off that amount. We were happy to do it, but are you happy?”
My immediate response was to get physically ill and go straight for that dark place that is deep within me. I have been struggling since returning to the States as to not giving into the darkness, and the letters from my parents may very well have pushed me over the edge. I already think I’m a fat, ugly, worthless piece of shit (though I have had moments where I’ve transcended that), and my parents reinforced every belief. As Alex likes to say, the reason our parents are so good at pushing our buttons is because they fucking installed them. OK, he might not have said fucking, but I’m sure he meant it. And boy, did my parents push every single goddamn button I have. Every one.

I can’t feel my feet! I wish I couldn’t feel my ankles, knees, or neck.