Story time!
Once upon a time there was a little girl. She lived in the beautiful and humid city of Brisbane, Australia, with her sister, brothers, and parents. Her mother was an artist who maintained the stereotypical homemaker role of her time, and her father had a PhD in physiology and lectured at the local university.
Fast-forward. The girl is now a woman who lives in the busy city of Sydney. She is smart, beautiful, fit, and single; although she has been in several serious relationships before, she is picky and has not yet chosen a husband although she is in her mid-late 30's. She has traveled the world, mostly on trips she has won because of her superior sales skills at Yellow Pages. She has many friends and lives nearby her sister. One day, she is sitting at a cafe when a man asks to sit at her table, and begins to chat with her. He is American, on a business trip to Sydney. The two talk and get along very well. She is intelligent, he is charming. They begin to date. She makes few trips to his small house in the Northeast part of the USA and he makes a few to Australia before the topic of marriage arises. The woman realizes that between her choosy nature and biological clock, her options are running thin. This charming American man is kind, interested in her, handsome, and has a steady enough job working for an electricity company in rural Connecticut. She has fallen for him and for once won't let her head talk her out of yet another relationship--and thus agrees to marry him.
Therein, however, lay the problem. Where exactly would they start their life together? The man had a house, a job, and his tightly-knit Polish family in Connecticut, and refused to leave each and all of them. The woman had a choice: leave her promising and lucrative sales career, her small house, her family, her country and her lifestyle...or leave him. She thought of her future child, and believed in the States that the child would have better opportunities for an education and career. And so she packed up her life, sold her house for the best price she could get on short notice, and moved from the bustling city of Sydney to a small town in a small state with hope and a ring.
Time passed and soon she did get the child she had already sacrificed a great deal for: a bouncing baby girl. She had what she wanted and her new life seemed to be going well. Unfortunately it wasn't long until rose-colored glasses began to wear off. The best sales job she could get was an hour's commute which left little time to spend with her daughter. American food was much higher in fat than the fresh seafood she was accustomed to and her figure soon saw the effect. Her in-laws seemed to resent her more and more for reasons she didn't understand and made her feel less and less welcome as time went on. The American man became less charming and more impatient. The woman thought of leaving and taking her daughter with her back home to where people were kinder and life made more sense, but was afraid of how the absence of a father figure might affect her baby girl. And so she stayed.
Five years into the daughter's schooling, the woman quit her job. She was infuriated by how much more time her daughter spent at Aftercare than at home and quit to become a stay-at-home-mom. This left the American man as the sole provider for the small family, and with that the woman gave up what little control she had left over her own life. She was now dependent on this man and he didn't let her forget it.
Frustrated by the lack of control she had, the woman turned her attention to her daughter. All of it. Her sole goal was to raise her daughter to not make the same mistakes that she did. Meanwhile, it also gave her an outlet: Although she had no more control or opportunities for change in her life, she had both in her daughter's. Time and money were invested in dance lessons, piano lessons, fencing lessons, anything that could give the girl skills and a future. Serious emphasis was placed on success in school. Pretty good and decent effort were unacceptable--"Don't be an "it'll do-er", be a "just right-er"". And the girl did succeed, frequently earning very good grades while keeping up with her extra-curricular activities, and her parents were very proud. Due to the constant parental attention, she became very mature very quickly. So mature that the woman would talk to her daughter as an equal, drilling life advice like, "always stay financially independent, no matter what" from a young age. The girl understood anyway. She saw her parents fight and knew that wasn't what she wanted.
The attention had its negatives, too. The woman had harsh rules about junk food, bed time, and socializing with friends. The girl wasn't allowed to drink soda, or sleep over her friends' houses. Bed time was strictly enforced through even the first two years of high school. The girl was warned to watch what she ate, because when the woman was an adolescent she gained weight that was harder to lose as an adult, and the woman refused to let her daughter repeat any of her misfortunes. The girl understood more and more how important it was to keep mommy happy.
It put a lot of pressure on the small girl. Although she knew daddy was the fun parent that bought her whatever she wanted, he was rarely around. Mommy was strict and mean, but she was also the one that would pick her up from school if she got sick and make sure she got all the hugs she needed to feel better. Soon enough the girl reached adolescence and began to question both of her parents. Why did dad think he could be rude and disrespectful to mommy just because he earned money and she didn't? Why did mom insist on enforcing the most pointless rules if not for simply a power trip? She began to realize that neither of them were superheroes and she began to resent both for how they treated each other and herself. But of course, this isn't about the little girl.
Now, the woman is much older. Her husband could care less about anything but his daughter and his boat. Her daughter, although well-adjusted and headed to a good college, frequently points out the flaws in her parenting and is resentful, impatient, and questioning towards her: the obedience that was second-nature in childhood has backfired completely. She is generally disliked by her family and can't seem to amend the qualities that make her so. She has a few friends but doesn't spend much time with them. She barely paints since she quit her art classes to save money for her daughter's college fund. She has numerous health problems, mostly stemming from stress. Skype and e-mail keep her and her daughter in contact with her family, although she only sees them once every 4 or 5 years. She is frustrated and unhappy, and consequently lashes out frequently at her daughter, who lashes back and starts the vicious cycle over. Sometimes when the two aren't fighting, the woman retells her daughter the story of how her life came to be like this, and reminds the girl to do better than that for herself. She reminds the girl of Australia and travel and how happiness is out there and she wants nothing else except for the girl to find it. She reminds the girl that better things are out there.
And that's why I can't marry Sal.
No matter how much I love him and how happy we are now, I've learned enough from my mom to know that two different people with two different goals in life can't both be happy in the long run. Sal and I have an expiration date coming up in the next few weeks that we both know and understand. It's better to part as friends now than struggle through a long-distance relationship through college and end up resenting each other in a few more decades. We'll stay close forever, I know that much. He'll be at my wedding, he just won't be the one standing next to me.
If for no other reason than I can't let my son or daughter 40 years from now to be writing a blog post like this one.
I think the best thing I can do for my mom at this point to make up for everything is to have a good life. So she knows she did something right, and everything she went/goes through isn't totally in vain. I owe her that much.
The End.
[Also, sorry this was pretty depressing. All the thought of Sal and I and our lack of future has just been getting to me and I had to sort it all out. Writing this helped a lot. When I think about it, despite all this stuff my mom is still going so it can't be all bad. Please keep this on the down-low for a while. I'm only posting it here because I expect that anyone who reads this would understand where I'm coming from. I don't need rumors flying around with people who wouldn't get it. I might end up deleting this soon anyway so read quick. Anyway I'm going to bed now, hopefully anyone reading this is having a great summer. I am, I'll post more of an update blog in a little while. Until then, stay lovely.]
*: "Some Nights" by Fun.
