Tradition and Change

It has been a tradition of mine, to take time out and reflect just before I supposedly become a year wiser. And in my reflection, it has always been asking my parents if I have made them proud.

Perhaps I have always carried this chip on my shoulder. And in the last couple of years, I have deluded myself into thinking the chip away. Alas, delusions are what they are - a mirage that you will yourself to have fixated in your head. All it takes is a strong gusty wind to come and clear the fog away. And what you see, is not what you want to see. What you feel is not what you wished you felt.

I am quite done asking that question this year. Year in, year out - the answer remains the same. Year in, year out - I have chosen not to acknowledge that it is the WRONG question to be asking.

For I know now, pride has no place in this unbalanced equation. How can there be pride when there is hardly any existence?! Or acceptance?!

So this year, tradition changes. I will cease to ask. I will cease to work towards achieving the answer that I had hoped for. I will cease to ask the question.

I will cease.

Perhaps when I cease, it will hurt less, or not at all, the crystal clear fact that you allow me to be insulted and leave me standing out in the rain, to bear the insult by myself. Telling me in not so many words that I am not worth defending. That the fact that it is your blood that runs through my veins, doesn't matter. 

Perhaps when I cease, I will be able to tolerate my rightful place in the history of our culture. That I am worthless, a negative number in your books - regardless of what else the rest of the world thinks of me and what I can do.

Yes, I shall cease.