All this stress and responsibility....
To put it mildly:
dammit.
I don't know. Maybe I'm just tired? But really: sometimes, just sometimes, I want to take a break from being the responsible daughter/granddaughter, having to shoulder the responsibility my parents are given at times in familial matters. Last time it was my grandfather being confined in the hospital and I having to stay with him
in the midst of preparations for thesis defense, oral exams and a written exam. Crapola. So of
course my exams suffered, me blanking out
totally in one of them. Hot damn, I can still remember that. And now my grandmother needs to be brought to the hospital tomorrow because she was diagnosed with pancreatitis. And I was tasked with
bringing her admitting her and staying the entire day-and-almost-entire-night with her. Again. I normally wouldn't mind, really, but I had
already practically spent the entire midmorning-to-afternoon with her (result: I lunched at 3:30 pm), running around the hospital for her ease, losing valuable study/research/reading time today. And I have to do it again tomorrow. OK, so
I know the doctor, and vice versa. Still...!!!! Argh, such obtrusions make me sometimes want to tear my hair out.
***I mean, why can't my
aunt and her kids take care of her/their parents/grandparents,
instead of it being me/us all the time too? The last time with my grandfather in the hospital, they'd come, sure, like twice or thrice
in the entire duration of his confinement, and only to eat, then leave afterwards
Why don't they heat his food and feed him, monitor his IV fluids and talk with the nurses, truly watch over him as I did?. As if that weren't bad enough, they'd bill
him for the food they ate! So where's the "service" in that?!
But I'll do it
of course I'll do it: 'coz who else will?. The Confucian ethic has been too deeply ingrained in me as it is, being the only child of the firstborn son (and only child of a male child, so far). So yes, in this Oriental side of me, I have no choice but to obey. Besides, the obsessive-compulsive streak in me--wherein things done have to be done
right, or not at all--rears its great head. So there you go.
But the Western influence in me, with its consumeristic, self-centered ideals--rebels. But this insurgence must be quelched, and I must submit, once again.
--This must seem like such a childish sentiment, but I assure you, it is real: I have my own hopes and dreams, after all.
To each and everything its own time, I guess, is something I still have to learn and appreciate. Point taken, then: lesson in progress.
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