What I didn't learn from my parents...
A daughter’s belated understanding of the people who raised her.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to understand my parents a little bit better.
I see them differently now. I see them as people who have lives of their own, and I regret to admit that I haven’t always seen them that way. They were only ever my parents to me, and I can’t blame my younger self for having such a superficial perception of them, can I?
But my mother isn’t just my mother to me anymore. She is her mother’s daughter; a sister to her siblings; a colleague to her coworkers; a manager at her workplace; a friend to her friends; a wife to her husband; and—most of all—her own person.
My father is no different. He is a son, a brother, a friend, a leader, a parent, a husband, and a man with his own thoughts and feelings and vulnerabilities, none of which the world will ever even catch a glimpse of.
I may have contradicted this realisation once, resented it even, because I was too naive. But now I have nothing but compassion and admiration for them, and I want them to know that I get it now. Sure, they have a role and responsibility to fulfill as my parents, but I recognise that they simply need to be for themselves, too. They have their own world and their own lives, and they need to continue living them for nobody else because they haven’t stopped learning yet. They are still going through changes of their own, discovering things, getting to know more about who they are and how to live happily, just as much as I am.
I accept every apology and I understand how deep the wounds have gone, inflicted after each failed attempt at becoming the “good parent” you’ve always tried to be.
I give them permission to be themselves now. And I apologise that it’s taken me this long.