Cleanse

My parents came to visit me in Melbourne.

It felt strange, as if for the first time, I saw my parents in a different light - or perhaps I was not around as often when they started changing. Perhaps it was the distance, or the mistakes I had made that made them react differently to me.

Never realised that my father had such random adorable traits. The way he would stand expectantly at a random tourist statue, or a sign and wait for his photo to be taken, almost as if to proclaim to the world that he had been there and had the photo to prove it.

I never realised my mother had such a gentle side. She was always so strict, and so stern, and expected so much out of us that I was afraid to disappoint - afraid to give her less than what was expected. She was definitely the disciplinarian of the two, and as a child, her fierceness gave me pause and kept me distant.

I can only wish that I didn't cause them so much disappointment, and so much worry.

I kept myself so distant because I believed that I could spare them my failings and my troubles, and I did not know how to break the silence when I found myself overwhelmed. I did not know how to tell them that I was flailing and grasping at straws, wanting so badly to not burden them with issues that I thought my own.

And so it came spilling out, the bits and pieces, the truths and untruths, some said, some inferred. And they accepted it all, all my faults and failings.

"You are still our daughter," they said. It made so much of a difference.

It is beginning of sorts, and I pray it is the beginning of breaking down those walls I have so carefully constructed throughout the years.It is ironic, that after envying the close relationships so many of my friends share with their parents, to realise that I was the one who did not know how to reach out to my own. To forgive is to set the prisoner free, and then discover the prisoner was you.

There is still a lot of worry for the future, but I will have the strength of my family behind me. And that is something I can be thankful for.