Living on Borrowed Interests

I feel like the reason we aren't born as fully formed adults but rather grow up is because we are all supposed to define who we are. Our sex, our body parts and our looks are all decided for us; creating our own identities is the only thing we have control of after we are born. From birth we are constantly manipulated by others and the circumstances we find ourselves in. Our parents train us to be members of society but no one can train us to become who we are supposed to be.

Searching for an identity is one of the most dangerous challenges we are faced with in life. Humans are so susceptible to manipulation (and children even more so) it makes it difficult to know what you truly want. I knew children up that pegged their nose when their parents would smoke but eventually got so normalised to it they too ended up as smokers.

My mum was big into piercings. She had four on each ear alone and she was proud of it. I never really liked body piercings but for as long as I can remember I wanted my belly button pierced because my older cousin Amber had one. Now I realise that I never really wanted one. I just wanted to be like her. One day, I was visiting my mum during the school holidays like I always did. We were window shopping and as we came across a piercing store I said, "I think nose piercings are cool."

My mum's head swung to look at me and she surprised me saying, "you should get one!"

Just because I liked them didn't mean I wanted one.

But my mum was persistent. She eventually said she would pay and I ran out of excuses to fight back with so I went ahead with it. She was so happy when I got that piercing. She even videoed the whole thing. For years she would tell everyone about it and how I cried. I can't truly express how dreadful this felt, it was a painful jab and twist of a knife. She was the tyrant against crying. She would order you to "stop crying you're not a baby" and saw it as unnecessary and pointless... But it wasn't pointless to me. It was an important outlet. It was my escape. As an adult, I have trouble crying when I feel overwhelmingly sad because she wouldn't let me as a child. I'm drawn to sad movies because it's the only time I am able to cry...I can't cry for myself I can only cry for others.

She also made sure to mention she paid for it. I occasionally wish I didn't let her talk me into it because now I can't say she never did anything for me. I literally walk around with that reminder every day. I feel like that was her plan or maybe she just wanted me to be more like her.

She wasn't there for me when I needed her and I'm still salty about that, it was her one true job as a parent. When I was young my mum left us, she never said why but I suppose it was to find her identity because I guess being a mother and wife wasn't enough. She wanted something all to herself. If she just gave us a reason maybe it would make more sense or not hurt as much but she never did so all I can say is that it was excruciating. I suppose it's not that bad leaving your family to find yourself. I don't have a problem with that idea but it's a lot harder when you are the one being left behind. It hurts even more when they decide the life they found was better and never return. But I can't really blame her because for the longest time my parents were miserable together. They brought out the worst in each other.

I grew up in a small town where your business becomes everyone else's. One day my mum visited my dad's work and was talking to his boss about how miserable she was and how "John is an asshole and so are the kids." I've never forgotten and I still don't know what to think of it. I don't particularly remember being an asshole. I mean I was only a kid, she could have stayed and tried to fix me if she thought this but she decided to give up on me instead. When you know your mum said that about you it's hard to believe her when she has packed her bags and says she is "leaving your father not you."

When I was young I used to forget I had a mother. Apart from the occasional phone call and being whisked away by her on holidays, I never really saw much of her. She gave me her old mobile when she upgraded but the older I got the less she called. A few years later she was talking to her friends about me right in front of me. She complained that I never reached out to her. That she gave me a phone for a reason. That I would never call her back or answer her messages.

I used to answer her messages!

It just took me a while to reply because I was at school and I was a good kid. She should be happy I wasn't on my phone in class like everyone else. I barely made any friends in high school. I was too busy replying to my mum's texts during lunch breaks. I remember once I was texting my mum while I was lined up outside the classroom. The girl in front of me craned her head over my phone. My mum had just sent "I love you", so I sent "ILY" back.

She said, "Who's that you're talking to? Oooh I love you, Is that your boyfriend?"

I want it to be noted that I still haven't had a boyfriend but the next word that exits my mouth is "Yeah."

It is so embarrassing that I was one of those cringy people, that are the laughing stock of movies, who had an imaginary boyfriend.

"What's his name?" She asks.

"Liam." It was the first name that popped into my head, he was the son of a friend of my mum's where she lived at the time.

"Do I know him?"

"Nah he lives in Sydney."

The people in front of us started filing in and I curse why it didn't happen 30 seconds earlier.

So for a little while my mum was my boyfriend.

Every passing moment I felt worse about lying but I didn't come clean because I didn't want to be made fun of. I even changed her contact name to Liam. Everyone at school found out about my 'boyfriend' but luckily never quizzed me about him. I was ready to come clean to the next person that asked me after 3 days but I was never asked again; it was old news. No one ever found out he was imaginary and I never told anyone the whole story until now. I am only telling this story because it made me realise how awful dishonesty is. So please don't laugh at me because this situation taught me how much I hate being deceptive because being deceived is an awful feeling and I don't wish it on anyone. Being deceptive and being deceived go hand in hand, you can't have one without someone experiencing the other.

Mum giving me that phone was somehow supposed to symbolise that I should call my mother and not make her the only person putting in the effort to stay in my life. Well her intentions went unnoticed. I was a child, you couldn't have just directed me with your words?

Now it has been drilled into my head to check my phone because I don't want to upset my mum. Even when I'm not looking at my phone I am still thinking about it constantly. I would more than happily switch off all my electronics and have a week away just taking in my surroundings but I would dread when I switch everything back on and am bombarded with tons of missed messages. I feel like my phone is an anchor and I am caught on it being plummeted deeper and deeper ever so slowly suffocating. I feel constantly stressed waiting for the next time my mum messages so I can reply quickly to prove her wrong and not give her ammunition for future discussions about me. But it's so hard to change your mothers mind about you once it's made up (its almost not worth trying). My mum has taught me that the things you do in the past follow you into the future. She says I'm a good girl, that she was gifted with such a good daughter but then she goes and talks shit about me behind my back. At least it is behind my back rather than in front of it like she used to. You might think well how do you know she does that? Well because when I visit her she bad mouths everyone to me. If she feels a need to complain about her best friends what would stop her from complaining about me to them.

I think replying instantly is an unrealistic expectation for anyone. We have become too demanding. back in the day when you received a letter in the mail you don't read it straight away and quickly and carelessly send one back. No! You read their message and feel their emotions and experience an in depth peak into their life. Then you spend the next few days thinking of how to reply in such a way that shows them how much you care about them enough to share little insights into your life. That way every message is sent with love not deadly daggers aimed at 3 little dots that disappear or a tick. Plus I think a message left on read is a lot better than a message that is left unopened. In my opinion that's the real way to hurt someone. The dots and the tick are like how you treat junk mail. But the unopened messages are how you treat spam and scams.

Growing up every time cousins came to visit they would be different. Their personalities were always evolving and their interests changed too. I feel like I formulated my interests by piggybacking off the things they liked at the time. But the funny thing is they introduced me to some punk bands then left and when they came back years later I was still listening to those bands but they moved on to K-Pop. I wonder whether I truly was interested in the things they introduced me to or whether I was just copying them. Are my interests even my own?

I have a cousin that's 4 years younger than me. She used to really look up to me. She would follow me around and I had her undivided attention. One night when we were at our Grandparents' house we were talking up a storm and she was making some 2 minute noodles. The bowl was spinning around and sparks were flying for a good 20 seconds before I noticed. I raced over to the microwave and stopped it.

"Why'd you do that?" She said opening the microwave.

"It was sparking...", I said looking into the bowl, "you put your fork in it!"

We had a good laugh about it and a week later when she was gone I visited Pa and realised he replaced the microwave.

"You got a new microwave Pa?" I asked.

"Yeah the old one just stopped working out of the blue last week." Pa said, a little confused.

"That sucks." I said while texting my cousin that we broke the microwave. That's how strong our bond was; when there was chaos around us it took the back-burner.

I still feel like I haven't found who I am yet. Next time she came back she was merely 12 years old with strong opinions and interests that were her own. Oh how I envied her for that. At times she seemed as knowledgeable as an adult and in others she was joking about 'drinking bleach' which was a thing kids used to say back then. Nevertheless it was quite disturbing, that's probably when I broke away from partaking in trends of the youth. Where I grew up probably affected my ability to form my identity too. All my classmates would ever talk about was getting out of this town. There wasn't much room for sharing each other's interests between the endless whining. Although I suppose the other thing the people in my class were interested in was partying. But that's also not for me.

Manipulation is just something people do. My mum isn't the only one. My dad does it too. My dad's attempts at manipulation are so obvious that I don't mind them. He doesn't mess around, if he wants you to do something he tells you, he doesn't try to bribe you or trick you. You can easily influence someone without meaning it because words matter and if you use the wrong ones it can scar a person. When I say manipulation I mean any form of influencing a person no matter how small or unimportant it may seem. You might think that isn't manipulation but really influence is still a form of manipulation that just isn't sly. Maybe it's just me but I feel like it's better knowing someone is attempting to manipulate you rather than someone successfully manipulating you and you only realising it in retrospect. My mum is the latter kind of person. I can't cry. Whenever I would cry she said things like "Stop it's not a good look." So I stopped. No matter how bad I feel I don't cry. My mother took that away from me.

I try not to influence people because I want them to be who they want to be. I don't want to put ideas in their head and force their hand. I don't want to change someone just because I don't agree with what they are doing with their life. Inevitably they are the only ones that have to be with themselves for the rest of their life so they should be someone they like.

Recently a cousin the same age as me, in the process of trying to get sober ended a 2 year relationship. It's hard to cope with so much change in such a small amount of time. She cried every night for weeks, it's hard to help her because I want to make her feel better but I don't want her to feel like I'm pushing her or overbearing. I am only her cousin after all, what could I possibly bring to the table, do I even have the right to provide input on how she should live her life? I try to stay neutral because the only outcome I want is for her to be happy. But can you really help if you are neutral? I have never known someone before that needed help. This is an uncharted territory for me.

Maybe I am making it harder for her when she starts crying as she says, "I don't know what to do" and I reply, "I don't know either" instead of providing her with solutions. I think doing nothing is worse.

We listen to the cicadas chirp around us from the patio.

"I don't know how to come back from this."

I say, "you already are. Every day you are getting closer to moving on with your life."

We both sit in silence.

"I don't know what I'm going to do for the rest of my life."

Then I say, "You don't have to. No one really does."

It sounded good to me but I don't know if it is what she needs to hear or if it is enough. She gets enough grief about her past from her mum so I try not to pile on because I know how much it hurts to be constantly reminded you messed up. Especially when they are your mum and proceed to tell you how hard their life was and how they worked hard to get where they are. I don't feel like comparing your life to someone else's is fair. To me it is too much pressure hearing a success story when you can't see the path to that ending for your own story.

we talked some more and I felt like we were getting somewhere then she said, "You're an amazing person Fay."

"...Thank you." I'd never been called amazing before, prior to this the best compliment I got from people was nice. I don't know if I deserved it but it felt lovely knowing someone thought that.

I told her, "I think you are amazing too. The fact that you are trying... it's so courageous and I admire you for that."

Then we both start crying, sitting together in the dark, until we have let out all our pain.