He doesn’t assert his boundaries and becomes resentful when other people don’t reciprocate the way he does. “Why do I have to be the one who gives in all the time?!” I am quite certain that’s a constant refrain in his mind.

Sometimes I’ll ask my parents if they need me to buy anything when heading out. Here’s a complaint being brought forth during our quarrels: if you really meant it, you’d have gone out of your way to buy things for your mum. That’s a really strange accusation - I merely asked if there’s anything she wants me to buy that’s on the way home. I wasn’t going to go out of my way because I was tired after working out. Apparently that’s a serious enough concern for him to bring it up. Instead of enforcing his own standards, he’d complain about other people’s standards and wish they didn’t exist!

When I air my grievances at home, he’d trivialise and shut it down by saying things could have been much worse! Indeed, I felt much worse after talking to him. When my sister sobbed about depression and wanting to end her life, instead of listening empathetically he downplayed it and insisted on his own narrative. My sister hardly opened up to us and when she did, that’s his reaction… I’m not surprised why my siblings have given up on this family.

It’s easy to recognise someone who is socially stunted and emotionally disconnected, but to live with them is a psychological extreme sport. The risk of injury is far too high - you either end up as a very angry, socially stunted, codependent (wo)manchild who has poor conflict resolution skill or any of the above. I don’t know even where or how to start when there are 20 odd years of emotional baggage and grievances.

I’m certain he’s not neurodivergent, although his thought process and emotional immaturity probably resembles that of one. My parents were raised in a small town in Malaysia where everybody knew each other. Fun fact: my mum still keeps in contact with her primary school friends. My dad lives in his own world and doesn’t have any friends or relatives here; despite having a family, without an anchor he’s been drifting like a piece of wood. He’s a microcosm of my family. As a result of his influence, home is an insular bubble with its own flow of time a few orders of magnitude slower than the speed in which society moves.

My family is an anachronistic temporal anomaly. The problem lies with parents using the 1960-80s method in a backwater Malaysian town to teach their kids, in other words trying to solve modern problems with ancient solutions.

Last updated: 25 July 2021