Yesterday, we were driving along the road, my father, my step-mother, and my two siblings, 7 and 13. The 7-year old was talking about all the things she wanted to be when she grew up, and she mentioned wanting to work several jobs to earn lots of money.
My dad, driving, turned around and said, “Gigi worked three jobs in high school,” with a touch of pride in his voice.
No. No, you do not get to be proud of me. In fact, you should be steeped in deep shame. “Gigi worked three jobs in high school,” you should have said, “because I told her when she was 15 that she was on her own, and that she had to take care of herself because I can’t.”
You may not remember that conversation but I do. It was the same car ride where you were pulled over for making an illegal U-turn, but talked your way out of it. When the police officer had driven off, you turned to me and said, “See, I got out of that because I’m a genuine person. That could never have worked for you.”
Now, you love talking about how self-sufficient I am, how independent, how much of a survivor. No. You do not get to be proud of me. You only have shame. I became who I am not because of your incredible genes (more on your obsession with the novel The Selfish Gene later), but because of your irresponsibility. Before me, you had two other kids by two other women. You speak about what “quality” women they were, how they “gave you no trouble,” after they realized that you could never own up to the responsibility of being a father to the children you saddled them with. You bragged about how you were able to select quality women, how their quality traits jumped out at you and how you wanted to reproduce with them so you could pass on your wonderful genes as well.
Children are not experiments through which you can fulfill your ego. It disgusts me that me and my siblings were made because the Selfish Gene told you that reproduction is the meaning of life. Today, on the couch, you told me that you belong to the school of thought in psychology where there is no right course of action, because what is right today is not necessarily what is right for tomorrow. That it is simply the intention that matters.
Upon that philosophy, you have skirted responsibility. Upon that philosophy, you have justified having three children, by three different people, and then leaving them to chase what you wanted instead, in the world. You say you love us. I say: your love useless to me.
gigiestee.com 