We will have been traveling for 24 hours, including transit and layover time in JFK, LAX, and Sydney due to a delayed first flight from JFK. I slept for a good amount of time on the LAX to Sydney leg, and when I thought for a moment about foregoing my mouth guard during my sleep, I thought that would be a pretty terrible idea given that my mother has hung up on me twice and tried to blame me for all her suffering, and I’d probably end up with chipped or broken teeth by the time we arrived in Sydney if I didn’t wear it. At this point, I can’t really mentally afford any broken parts of my body.

For my conscious time during these flights to Melbourne, I wondered a lot about parent-child relationships — what makes them work, what makes them not, and the constant blame game that seems to happen in even the most functional parent-child relationships. I wondered about what led to my brother’s untimely death, and all that I wish he had from our parents that he was deprived of. It’s easy for me to blame them, but how can I really blame them when they had inadequate love from their parents, as well, which led to their ultimate inadequacies in raising us? All they are doing is continuing the cycle of dysfunction, criticism, and emotional abuse that they endured as children. They are only doing what they know. It’s sad, but it’s all they know.