I’ve been discussing my mother’s situation with a few different people, and it looks like we all agree that perhaps I should shorten my stays when I visit home and potentially increase the frequency to make up for the fewer days. The last time I came in June, I was there for about five days, and luckily, no real fight happened; everything was as calm as it could have been. This time around, the stay was about 11 days, and we had four arguments varying in intensity and length. It really takes an emotional and psychological toll on me when these things happen; I feel stressed to the point where I can feel a physical change in my body, and then all I think about are all the dumb things she had said to me that made zero logical sense. It would be different if I didn’t care about them at all, but I really do; ultimately, I just want my parents to be happy, but it doesn’t seem that I can really make that happen on my own. What is really preventing them from being happy and leading full, rich lives is their own mindset and all the negativity that surrounds it. It’s their distrust of the world, their disgust of other people like my aunt who actually do lead happy lives despite having many elements of dysfunction and imperfection. They will always be like this, and it’s my life-long struggle to just accept them the way they are and the way they will continue to think.