It’s pretty clear that I lucked out in the parents-in-law area. My in-laws are smart, generally open-minded people who are world travelers that would put most of us to shame. They’ve welcomed me into their lives with open arms and without any real hesitation. But I knew that at some point, we’d disagree on something. I guess that some point has come now.

None of these things are big things. They are quite small in the grand scheme of problems we could have. My future mum-in-law has indicated that while she enjoyed the sample wedding album that we shared with her from our chosen wedding photographer, she didn’t find them particularly unique and was expecting something different. I get that not everyone understands photography technique and editing the way I might since I scrutinize photos like crazy and took a while to make my photographer decision, but wedding photos are wedding photos. No matter how personalized and “you” that you make your wedding, you will definitely have photos that look like other people’s wedding photos: the bride walking down the aisle, the bride and groom standing together and posing, family shots, cake cutting, dancing, etc. You can’t really make these things that different. It’s just the way it is. The editing will make the difference in the end in terms of color.

She’s also indicated that she is against the idea of us having a nanny. “You have to raise your own kids!” she exclaimed at Chris when Chris mentioned that we would eventually have a nanny. I didn’t get involved in the conversation, but I was definitely not that comfortable listening to it. The thing about being in a dual-income family is that if both partners are working full-time, you can’t really get by having children and not have some external help, whether it’s from family, an extremely good friend, or professional help through a daycare or a nanny. It’s just not feasible. I have no desire to be a stay-at-home mother and wife. Chris’s parents had the luxury of having Chris’s dad’s parents take care of the kids while his own parents worked full time. My parents had the luxury of having my grandmother live with us while all of us were growing up. They had help — it was just unpaid and done by family. If we’re not living in San Francisco or Melbourne when we raise our children, we’re not going to have familial help, either, so the only option is hired help. People seem to forget the little luxuries they’ve had when they judge other people’s choices, which is a little frustrating.

Usually, when you hear of bridesmaid drama, it tends to involve the bride being too high maintenance and demanding, also known as a “bridezilla,” and the bridesmaids not being a huge fan of this and expressing frustration. In this version of bridesmaid drama, it’s the bridesmaids being passive aggressive with each other to the point where absolutely nothing is getting done.

My friend just found a great place where we were supposed to stay for our weekend away in September, and we all loved it. Supposedly, another bridesmaid never confirmed that she was in agreement with the place and the price, so of course, given that it’s Labor Day weekend, the place got booked on AirBnB by someone else. It’s gone now. And I was really frustrated. How difficult could it possibly be to respond in a timely manner to an email about a time-sensitive booking?

One bridesmaid is too passive aggressive and doesn’t stand up for herself enough and getting stuff done. The other is lackadaisical and doesn’t see a reason for setting timelines and deadlines. In other words, no one is being proactive to get anything done.

I’ve explicitly told them all that I want to hear no more complaining about each other and nothing about planning until everything is finalized, and I can finally hear some good news for once. I don’t think I should have to be involved in all this when this is their responsibility.

Tonight, we went to see a show in the West Village called “Nice Girl,” about a woman who ends up dropping out of Radcliffe College after her dad falls ill and dies, and she lives with her mother for the next 16 years and helps take care of her. She takes an assistant-type job at an accounting firm, and it’s clear she thought she had more potential than to be someone’s assistant at the age of 38.

The mom is emotionally manipulative. She tries to get her daughter to do things by guilt-tripping her here and there, and she loves to act helpless, as though she would not be able to survive without her daughter’s daily help. She gets angry at the idea that her daughter would even think of moving out and being on her own. Wow, this seemed so familiar to me. It’s like my own mother in a lot of ways. She always says she’d never be able to live alone, ever.

It made me remember the one time when Ed had a tiny chance of moving out. He found a small room for rent in an in-law of someone’s house at an affordable price, and he considered moving. It would have given him freedom not just from the overbearing eyes of our parents, but also freedom from constant scrutiny and intense and unwarranted criticism, which chipped away at him every single day. Unfortunately, when my mom brought it up with me one day on the phone, she was angry about it. She said it was a stupid idea, that he’d never survive living on his own, and that his job wasn’t good enough for him to move out. She also said that if he did decide to move, he wouldn’t be allowed to take anything from this house with him except the bed he slept in. That infuriated me, and I told her it was wrong. My words meant nothing to her, though, and of course, she just yelled back.

Well, now the house has all these nice things that Ed was so generous and loving to buy — endless bath towels, bedsheets, pillows, comforters, a fancy knife set that is barely used, dishes, plates, bowls, bathroom supplies, even a freaking flat screen TV. That bed is still there, too. But there is no Ed. That house will never see Ed ever again.

We were shocked to learn of the economist John Nash’s death over the weekend during our trip to Ohio and Kentucky. I first learned of Nash during one of my economics courses in high school, then again during college, and of course, when the movie A Beautiful Mind came out during my high school days. When I learned of Nash’s genius and how he suffered from schizophrenia, I had thought about my brother then and thought that it was possible my brother did have a future. John Nash could get through it and persevere, therefore so could my brother! At the time, Ed was not exhibiting any schizophrenic symptoms, but he did have some of these symptoms toward the end of his life. They had mental illness in common.

The most tragic part of Nash’s and his wife’s deaths was that from what the reports have stated, they could still be alive today if they were just wearing seat belts in the cab they took from the airport. It made me shudder to read about the seat belt detail in the articles, as I thought back to a small handful of times when I’ve been in a New York City cab, and for some reason, the seat belt fastener either was not there or not working. I’ve been pretty diligent since I was young about always wearing a seat belt. It was drilled into my head by both of my parents (to this day, my mother still asks when I am in the car, “Did you buckle your seat belt?”), and then again during my mandatory driver training course in high school, where we had to watch test crash videos of dummies in car crashes wearing versus not wearing seat belts. Like when Dave Goldberg died earlier this month and I thought about him falling off his treadmill every time I got onto a gym treadmill in the weeks following, when I think about being in a car now, I think about seat belts, as I did tonight during our car ride home from LaGuardia.

My mom wants me to be a good wife and daughter-in-law. She knows that Chris’s parents are in town this week, so yesterday when I talked to her, she asked what I was making them for breakfast every morning. That’s a code for, she expects me to be preparing something for them to eat each morning to fulfill my good daughter-in-law duties.

This morning, I read this Vice article written by a woman whose best friend is suicidal. It was interesting to see another person’s perspective of interacting with someone with a severe mental illness and how she was coping with it. If I had to write an article like this about Ed, I’m not even sure where I’d begin. Would I begin it with his first suicide attempt when I was 11? Would I isolate it to his downward spiral from 2012 to 2013 when he started exhibiting schizoaffective disorder, and how I knew he was nearing his end, so I kept telling him I loved him and cared about him and that I needed him to be strong and believe in himself because I believed in him in every single phone conversation and e-mail up until that dreaded day he went missing? I don’t know.

What’s it like to be friends with someone who is suicidal, or to have a sibling who is suicidal and then commits suicide? I know what that’s like. No one really cares about your experience as the friend or the sibling. They just tell you that everyone has to carry their own load, that he has to figure things out for himself and stop leaning on you. No one wants to help you. They think you are pathetic for wanting to help. And they certainly don’t want to help him. So you are powerless, and you feel even more powerless as the days go on because you can tell the end is near. They think he’s crazy or not worth the time or effort, or they criticize him and make him seem that all his failures are his own fault… That is, until they receive the news that he is no longer living, that he is dead, and that he is dead by his own choice, or hand, or jump. Then they come back to you and say senseless, moronic things like, “If only I had known it was this serious, then…” Then what? Then you wouldn’t have done shit. You wouldn’t have done a single thing differently. Go ahead and cry your stupid tears. I don’t care that you are crying. You will cry at the funeral, feel bad for the next few days, at most a few weeks, and then move on with your life. The past has then passed, and you have forgotten. It’s easy for an outsider.

It’s really hard to have faith in human beings when you know how stupid they can be in times like this. How do you teach empathy to people who are just not open to it?

We ended our long day trip out to Long Island today with a stop at Tangra Masala, one of my all-time favorite restaurants that specializes in Indian Chinese food in my old neighborhood in Queens, Elmhurst. As we are ordering and eating, I am remembering how I wanted to take Ed to eat here when he came to New York, but there was no way that my mom or dad would have been able to eat it. My mom would have been annoyed it was Indian anything, and my dad would have passed out from how hot and spicy the food was. So in the end, I never got to take him. Ed loved hot and spicy food. He and I both got our mother’s pretty considerable heat tolerance. He also loved Indian food, but as a family we never ate it together unless it was just the two of us.

I thought a lot this evening about Ed and all the things he never had a chance to do, things he was pretty much robbed of because of our parents and how they prevented him from evolving and growing into a true adult. Something as basic as eating at this restaurant, or as frustrating as not being allowed to go to a cousin’s wedding because he would, in their opinion, shame the family, or as terrible as not being allowed to drive the family car into his thirties — the stories just get more and more ludicrous as I remember them and write them all down. Some of these things have been forced on me as well — I rarely got to drive despite being licensed to drive. My mom praised other people my age for driving and being independent, yet she refused to give that opportunity to Ed or me. Without being aware of it, they just didn’t want us to become adults, even though they thought they did everything they could to make us into adults. “Just be an adult! Can’t you do that?!” My mom would scream at Ed a few times a year in his 20s and into his 30s. Most of the time, Ed never yelled back. He knew he was powerless. Neither of them would ever empower or imbue him with the confidence and self-respect he needed to have a fair chance at life. My life at home is full of painful memories, all of which end in Ed’s premature and untimely and unfair death. These memories always seem to creep into my head at the most random times.

Last night, Chris’s parents gave Ben, Chris’s younger brother, a call to see how he was doing. He’s still living at their house in Melbourne while he continues his job search, and for lack of better words, he has a pretty simple, easy life right now. He’s bickered quite a bit to me about how overbearing their mother can be, as every child does at some point, but generally I cut him off by reminding him that he doesn’t even know what the meaning of “overbearing” is. How does Ben define “overbearing?” It actually played out quite illustratively last night. This is how the conversation went after his parents were able to get through via dialing their land line:

Mum: “Ben? Can you hear me? Yes? Hi! Hi! How are you going?”

Ben: “Yeah! Everything’s fine! Nothing’s wrong! What do you want?!” (Proceeds to ramble a few other cutting comments to his mother that I can’t quite hear clearly)

Mum: “Oi! Ben!”

I never realized that saying hello and asking how one’s son is doing was overbearing and excessive. Ben says something else rude to his mother, which his mother responds with the same “Oi!” as she raises her eyebrows. They needed him to do something on his end in their dad’s office, and so when their dad got on the line, Ben barked impatiently, “What do you want me to do?! Just tell me!”

Wow. So I texted him via Whatsapp afterwards and said, “Just FYI that you sounded like a dick on the phone to your mum.” Ben, the ultimate mobile device addict who is on his phone even during meals, didn’t respond.

I thought about this for a bit, as I remembered mumbling something to my therapist about how someone really needed to see a therapist. She smiled when I said this and responded, “Everyone needs a therapist. Everyone needs someone they can talk to.” And to add to this, as I’m sure she thought this, too, perhaps everyone needs someone in their life, voluntarily or involuntarily, calling people out on things that they could improve on, or terrible habits or behaviors that are not conducive to real maturity or development. And I realized I couldn’t figure this guy out.

It makes sense to have this sort of fussy, irritable, even childish attitude as a teen full of angst, or even as an adult if you have a poor relationship with your parents as a result of years and years of dysfunction and mistreatment. But Ben’s had a pretty good life because of his parents. He’s had worldly indulgences at ages that the rest of us have never even dreamed of… because at those ages, we were so young that we didn’t have the awareness that a world outside of our house or neighborhood even existed! He gets love and attention and money from them, even when he doesn’t want it and avoids it. He even gets a roof over his head while he’s unemployed, doesn’t have to pay rent, and doesn’t even do his own laundry. He barely even has to wash a dish at home because his mother will take care of it or load it into the dishwasher. So why does he have to act the way he does with his parents? It’s as though he’s been wronged in life by them, and I can’t understand it. Maybe only a therapist if he were to ever get one (and he probably won’t) could break it down. Or perhaps a smart woman who may consider him as a potential life partner may call it out for him or even dump him because of this bad attitude. No sane, self-respecting woman wants to marry a guy who treats his mother poorly. I’m a strong believer in the idea that men will end up treating their wives just like they treat their mothers, perhaps not during the courtship phase of the relationship, but many years down the line when things aren’t so romantic and snuggly anymore.

As someone who’s come from a family of generations of dysfunction, I am always extremely cognizant and observant of how people interact with their parents — in public, in private, whenever I have the opportunity to observe it. It’s very telling when you see how people treat their own family members, particularly the two people who have given them life. And as someone who has dysfunction with her parents, I still treat my parents very well despite that because I recognize that they gave me life, a roof over my head, the education I’ve had the privilege to go through, among many other life gifts. There are sacrifices they have made to raise me and terrible things they’ve had to endure to make sure I had a decent life. I didn’t grow up in luxury, but I grew up with far more creature comforts than either of my parents could have ever fathomed. So as a result of all this, I get this visceral anger when I see people like Ben treating their parents as though he’s some ungrateful teenager as opposed to a nearly 30-year-old grown man. I can’t empathize with his constant impatience, annoyance, and attitude. It’s like attitude for the sake of attitude, which is immature and almost painful to observe. If anyone here really wanted to act out against their parents, it should be me or Ed, not Ben.

Don’t get me wrong. He and I get along really well. I look at him like a brother (younger brother to be honest, even though he’s technically four months older), and I talk to him like we’re siblings. But as with all siblings, we disagree. And with his treatment of his mum, I disagree the most and have no issue voicing it.

This question was asked to me yesterday by my therapist during our session. Why do I like them? Well, that’s an easy question to answer. The very plain and quick answer is, they are good, happy people who only have the best intentions and want to see the best in everyone else. I’m not full of shit when I say that. I really mean it. The longer answer to that question is that what makes up these very good, happy people are interests and passions that also interest me: food, culture, travel, politics, daily observations of the world that are actually valid and insightful. It’s true, though. I’m not going to like or get along with everyone who says they have these things as interests. One person could say he’s into food and cooking. A colleague I don’t like is like that. When I realized what kind of food and cooking he’s into (just food that originated in Europe? You just make chili and enchiladas?), I realized… we have nothing in common. You’re not as exploratory as I was hoping.

So I like my parents-in-law as actual people. This is why. I could go on all day about everything interesting that we’ve discussed that feels like a substantial conversation. “Do you like your parents?” she asked me. I responded, “Do you mean, if they were not my parents, would I want to be friends with them?” She nodded. “No, no way.”

Today, I met with my therapist, and I was describing to her why I was annoyed about my mom’s reaction to Chris’s parents coming last night. As I’m telling her what transpired, she cuts me off at some point and says that she’s made the observation about me that when I discuss something that is very emotional or sensitive that I laugh. That’s true, I said. In fact, Chris has pointed this out about me relatively recently. Why do you think you do it? She asked. My initial response was for external reasons, that it was to make other people feel more comfortable about a topic that was not comfortable at all. She breaks into a little smile and says, Do you think you need to make me feel comfortable? Hm. Well, that’s a good point.

Why do you laugh? She asked. And I said that in 99% of these situations, I just think the overall thing that happened is ridiculous or just plain stupid. Why would she just predict that Chris’s parents would not be nice? Or why would she get so mad and hold a grudge because one isolated time, someone asked her if she wanted to remove her hat when entering someone else’s house? These things are not a big deal at all to normal people. My therapist responded, yes, that may be the case and is usually the case, but can I say that I think you do this because it’s your way of expressing your anger, and instead of allowing yourself to feel, you try to skip the anger feeling and go immediately into the “that’s ridiculous!” laugh feeling?

Yes, it’s probably true. Now I need to stop laughing at myself as much when I describe these situations to outsiders.

I guess I’m never going to fully get over my anger toward my parents. It’s just a fact that I need to deal with for the rest of my life. But I think so far, I’m doing a pretty decent job considering how much I talk to them proactively and how often I go home and do my good-daughter duties.