“Why do you always say ‘no’ when someone asks you if you want something?” Ed used to ask me, always exasperated and annoyed. “They’ve brainwashed you into never wanting anything. But that’s not normal; everyone wants something from time to time, and it’s okay to want things!”

Occasionally, Ed and I would go shopping together. He very generously took me shopping to purchase my very first prom dress for my junior prom in high school. Ed was always very generous, especially in the years when he was working, and so he’d always offer to buy me things just for the sake of it. There didn’t need to be a birthday or Christmas coming up; he just thought it was good to indulge every now and then. “I don’t pay rent, so might as well use the money to buy you something,” he’d say.

It pains me to remember these moments. All Ed really wanted was love, attention, and our time. Unfortunately, he never got any of the above from our father. Our mother gave him the wrong kind of attention (critical, scrutinizing, eager to compare to “the kids upstairs” aka our cousins).

For whatever reason, I remembered these moments when Chris and I were strolling through the Santa Fe Farmers Market yesterday morning. The farmers market here is famous for being very strict about how all its products are sourced: all of the items or foods either need to be grown and/or made right here in New Mexico. In addition, if it’s a food product, it needs to be certified organic. I stopped by a lavender vendor and perused her lavender based soaps and skin products. Did I really need to buy more soap or lip balm? Not really. But in the moment, I thought, well, I haven’t traveled for so long, and we can always use more soap and lip balm, so why not? Plus, I like supporting small, local businesses. So I purchased a couple items from this vendor and went on my way.

Ed used to hound me all the time for being cheap for myself. And well, it’s not too far from the truth; if I purchase something that isn’t food-related for myself, even to this day, I obsess over whether I really actually need it, even if it’s just a $20 shirt. I will spend at least 4-5 days wondering if I will really wear it enough, get value out of it, etc. I’m just not comfortable splurging on things for myself and I never have been. He’s right, though; it’s likely because our parents 90 percent of the time always said “no” to everything when we were growing up. I even started saying “no” to events with friends before even asking for her permission because I’d be so sure that she’d say no.

The two times I knew she’d never approve of that Ed knew about, which he got really mad at me for: the first time was in middle school, and a good friend of mine was going to get tickets to a concert in San Jose that my all-time favorite singer Mariah Carey was going to be doing. The tickets were around $100, and she asked if I wanted to go; her dad would be taking her. When I heard how expensive the tickets were, I knew my mom would never agree to pay it, so I told her that my mom said no. Ed overheard this phone conversation and lashed out at me after.

“You didn’t even ask!” Ed said, raising his voice. “Who cares if it’s a hundred dollars? She (Mariah Carey) never comes to the Bay Area! You should just go!”

I just shrugged. I told him that there was no way our mom would agree to let me go. In fact, she and our dad would likely get angry and accuse me of being spoiled just for THINKING that they’d even consider letting me to go to an event that cost that much, an event they’d likely deem as “unnecessary.” Everything to them was seemingly unnecessary.

The second time was during my senior year of high school. I had already accepted college admission at Wellesley, and I really had nothing to do the summer after. Two of my friends were planning a Hong Kong and Japan trip that their parents were gifting them as a graduation present that one of my friend’s moms would be going along on, and they asked me if I wanted to go. I knew my mom would say no, so I told them I couldn’t go with them.

I later told Ed this, and he had a similar reaction. “You always do this to yourself!” he said, shaking his head. “You prevent yourself from having fun and enjoying yourself. Just because they don’t want to enjoy life doesn’t mean you can’t.”

I already felt guilt for how much my college education was going to cost; going to Wellesley was going to cost my parents over double what going to UC Berkeley would have cost. My parents never gave me a high school graduation gift; to them, my college tuition was gift enough. My mom was already laying the guilt on heavily on me for deciding to attend a private college on the East Coast, three thousand miles away. My parents were not shy or quiet in the slightest about reminding me every step of they way how much my education was costing them, from the moment they wrote the first check for the deposit to hold my spot there. During one of our many arguments, my mom shrieked at the top of her lungs, “WE HAVE TO EAT LEFTOVERS EVERY NIGHT BECAUSE OF YOU!”

That’s very likely an exaggeration, as my parents were hardly scraping by to send me to college, but it did not feel good to have her say crap like that all the time to me; that was not an isolated incident. I don’t even want to know what my life would have been like every day if our parents decided to send both of us to K-12 private school. I’d likely never hear the end of it.

So I guess every time I buy something that may be perceived as “unnecessary” now, I feel like it’s a small form of rebellion against my parents. They perceive most of my life choices since college as “unnecessary”: all the trips to Australia to see Chris’s family (she actually did say it was unnecessary, if you can believe that), all the travel we’ve done outside of work and San Francisco (going to SF to see them, however, is always necessary), both domestically and internationally; all the apartment living in Manhattan, even my hair highlights.

Small acts of rebellion. I hardly appear like the rebellious type, but it’s easy to “rebel” against rules when the rules are so stupid and insipid.

We left Albuquerque yesterday to drive up to Santa Fe, where we’ll be staying until Sunday and traveling in the surrounds. When we checked into our hotel, which is basically like a lot of little apartments surrounding a pool and common seating area, I thought about all the hotels and motels I’ve stayed at over the course of my life, and how in the last 10 years, I’ve been really lucky to stay at some very beautiful, well-appointed hotel rooms and suites. Somehow, this triggered the thought of all the crappy motels I stayed at during short travels around California with my parents. For my parents, they didn’t understand why anyone would want to pay more than $30-50/night for a hotel room; “it’s just there for you to sleep,” my mom would insist. So each stay, they’d search for the cheapest possible motel, most with peeling plaster or paint, stains on the carpet and walls, and one even had a massive hole in the wall (that hotel was $30/night; my mom apparently drew the line there, and after seeing this, she demanded a refund and we left). Ed refused to go on “family trips” once he was a teenager; for him, being away from our parents was vacation enough. The first trip I vividly remember taking when he refused to go, I was 8 years old, which meant he was about 15, and early that morning when we were packing up the car to leave, Ed started crying, insisting he didn’t want to go. I was too young and unaware to understand his strong feelings of hate and rejection. My grandma sided with him, telling my parents that they shouldn’t force him. So we let him stay behind.

This evening, when I was showering, I also washed my hair, and well, when you wash your hair, you shed hair that needs to get cleaned up. So after my shower, I cleaned up all the hair from the drain and disposed of it in the trash. And yet again, this was yet another triggering moment, making me remember the time when I was in college back home at some point, and I accidentally left hair in the bathtub drain. I had always been pretty thorough with cleaning; I was basically trained to be that way because anything less than perfect (splashed water on the kitchen counter, stains on the stove, dust on the shelves, sponges left unsqueezed of excess water) would be constantly nitpicked by our mother.

I was always good about cleaning my hair out of the drain, except for this one, single time. And I distinctly remember my dad getting so angry and worked up about it (because all the little things are made into big deals in that house). He barged into my bedroom by violently opening up the door (you’d know a violent door opening when you heard it), and yelled, “You know, you need to remember to clean the drain when you wash your hair! You don’t need to be told! USE YOUR BRAIN!” And then without wanting or expecting a response, he left and slammed the door.

Leaving hair in the drain once is really not a big deal, but as he and my mom always did, he made it into one. Everything was explosive and angry in that house, and unnecessarily so. His reaction was such an over-reaction, but sadly, it was not unexpected from them. A reasonable father or human being would have just walked over to me and said, “Hey, can you remember to clean the drain after washing your hair next time?” and maybe even acknowledged that I NORMALLY ALWAYS DID THAT ANYWAY, AND THIS ONE TIME THAT I FORGOT WAS NOT A FUCKING BIG DEAL AND WAS AN ANOMALY.

And if you thought that was it, well, that unfortunately was not the end. Later that day, I may have accidentally slammed a kitchen cabinet. And my mom came out of nowhere and said angrily with her face all scrunched up, “I know why you’re making all this noise. You don’t like it when your father disciplines you. Well, all children need to be disciplined and told when they are wrong. Kids need to listen to their parents, and those who go against their parents will be punished BY GOD!” With each word, her volume rose. And with each word, I counted down the days until I could be free of their financial support, graduated from college, and far away from their constant unfair treatment and tyranny of me.

According to the Bible, children must honor their parents. But what the Bible (and I’m sure every other religious text out there) never outlines is that parents are NOT always right, and when they choose to be physically, verbally, or psychologically abusive towards their children, that is not okay with whatever higher power you believe in. Parents are not gods, whether they want to believe that or not. I frequently have yelled back at my mom and told her that she believes she is God, but not because she thinks she is always right. Her response is the usual, “God hears everything you say, and you will be punished for being disobedient.” Rather, I say that to her because she literally criticizes and judges every single person as though she has zero flaws herself. She most recently criticized someone who is supposed to be her “best friend” because her daughter is recently going through a divorce (my mom thinks divorce is unacceptable) and her son just had a baby out of wedlock. I wanted to remind her that maybe, just maybe she shouldn’t criticize her friend, because at least both of her friend’s children she gave birth to… ARE STILL ALIVE. Some of her criticisms or judgments are based on “facts” that she has actually made up, which only makes her seem even more delusional and mentally demented.

This past week, for whatever reason, has been extremely triggering for me. Everything seems to remind me of something stupid my parents have done. Oh, and I just looked in the mirror and realized that what I thought was just a “bloated” look is actually my stomach starting to “show.” I hope all these triggers can go away so I can just move forward and stop remembering the stupidity of my family’s past.