Sorry

I was inspired to write after having to go through a mindless rant entitled to most of my family members (except my older brother and my maid) when it was first directed to my father by none other than my mother.

Rants are normal and rather understandable, usually a long expression of one's frustration towards a situation. I'm not going to accuse her of ranting, about how often we don't get our facts right and have a biased viewpoint whereby we usually would picture ourselves as the victim and start criticizing others. I do it too, in fact I used to be extremely fond of it. When I was younger, I created blogs for this very purpose, to rant whenever I was so fed up and that I didn't really have anyone to pour my woes out to because nobody seemed to understand what I was going through or they simply couldn't spare the time. I've heard loads of rants as I grew older, some would sound rather biased, some would sound a little more objective. But never have I heard rants that pour so much contempt over the people involved in the issue. Yes, I'm referring to my mother in this case. Her rants are far from ordinary, one (rant) would stand out from all the other rants I've heard in my past 16 years of my life (and unfortunately, I've heard and digested a lot more than one rant from her).

I admit that most of us portray ourselves as the poor, suffering one when we rant. We want people to empathise with us and to agree that others are the epitome of wicked. However, in her rants, she does not only view herself as the victim but she basically sees herself flawless, without any fault at all. And there she starts, putting all her ten fingers into and her irrepressible tongue jumps to life.

Her prejudiced rants are one thing, after all most rants are meant to be biased. Perhaps what really flicked that rage switch in me is the lack of apology.

From the moment I was born into this world to the moment when I'm right now typing this blog entry, I've never ever heard my parents said,"Sorry" to me, even when it is explicitly their fault. I get so overwhelmed by so many different emotions whenever I start thinking about this issue. Resentment, indignance, disappointment, perplexion, exasperation... Sometimes, I'm just lost for words.

Even a toddler is taught how to apologise when he did something wrong. What more working adults with four kids? There are so many books, even books for children, that teaches it is not difficult to say sorry but harder to forgive. So really, how hard is it for them to say sorry when they did something wrong? Being a father or a mother doesn't make you 100% perfect or somebody who would never mistakes. If anything, they would probably make more because (I admit) that parenting is never easy. As much as I can try to understand what they are going through, I simply cannot think of a reason to justify their lack of apology. Pride is hardly a justifiable reason when we were taught to be humble as kids from the well known story of the tortoise and the hare.

As a (turning) 17 years old, I guess I can never understand what is going on in their minds. I can only hope that God would give me the grace to be forgiving for it is really not within me to do so.

- Abigail