The Tipping Point

Love can turn to hate.

So quickly it makes your head spin worse than the nippiest top.

I used to love my 'father'.

Or, more accurately, he used to force me to 'love' him.

And I did. Throughout all the neglect. The aloofness. The yearly trips to the casino where his children had to wait the interminable wait while he gambled thousands away. Thousands which could have easily paid for a more enjoyable and conventional holiday,which he had no interest in, but which I used to yearn for. In vain.

I 'loved' him because I didn't know better.

And I was in the Matrix of inculcated ignorance,perpetrated by the same man who never wanted to give anything beyond basic material needs to his children.

The same man who expected his children to bring him honour, in ignorance of Bertrand Russell's wisdom.


Granted we were in a face-conscious semi-Confucian society, where parents regularly whipped out their childrens' achievements like lances to jab and parry with their neighbours in social conversations.

When I was fifteen, a visiting aunt from Australia gave me a customary hug, and I felt awkward. Many years later, I realised that it was because neither of my parents had ever hugged me before(or at least, not that I could remember).