Describe a positive thing a family member has done for you.
You got to know, I am not one who knows how to take a compliment or help. Growing up, I am the eldest of three sisters. I basically knew how to take care of myself on my own and I am not familiar with the feeling of being offered help.
I was always top of the class, best in all class subjects,excelled in various extra curricular activities I joined, and was famous for it.
But was I genuinely happy? I think I was. I mean achieving something of that degree was never easy and it took extra effort and diligence. I let people think how they think of it. When they talk about my resumé they make it all sound so easy that when I make a minute mistake or mishap it was so easy for them to discredit all my work. However, again I just let them talk their talk. I go on with my days and live with the pressure of the society, my teachers at school, and my parents. It was bearable, tolerable, at the time.
College happened. And things happen. Going to the city I did not have any expectations. I wish not to excel but to only pass. Because I was away from home it felt a little bit easy for me to take off all the burden from my shoulders and just exist.
My parents, especially my mom, started missing me. I was far from them, alone most of the time, and I barely call them. I was trying to really take the independence all in. Until I experience my first failure. I failed my quizzes and exams and resulted in a fail preliminary mark. I did not cry. It was the first time I felt I am normal. But because I cannot afford, financially, to fail, I studied harder and tried harder. The next exam I got perfect scores including in my quizzes. There were fluctuations in my grades on my first year in college.
I told these to my mom. But only the failure parts. I never told her I got perfect, or passed something, or got a compliment from a professor. I told her only the tough parts.
In this writing prompt, you may be asking, then what’s the positive thing that a family member has done for me?
My mom told me it’s okay. She told me it’s going to be okay. I did not know the word okay could have so much emotion in it. For the first time since I could remember, she never told me ‘you can get it next time’, or ‘there’s always next time’, or ‘you can do it’. For the first time she lifted the pressure off me. She never encouraged me. And that was what all it took for me to keep going.
My mom always knew what to say. Even I could not believe my ears when she told me she accepts any result of my academic journey. She said it’s okay. She was satisfied for the first time.
I like to think that it is distance that was the culprit of this acceptance. Because I was so far away from them, they missed me so much that they will take even the bare minimum. Sometimes distance may be a good thing, you know.
There was no pressure from my parents, until now, whatsoever in how my college journey would end up. And I am so fine and happy with that that I don’t even care anymore what other people say. It was the best or the most positive thing by far a relative has done to me.
And if time and distance were what it took for me to be free of pressure, I wonder what time and distance would do together again for me. Hopefully, heal my broken romantic heart.
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