Doing Time

This morning, I was awake early...what's new there...and started watching a movie on Lifetime Movie Network. My favorite past time when I'm awake before anyone should be. It was a movie about a family who on the outside seemed like the perfect family...the dad owned a restaurant, the mom stayed home and took care of her family. One of the sons had gone to Yale. He was the perfect, golden child. While they seemed perfect on the outside, things were far from perfect.

Turns out the parents were extremely controlling and critical. Nothing was good enough for them except for the son who went to Yale. One son was an alcoholic and his dad told him at one point that every time he looked at him, he was thankful he had another son. The daughter was married to a man who the dad looked down upon because he didn't make enough money. This same daughter was going to have an abortion without even telling her husband she was pregnant because she was so afraid of what her parents would think of her having a baby before she and her husband were financially secure enough to afford a baby. The son who went to Yale...turns out he was gay, and he decided that his parents would be better off if he were dead rather than know he was gay, so he tried to kill himself by running his car into a telephone pole.

Their perfect little world came crashing around them after the son tried to committ suicide, and he decided to tell his parents and everyone else why. Then, the husband of the sister told her he'd found out she was going to have an abortion. She told him she didn't really want to have an abortion, but she couldn't handle facing her parents. He told her in so many words that she needed to stop living her life trying to please her parents...that he was not one of her parents, that she had done her time...

I know this was a fictional movie, but it has haunted me all day. As someone who has very controlling parents, as someone who has spent most of my life trying to please them but always falling short...I can't stop thinking about the daughter's husband telling her, "You've done your time."

So...I've done my time.

But how do I stop doing more time? How do I stop trying to please them, when I haven't been able to in 46 years? What makes me think I'm going to all of the sudden click on some switch that is going to reverse things?

The movie I watched this morning had a happy ending. The dad made ammends with the alcoholic son who felt his father didn't love him. He made the son who was gay promise he would never try to kill himself again...he told him that he could learn to deal with his son being gay, but he couldn't deal with his son being dead. He said it would kill him.

Unfortunately, I don't think real life necessarily has such neat and tidy happy endings.

But, oh how I wish it did.