Larasati Silalahi

I’ve been watching the 5th season of nip/tuck, now on 4th disc. Apart from all the annoying, crazy, morbid lives the characters had, there was this, one good lesson I learned from this TV show.

It’s called F A M I L Y…

Yes, Dr. McNamara and Dr. Troy were plastic surgeons whatever, bla bla bla, but the most intriguing part of the show is how their families were so messed up and I always had this ‘dark’ feeling about the kind of relationships that’s been going on

Anyway, it reminded me on how family really plays part in our lives. Think about it, every one of us has weird habits or traits. Most likely it was built during our childhood, how your parents raised you, what kind of values your family has, etc.

Think about the one thing that’s in your life right now, and try to think about how you’ve been raised. There must be connections between them! Do you crave for love too much? Are you possessive? Are you afraid of commitments? Do you forgive easily? Do you get emotional so quick?

The one thing that I had always been lacking of is the presence of father figure. I realized about this once I got to know Christianity, before that, all I knew was the fact that I got along so well with guys, and I had plenty of guy friends (some were boyfriends too), which now I understand that it was one of the acts of consolation for not having my dad around during growing up. My dad had always been busy. Even the day I was born, dad only had 5 minutes to hold me in his arms, and he got to catch his flight to Tokyo

Dad was always away on business trips; he had visited every country in the world, as I remember. He woke up before I did, and came home after I slept. Don’t get me wrong; I never hated him for being busy. I know that my two brothers, my sister and I could experience all the privileges (studying overseas, traveling, etc), because of dad’s hard works.

To be honest, my dad and I just started to ‘build’ the father-daughter relationship since I got back from Singapore (not even Perth period), more less starting from three years ago. Kind of too late, but it’s not too late to fix something. Of course, during the ‘reconciliation’ process, we had lots of arguments, fights, and so on. No wonder, I hardly knew him back then.

The thing is this; we really can’t blame anybody for whatever happened in our families that made us who we are today. All we can do now is to try our best to ‘fix’ whatever can, and not to repeat the same mistakes our family did, once we have our own.

(One day, maybe 5 years from now) I KNOW for sure that my kids will always have their dad beside them during growing up. I won’t mind stay at home while my husband take the kids out on play dates or whatever.

Something I never had with dad.