Life in My Years

My dad tries to put his arm around me, but I shrug him off.

“I don’t want to talk,” I say again, and inexplicably, frustratingly, I start to cry. I had thought for sure I wouldn’t, when I walked in the front door just minutes ago.

But then he had said “You look sad,” as I walked past him in the living room where he was sitting, waiting for me, and I felt so angry he said that – that he was here, waiting for me instead of shutting himself in his room like usual; that he’d guilted me into coming home when I didn’t want to; that we were going to have to have a talk now, to make him feel better. And now, looking at me with that face, and speaking to me with that tone — especially that face and that tone — so familiar and yet so inconsistent with how he behaves normally. It felt exploitive.

I walk into the dark bedroom next to the living room and put down my bag. I can hear him waiting for me to respond and I know he’s going to come in any second now, if I don’t say anything,. But even if I do, I know he’ll come in anyway.

“I do not. want to talk about it,” I say loudly and clearly.

But that’s a hard thing to say to a member of the Zou family. We talk because that’s what makes everything okay again. We don’t stop.  It’s like we can’t stop. We brute-force our way into feeling better and I’ve only started to realize in the past few years the limitations of this conflict-resolution approach. This was one of those times.

Right now, I didn’t want to have deal with all his inconsistencies, his contradictory behaviors. I wasn’t his little girl anymore, readily taking in his mood swings and only all too eager to laugh along with his jokes and please him when he’s feeling happy and being nice. I need some consistency now.

So I shake his arm off. And when he tries to hug me, I pull away more vigourously, like he’s poison. My movements feel almost automatic, like I don’t even mean to do them, but my body just won’t tolerate his kindness.

“Do you dislike your father so much?” he asks, the third time I brush him off.

“No, I don’t.”

And it’s true, I don’t dislike him. I love him.

But I just don’t want to talk.