2001-05-02 - 7:30 p.m.
#52: No Need for Confrontations
Note to self: My parents love me. Well, my father does anyway. I don't know about mom yet, but I'm hoping the trend is true there, too.
Well. Tonight was the night. I finally told my dad about my feelings on continuing my education in engineering. I hadn't really planned it that way of course. It just so happened that he rang tonight and.... Well, if life was a TV show this scene would have been so over dramatic it'd be hillarious. He'd rung up to ask if I was okay, if I was eating well and so forth and so forth and I answered with my usual affirmative grunts (I'm not the best conversant over the phone). Everything was pretty routine until suddenly he asked, "Is there anything you want to tell me?". Now THAT question just got me. This was the perfect opportunity. Either I said my piece there and then, or I could just bottle up and just say "No, no everything's fine". I hesitated for a moment and then my brain came to a brilliant compromise. My mouth said "Erm". That statement betrayed my confused thinking and forced me to take the next obvious route of explaning exactly WHY I said "Erm".
So I said, "I'm thinking.... that I'm not sure that I want to continue studying engineering". And there was a clap of thunder. I mean, literally, there was a clap of thunder when I finished that sentence. I would have burst out laughing if the situation wasn't so serious and my throat wasn't so suddenly dry. I awaited for what I thought was the inevitable explosion. It didn't come. Not even a frustrated sigh of disappointment.
Instead my father simply asked me a question.... Can't remember exactly what it was now, but it was along the lines of "why?". I answered him, and he resettled the phone over his ear as he listened to me spout my reasons about not wanting to continue the course, about maybe going out into the workplace to experience engineering as a line of work rather than an academic study. We had a back and forth question and answer session (not that long, really) but I can't seem to remember too many details from it. My sieve-like mind is to blame. -_-;;; The thing that I remember most clearly however, is that he wasn't angry with me. He could be disappointed, he didn't sound it, but he did say that he and mom were getting old. But he wasn't angry.
He also said that he was glad that I had finally come to him to talk about this. He already knew that I was getting vaguely frustrated by my lack of progress in engineering and about the fact that I was going to see a university counsellor. He even had a family friend try to act as a middleman between my parents and I, so that I could tell him how I felt about my studies and he'd relay some of it unto my parents at my discretion. But this was the first time I had actually told my father, directly, about my problems and he was happy about it. I'm relieved. Actually I'm pretty ecstatic. I'm about this far away from bouncing off the walls. I'm so glad that it ended on such a high note.
But.... Now that my high is (more or less) momentarily past.... I wonder if I had really told him all I had meant to say. Maybe I'd sugarcoated the truth somehow by forgetting some vital piece of information.... Maybe he wasn't angry simply because I hadn't told him about all my plans. And then.... He told me not to "do anything drastic"? Does that mean I shouldn't quit engineering? I didn't tell him that at all, now that I think about it.... I just said, in a wishy washy way, that I was THINKING about quitting engineering and/or trying for an engineering orientated workplace to see what it was like. Nowehere in our conversation did I actually CONFIRM that I was quitting. Not that I remember anyway. I could have misled him with my poor choice of words.... Oh god, I hope not. I don't want to borrow trouble now. Not now. Not when everything seems to be all right. I should just forget about this. These fears are probably just part of my imagination. I hope. Lotsa maybes around....
Anyway.... (less happy now, damnit. think happy thoughts now) My dad said I should probably wait on telling my mother until she got back from Canada. He mentioned he was going to phone her, but he said he wasn't going to mention my decision in the conversation. I guess he wants me to tell her for myself. I guess I appreciate that, in a "treating me like an adult" kinda way. One parent down, one to go. I'm not sure I can take the emotional strain.... But the weight it lifts off my shoulders is a relief. ^_^
