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For context for what I'm about to talk about, you should know that I can't drive, and neither do I have any interest in learning to do so. The thought fills me with anxiety, honestly, but even if it didn't, I still have no interest in learning to drive or ever learning to drive. It's just not a thing I want to do. It's also not a thing that I need to do, even if not being able to do so can be inconvenient at times. You should also know that for the better part of 2 decades, my father has had extreme difficulty understanding this. Not only that, but actively trying to convince me that I should learn to drive, should want to learn to drive, and dismissing my preference by saying, "Well, it's inevitable that you'll learn at some point." (It really isn't, though.) I've asked him repeatedly over the years to stop trying to pressure me into learning to drive when I've told him multiple times that I don't want to. And while large stretches of time go between incidents where he'll trying and put the pressure on again, that's only because driving actually rarely comes up as a topic of conversation between us. But every time it does, he tries to convince me, again, that I ought to learn and that it will benefit me and that I really would enjoy it if I learned and that he's sure I'll do it at some point anyway no matter what I say now.
So, now that context has been established... My dad sent me an email last week, telling me he picked up a few things for me on a recent trip, and wanted to meet up on Monday to give them to me. It would be a quick meeting, since he was on a deadline and was transporting stuff that really could not be seen to go off-route, so he'd meet me at the bottom of my street, say hi, hand off the package, and be on his way. 5 minutes, tops. Cool beans.
I mentioned that R recently passed his driver's test and that we were in the process of buying a car (which we now have, but that's not important to this story). He asked if this meant I'd also be learning to drive soon.
I said no, and said that I also hoped this would be the last time I had to tell him that I still have no interest in driving.
He replied, "Yeah I know you're not interested in driving but having a car opens up a world of possibilities." I copied that directly from the email, so that's not me paraphrasing. He acknowledged that I'm not interested, but in the same breath tried to apply the same pressure he has for years, while also overlooking that with R driving, those possibilities have already opened up. What, does he think that if I learn to drive, we'll magically be able to afford a second car so that I can go out while R's at work?
(That's the other kicker about his years-long pressure-fest. It's only been recently that we could afford a car at all, and that was with R's parents helping out with finances. For the entire rest of the time he badgered me to learn, we were nowhere near being able to afford a car. Having a car opens up a world of possibilities, maybe, but it does diddly-squat if I don't actually have a car, regardless of whether I hold a driver's license.)
I asked him to please, please, just stop trying to pressure me to learn to drive, I do not want to, and I am frankly sick of having to say so.
He seemed confused, said he reread his message and couldn't see anything objectionable in it.
"The objectionable stuff is that you've honestly been trying to convince me for nearly 2 decades, and every time I say I'm not interested and ask you to drop it, and every time you don't drop it. It's not that this one message was particularly objectionable, it's that it's the most recent incident in a long line of incidents that I'm tired of having to deal with. If this was the first time you'd ever asked, then it wouldn't be a big deal, and I wouldn't be so annoyed. But it's not the first time, and every time I give you the same answer, and every time you keep trying to convince me despite me asking you to stop."
Could I have been more polite there? Yeah, probably. But this is something that's been bothering me for, as I said, nearly 2 decades. Nearly the entire time it's been legal for me to potentially drive, he's been on at me about this. And I'm tired of it.
Then came his reply.
"Let me understand, it's OK for you to double down calling me a racist and homophobe but not for me to mention that you may enjoy driving?"
...Yeah, because those two things are entirely equivalent.
Last two times we've talked, he's been the one to bring up me calling him racist and homophobic. Which, to be honest, I haven't done. I apparently called him homophobic when I was 17, when he said to me that he hoped I don't grow up to be gay (his thought process was that if I was gay, then life would be harder for me than if I were straight). I don't remember this at all, so I take his word for it that this conversation happened. And the thing is? Yes, that was a homophobic statement. Because he can change neither me sexuality nor the world in which I live, but rather than wish the world wasn't harsh to gay people, he would wish I wasn't gay at all. That is, at its core, homophobic.
Do I think my dad thinks that gay people are wrong and nasty and degenerate? No, not at all. Do I think he's said some homophobic things that he really needs to acknowledge the wider context of? Absolutely. Do I think he needs to educate himself about why saying certain things might offend people because words carry meaning, and that "I don't mean any offense" is not a valid excuse? Also, very much yes. I believe it's possible for people, in ignorance, to say homophobic things without being what people typically think of as "a homophobe."
Same with racism, and sexism.
My dad and I have also talked a lot in the past about how, because society benefits straight white cis men above all others (and he is all of those things), what seems innocuous to him might be loaded for someone else. It's easy to not think about the impact of things when those things impact you. We've talked about how unlearning this stuff is a process, and that I'm also learning and unlearning and catching myself thinking or saying things that I need to work harder to stop because they're problematic. We've talked about how much growth he's shown in recent years, just being willing to listen and learn and go beyond, "I think marginalized groups ought to be more patient with me."
But suddenly all of the rest of those conversations get thrown out the window, and he's back to focusing really hard on me calling him a racist and a homophobe. Also, that this is the equivalent to him "mention[ing] that [I] might enjoy driving."
My dude, it's not that you just mention it. It's that you keep doing it over and over, despite my insistence that I don't want to learn, and despite my requests for you to stop. Also, even if I did call him a racist and homophobe, he seems to be prioritizing not wanting to feel bad about that stuff rather than respecting my request for him to not pressure me to do something I don't want to do.
So I kind of tore a strip off him after that, told him his argument was a weird damn false equivalence, told him that he's repeatedly ignored and disrespected my wishes regarding something that is far more my choice than his, and then said I was done discussing it. If he wanted to talk about something else, fine, I'm here for that, but I'm not continuing the discussion about driving anymore.
Silence for 2 days.
Then: "I'm still quite angry at the way you drop bombs on me so I'll not be stopping by on Monday."
...
It seems like he's utterly incapable of seeing anything he does as anything other than an isolated incident. Him trying to pressure me for years and disregarding my personal choices? Nah, not a pattern of behaviour at all, just a bunch of random isolated incidents. That's the only reason I can think of why me saying, "Please stop it because you've been doing this for years and I'm sick of it," is some sort of surprise bomb-drop. He either doesn't remember any of it (which makes no sense because he acknowledged that he knows I have no interest in driving), or he can't actually see why repeatedly telling me something even when I repeatedly tell him to stop is an ongoing problem.
Also, say hello to the petty man who is so angry at being told to not do something that he's dropping a 5 minute meeting with his kid.
My reply to him, though? "Suit yourself. I already expected that you wouldn't want to see me anyway, so it's not like this comes as a surprise."
The only part that surprised me was that he gave me the courtesy of telling me in advance. Because I honestly suspected that I would hear nothing from him on Monday, nothing at all about when he'd be available to meet so I could walk down the street, absolutely nothing. I had already predicted that he would do this, because it's not the first time he's done something like it. Granted, it's been a very long time since he did so, but still. I had already accepted that he probably wasn't going to want to see me after that, even if just for a couple of minutes to hand off a package.
And honestly? I kind of hope my comment about how it's not a surprise stung him a bit. I kind of wanted to hurt him a little by saying that yeah, I already figured he was going to not want to bother with me. I wanted him to know that his pettiness was expected, and that any sting he wanted me to feel from the surprise of him cancelling our meeting was a sting I'd already braced myself for.
That doesn't make it hurt less. It just means I was prepared to deal with it.
So yes, my father is a fucking child who got so butthurt over being asked to stop harassing me that he cancelled a 5 minute meeting in which he'd barely have to deal with me, to hand over things he'd bought for me.
And I'm here once again wondering why I keep bothering to let my parents in when I know that more often than not, all they do is hurt me.
(Actually, I know why. Years of conditioning that make me feel like I'm the bad guy for hurting them, and like I'm a bad person for not being close to them when they raised me. Regardless of what they did before, and what they do now, somehow when I stand up for myself, I always feel like I'm in the wrong because they're my parents, and aren't parents and their adult kids supposed to acknowledge each other as adults and just go from there, but also aren't the adult kids still supposed to defer to their parents because of the prior power dynamic? It's a complicated and messy issue, and I'm working hard to deal with it, but still, when either of my parents do something that hurts me and I call them on it, any satisfaction I may feel about standing up and speaking up for myself is tainted by the feeling that doing so was the wrong thing because it hurt them, and that's supposed to be a worse sin than them hurting me.)
