Family

Family.

One simple word; a whole world of meaning behind it. I'd never learned just how important family was until I started living alone... Back in the day, I used to think that family only meant responsibility, and that made me skeptical about the point of it all. Being an entitled millenial teenager who'd been raised to believe that he was special and that he deserved only the best, I insinctively used to avoid any duties or tasks I was asked to do because I was too good for that. Let the workers and peasants worry about these things, for I was too important to care about anyone else. All that mattered was me. My only job was to use all the resources at my disposal to pamper myself and cater to my own needs and desires... Everyone else was just white noise.

The millenial teenager grew up to be a millenial adult, and even though I became considerably more mature, I still shirked responsibility whenever I felt I could get away with it. Sure, I'd help around the house every once in a while or run some errands, but if I didn't so what? Someone else would pick up the slack. There was no real reason for me to contribute because I didn't believe it made a big difference. Besides, I was still a super-important, entitled prick, and if my passiveness made anyone else's life any harder... Well, it was expected of them. Their lives came second.

Now, I'm sure I've done a great job of making you hate me so far, so you can understand how I felt about myself. Through being completely selfish and only caring about me, I came to have a very low opinion of myself. I used to see my dad finish work at 8, run a million errands, fix a leaky tap and do all the handiwork our parents' generation had to learn to do to survive, and I didn't understand how or why he did any of it. But these moments of contemplation were few and far between, because after all, that was his job. He was supposed to overwork himself to the point of exhaustion so that I could fulfill my destiny of being an entitled douche... And even though I was given complete freedom to do everything I wanted to do, I can't say I ever enjoyed it. I always felt like a waste of space, and I always hated myself for it.

Then, all of a sudden, that life was over. Practically overnight, I was plunged into a whirlpool I'd had no idea how to handle. I went from being spoiled and entitled to being completely responsible for my own well-being. Things I'd always taken for granted like laundry, home-cooked meals, having a clean home... If I didn't take care of these things, no one was there to do it for me anymore. Moreover, being sick or depressed suddenly became several orders of magnitude worse, now that there was no one to take care of me. I was completely alone, and it forced me to grow like nothing else could have.

The irony was that I started feeling guilty. The whole time I lived alone, I felt responsible for my family. I began to feel terrible for abandoning them to fend for themselves so I could pursue my career and live abroad. For 6 months, all I wanted to do was go back home and take care of them the way a real man is supposed to, to make up for all the years I leached off their efforts.

But you want to know what's funny? When I returned, everything came rushing back... My dad's relentless drive to be productive, even in his free time; my mom spoiling me again to the point where I'd have trouble living alone when I had to move away again a month later; and my amazing sister who not only reminded me how much I'd missed hanging out with my real best friend, but also how much I'm proud of the remarkable young woman she's shaping up to be, and how I feel like she's one of my biggest achievments in  life so far... And with a pang of bitter guilt, I realized that even though I came back with every intention of being there for them this time... They were the ones who were there for me yet again... Just by being there.

The biggest reason that makes me want to return to this dump of a country.

My family.

It's going to be a long 6 months.