Parent of Three
Being a parent is often framed as bravery. But for many of us it feels less like bravery and more like destiny, a duty we never chose. It arrives as if tied to our name at birth. The problem is this: sometimes we don’t want that path and every time trying to escape still leaves us facing a persistent shadow of responsibility.
It comes to me when I decided to escape far from home. My reasons had been building since I was eight and started to understand what is a better life I’d like to pursue when I’m a grown up. Leaving wasn’t an act of rebellion for its own sake, rather it was a strategic move to create a future where I could learn and become who I imagined. I should close my eyes and ears for what happened to those living souls, just to focus on what I need to gain from my learning process. We were so distant, 560 miles away. The distance changed me. The city stripped away the old script and the old wound. I started to became myself.
At first, I thought it would be easy being far away from home, releasing all the identity and pain all over my body and attribution. It wasn’t the city’s fault, it was mine to have grown. But every living growth has a cost. However that was all my plan after all. I left living souls behind. But blood tethered us, their needs eventually tethered me. When I could finally earn a living, they asked me to support them. I agreed up to a point. I would not return to being who I had been.
One month, two, four, twenty, I lose count. What began as supporting became mandatory. Dollars solved some problems but exposed others. One of the living soul once said “money isn’t everything” but now reduced care to money alone. Until one day, money isn’t the only thing they want from me, they demand my life. Apparently it’s legal to ask for the descendants to have a living plan as what elderly wanted. That’s where my limit had reached.
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Along the way of process, we argued. I explained the reality of survival which is hard, yet I also needed to build a life full of motion, with travels or all the human work of ‘becoming’. Their expectation that I must be content and stable at their convenience conflicts with my plan to keep me growing. I refuse to convert my life into a maintenance plan for others’ regrets.
The consequence of suddenly became a parent of three unwanted living souls in life, means that we should feed them, took care of them, helping them grow even grow is no longer right terms for elder people. I do not believe that someone in their fifties or sixties who never cultivated growth in youth will suddenly bloom. One might enough, as it also have the chance to have a better life someday. Three is just unsustainable.
Unprepared parenthood creates a chain reaction: responsibilities passed to descendants who never consented to carry them. The child who becomes the mandatory caregiver loses the freedom to take risks, to fail, to rise, to leap when opportunity appears. That single parent role becomes defensive, a risk-averse, a life optimized for maintenance rather than growth.
At first, being the sudden single parent felt like duty repaid. Until I realized, life actually offer choices: to leave or to hold. To leave means to release the emotional anchors so we can climb. To hold means to carry all the burden along with every step we took in life. Either choice shapes not just my life but everyone connected to it.
Whether or not, being a parent is an endless learning process. For me, to choose not having another soul to take care of, means I fully understand these consequences and never have a will to passing my failure to another innocent life as it’s something inherited. I can only take the risk of having another one, if only I can ensure mine to be worth living until two or three generation after me.
JKT, 18/09
