Whew, it has been a while. I will have to save my life updates for a separate post, or perhaps several. With this entry, I wish to focus on how some individuals do not even think twice about nitpicking another’s lifestyle. However, what makes this nitpicking feel a million times worse is when it comes from a member of your family that is supposed to love and support you. This happened to me just yesterday, and I needed an outlet to vent.

It is my firm belief that as long as someone is not hurting himself or herself, or anyone else, then this someone should be allowed to live a lifestyle that best suits him or her; and, furthermore, others who live lifestyles that differ, or who have contradicting beliefs, should respectfully remain silent if they feel the need to critique this individual that appears so different than them. I know that the topic of vaccination has, unfortunately, been controversial in the United States, lately, and in other first-world countries, but my desire to vaccinate myself against two different viruses was the topic of someone’s critique just the other day. What is worse is that this person — my father, no less — was not just critiquing me, but he was asking me, in a condescending manner, why I was “being so ridiculous” and why I wanted to continue to carry out my personal preference of getting vaccinated.

It is one matter if my father had a different opinion on getting vaccinated but responded that I should do what I feel comfortable doing. It was another matter entirely that he was actually using his contradicting beliefs to make him seem like a bigger, smarter person for not getting vaccinated, and that I was the smaller, more stupid person for going through with getting vaccinated. There was absolutely zero support coming out of his mouth. His tone was not only condescending, but vicious. I would wager that he has never practiced how to hold his own beliefs while speaking intelligently to someone with differing beliefs and lifestyles. I know for a fact that there are members on his side of the family who are speaking to him frequently about how vaccines are the equivalent to the Christian “Satan” for this reason or that reason. It is just so unfortunate that he cannot even hold the emotional maturity and integrity to support his daughter for making her own decisions, as a middle-aged adult, no less, and that of which do not even affect him at all.

If I desire that my immunocompromised self should be vaccinated against viruses, then that is my personal, adult decision to make. I should not have to explain myself to anyone, but, even if I do, I should be met with, at the very least, quiet tolerance, and, at the very most, a brief conversation telling me that I should go forth with whatever decisions I deem best for me and my life. What hurts is that, even though I hold a different opinion regarding vaccines than my father does, he, without hesitation, tore into the kind of person I was at my core. Not once — not once — did I ever think about snootily remarking about how he is incompetent or making a foolish decision for not getting a vaccine. When my father venomously spat his ugly words at me, instead of arguing, I simply responded with, “Well, you know, you do you, but this is what I am going to do.” I thought this would end the conversation. On the contrary, he simply continued his tirade about how those who get vaccinated are unintelligent, less-than beings with no sense in their heads.

What a pleasing way to speak to your own daughter, is it not?

This bullyish response of his burned me up inside even long after our phone conversation ended. I was devastated not just because my father ripped into me about my vaccination preferences. At the center of all of his sneering and jeering, one thing became evident: His support for his child was conditional, and was only given based off what he believed in, and how he lived his own life. The realization hit me that, even as far back as I can remember, I have never had his support on much of anything. And, now that I am an adult and need my family the most — especially when it comes to navigating the world — I know that I do not have my father in my corner, and I probably never will. And his lack of support is not just regarding vaccines, but for anything, really. If this is the stance he takes for me being “so different” than him, he would not support anything that he did not understand or has not already incorporated into his own lifestyle.

And, to be perfectly honest, that realization hurts.