The M.I.L knows.

As much as that is a pleasant thought, it scares me. It scary for the expectations and the sense of finality this creates. It brings out the fidgety, nervous, commitment-phobic Me. Pleasant thought or otherwise, it's a development. We're headed in the right general direction at the very least.
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I've inheritted my anger from my father methinks. He's supposed to have had this scorching anger as a young man. Over the years he's learnt to control it and now possesses a more muted, seething anger; albeit just as severe as before. He's learnt over time to swallow his anger and keep it to himself. It's part of what makes him physically ill alot of the times. He's a true Gemini though. He'll be happy and good-humored one minute and seething with anger the next. Highly volatile environment to live in, I swear.

Which is why I'm seriously surprised at how well he's dealt with this no-graduation thing. At some level I think he's just glad to have me back home. He's not pressuring me to do anything at the moment and I know I'll get things done by next week. Would have done everything this week except for my cousin tossing a big plumbing tool into the whole deal. All I want to do now is to make up for the gargantuan fuck-up that I've been for the last 6 years.

See, all Daddy's ever asked of me, and I'm grateful to him everyday for it, is that I get good grades. Unlike other fathers I know, there's never been any demand for what I should do and never been any pressure to take any particular path in life. He's shown me by example what it means to be a caring, loving, decent human being. He's shown me each and every day of my life how to live a life of dignity and 'sharafat'. Daddy's never even asked me to behave a certain way. He's always just been a perfect model of decorum himself. The Perfect Father.

If he's been too up-tight and difficult to talk to, it's been because of his personality, never lack of feeling. He's intimidating most of the time. Well he used to be. Now he's just a seemingly harmless, loving, old man with a ready smile. He loves his first, and so far only, grandchild to death. He never complains about anything no matter how much he hurts, physically or otherwise.

All of this is why I know I've failed him. Despite him working all his life to be able to provide his children with the best lives possible, all he's demanded of those children is grades.

There's nothing worse than knowing you have failed the one man in the world who has the right to expect the world from you but chose to expect only just one thing.