who are they

 Disclaimer: This essay may have some slightly heavy themes.

This essay is also a product of the fact that none of the prompts gave me much worth reflecting about. I understand that this essay needs serious revision, but I will not be looking at feedback for this essay as I want to revise the other one I wrote.

Who is your family? 

The family I live with consists of 4 people including myself. My sister is the youngest child, but my parents say she is more mature than I am. She rarely takes things seriously, but I appreciate that aspect of her because she tends to lighten the mood whenever she is present. My father was born in a small village in Alaska and studied Computer Science at Fairbanks, which is where he met my mother. My father is levelheaded and not very emotional - I don’t think I have ever seen him cry, which is unlike my mother who I have seen cry many times. When my mother cries, it’s usually because she’s worried about my future - when I make a mishap I have made several times in the past, she worries that I will keep making that mistake for the rest of my life, which I definitely understand. She also worries that when she tells me about these mistakes, she’s being as harsh to me as her mother was to her. 

My mother was born in a small town in Japan where her mother would mentally and emotionally abuse her on a regular basis. This made her have a very low self-esteem throughout most of her life but thankfully that has greatly improved after she started living elsewhere. When my mother was (I think) 18, she finally left her household and her country to study Physics at Fairbanks. I know victims of abusive parents tend to abuse their own children as well, but I really don’t think that’s the case for my mother, and I will always be grateful for that. Despite everything, my mother still occasionally speaks with her mother on the phone. She says her mother is actually a fun person to talk to when she’s not doing anything abusive, and I could definitely see that during the time I met my mother’s family in Japan. However, I could also see her abusive tendencies through some incidents. From what I heard, my mother’s father isn’t exactly abusive, but he never cared to do anything about the abuse that was already happening in his house.

My father’s parents are quite different from my mother’s - they are both very outdoorsy people who frequently took my father on hiking trips and, despite their age, I believe they still go on hikes, which is something I admire. My father’s mother is a very nice person but is a bit boring to talk to, the complete opposite of my mother’s mother. I don’t have a great idea of who my father’s father is as a person because I haven’t interacted with him much, but I do remember one specific interaction I had with him. It was when I was a very small child (maybe 5-8 years old), my sister and I had been complaining about something for a while, and my grandfather finally snapped, yelling “We are guests! You all need to behave when we are here!”. I don’t remember that moment enough to decide if that reaction was justified or not, but it definitely did shut me up. Looking back, that moment probably was my first realization that other people might not like things I do and I might suffer the consequences of that. 

Describing my family made me appreciate the fact that I was born to them. Everything from their backgrounds to their personalities makes them special and I can’t imagine having any other family.