February 13, 2012

• Progress

  I’ve written a lot about how abusive my parents are. Sometimes I make excuses for them in my head. Other times, I recognize abuse for what it is.

  These are the kinds of things my parents say to me / about me to each other:

  • It’s pointless to love someone like you
  • You think you make any difference in this world? Your efforts don’t matter 
  • Don’t call me your mom anymore
  • I wish you would leave
  • Let’s just not bother and kick her out
  • She’s crying. Again. 

  Sometimes I’d only just hold myself together during school and work because I never knew what I’d come home to. I learnt to not hear what they were saying by staring at the wall and not breathing, a kind of reverse-meditation where, instead of embracing your existence, you pretend you’re not there. 

  But everything changed when I moved out. I come back home only 2-3 times a month. Now instead of hurtling insults, my mom asks only if I’m eating enough or if I have enough groceries. It was strange and jarring to feel like I have a mom again. This doesn’t mean that I’ve forgotten about the ugly, but it’s better and I’m grateful. I don’t know what it’s going to be like when the job finishes in September and I boomerang-generation back home. But that bridge comes later.  

  I’d really rather deal with more important things. It’s such a waste of time to feel sorry for yourself. 

  ===========================

  I pay my rent by working for the evil Conservative government. So I get to choose between living with abusive parents or working for an abusive head of state. 

  As a part of my job for example, I helped to organize a big hotel seminar featuring a 1% CEO speaker who makes millions of dollars in international trade. His company is based in China. He spoke to a room full of small food producers who were hoping to break into the Chinese market.

  “Every year during the Spring Festival,” the CEO explained, “all Chinese migrant workers return to their homes. After a year of living and working in the big industrial cities and sending paycheques to their families, they flood the train stations, all 230 million of them, in order to return home.”

  He showed us two photos on the powerpoint: an aeriel view of a train station so packed with little black-haired people that they looked from that distance, like flies. In another photo, a few workers were walking down the street, many heavy bags in hand.

  The CEO gestured to the latter photo and explained that migrant workers make $400 a month - if they are lucky, but still they don’t dare to return home without a gift in hand.

   

  This, he proclaimed to the companies before him, presents a market opportunity. 

   

  He said it so glibly and with such enthusiasm that I didn’t quite realize what he was saying.

  “It’s very simple,” he explained. “These people need gifts, and your company can supply them. For example, [he clicked to a new photo in the powerpoint] here you see two $5 wines in a $10 gift box with a hand corker, and there you have it!” he exclaimed triumphantly. “French wines for only $20!”

  “This is a niche whose potential has not yet been explored, and my company is prepared to fill the needs of this market.”

  The room was full of 40 year old Canadians, people who had probably lived many years of their life supposedly in a democratic country which understood human rights. And yet nobody objected to this gruesome misconstruction. Nobody objected to the narrative of using some of the world’s poorest people as a way to make money and to get rich. No one said a word and the CEO kept lecturing.

   

  I work for Stephen Harper. I try not to think about it much, so that I’m not too angry to do my job. It turns out it’s not too difficult to vacate your mind when you’re staring at a computer in a cubicle all day. 

  I don’t mean to be ungrateful; dozens of people in my co-op program were unable to find work, and I get paid a good salary. I was lucky. But I have to recognize my work for what it is.

  • 1:28 am
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