This is something I often hear, the fact that we owe everything to our parents. Well, I tend to disagree. We didn’t choose to be born, we didn’t choose if we wanted to be born. They did. Our parents wanted children for their desire, for them. It is true that, as children, we need food, clothes, a roof, money for our studies. And they did everything to give us that. They exhaust themself to tend to our needs.

But this is normal. If you want to have a child, it’s completely normal to give them everything for their growth, for their life. While I’m grateful for my parents to give me everything I needed, the fact remains: it’s completely normal to give to your child those things. Everyone knows: having a child means having responsibilites.

Just because our parents do this effort every day doesn’t mean that we owe our life to our parents. I often hear “it’s thanks to your parents that you’re here” or “they did everything for you”. But why I should twist myself to answer their desire?

OK, let me clear this idea. When children criticize their parents or tend to disagree with something they say or do, people often say that we have to obey to every command because they are the reason we are alive. Careful, I’m not talking about orders like “eat your vegetables”. I’m talking about our way of life, our point of view, our dreams and desires.

Sometimes, we enter in a fight with our parents because they disagree with our choices, choices of job, of relationships, of moving in another countries, etc. There is no perfect parents and, sometimes, parents can be really toxic.

Even when our point is valid, if it’s not what they desire, they can be really mean and insulting us of ungrateful children. This “you owe me” is really toxic. It can be used by parents and also by friends who justifiy their actions.

So, because we should owe them our life, we should just stay silent, we should just obey?

OK, now is the time to talk a little about my life. My parents are toxic. They never hit me, they never threaten me to throw me out. But they never agree with my choices and my life. They want me to be a perfect copy of them, never changing, never thinking, always saying “yes” to their orders. They want to choose for me. And, in their mind, because they are my parents, I should just accept that.

At the beginning, I never give them anything to doubt me. My grades were amazing, I never smoked or drinked, I wasn’t hanging out with my friend. I was their little perfect girl, doing what they want, only going to school, coming back with grate notes and never saying anything.

And yet, it still wasn’t enough. Nothing was enough. Nothing is enough. They criticize everything, they disagree with everything: what I was eating, what I wasn’t eating, when I was going out, my clothes, my actions, my thoughts, my words, my decisions, my jobs, when I resigned some jobs, my dreams, my lover, my pain, the physical disease I have, my mental illnesses, etc.

As parents, they should give me what I need to become my own person and to lead my own life. They don’t want that for me. So, when I had begun to say “no”, I had become the ungrateful child.

And everyday, they remind me of their efforts, their struggles to give me the life I have, to tend to my needs when I was a child. And yet, my idea remains: I should NOT give up on my life, my dreams and my desires to thank them for what they did for me.

One day, a former friend of mine said to me: “there is little reasons to fuck shit in your own house”. Because the fact is: it’s not only our parents who remind us that we should say yes everytime. Societies tell us that too.

My story is the story of many children. Many children and, then, many adults, have still to justify their actions and their decisions.

We still need to remind our parents, our friends sometimes, that we are right by pursuing our dreams and our way of life, of thinking. We should never give up on that because it doesn’t suit our parents.

It’s true that, one day, our parents die. But it’s true that we have only one life and that we die too. So, no, we owe nothing to our parents and they never should expect from us to submit to their way of life just because we breath thanks to them.