My parents are arriving in Los Angeles tomorrow. My sister is already here for over a week. Not to see me, of course, but to see The Fiancé's best friend, whom she is having a long-distance relationship with for over a year. At any rate - I am getting what I wanted, and what The Fiancé wanted for himself, and what he cannot get: my family here for my graduation.

Yet I feel terrified.

Don't get me wrong, I love my parents dearly... but at the same time there is nobody in this Universe that can make me feel worse about myself on a regular basis than they can. No words can give justice to the relationship I am having with my parents, and now with their imminent arrival and with my stressing over it and the whole household suffering my moods, I start to realize that many of my issues stem from my relationship with my parents, and how I was brought up.

My compulsive over-explaining and justifying every movement I make? - coming from the fact that for my parents a simple statement is never good enough. Nothing I ever asked for as a child/teenager I was granted without giving lengthy explanations first on why I think my request is justified. I never had the feeling that I could just say "I want this", or "I am going to do this", without giving a detailed why of the matter at hand. Now I am driving The Fiancé crazy with my constant explaining myself over the smallest things and repeating myself over and over - I can't even take out the trash without explaining to him why I am doing it and seeking approval, even if it's the most obvious reason in the world.

My chronic inability to apologize and make up for a mistake I made? - coming from the fact that nobody in my family ever apologizes for anything. Mistakes are being acknowledged and punished (as we were kids, anyway), but that's it. Gosh, I can't even remember how many times my mother and I yelled at each other and slammed doors into each others faces, and 10 minutes later she came back into my room all smiles and friendly, as if nothing ever happened. It was an acknowledgement that something happened, but it's over now, so let's move on. So that's what I do now... even if I know that I fucked up, I acknowledge it to myself, then try to change the subject. Saying "I am sorry" causes me almost physical discomfort, and that's something that The Fiancé has the hardest time dealing with, and it's one of our biggest issues.

But that's not why I am feeling so bad right now. Why I am feeling so bad is because now I realize - after three years of seeing them only twice a year for 2 weeks each and otherwise living my complete own independent life by myself with them only playing a very marginal part in it - now I realize how much power they still hold over me. They (unknowingly, I am sure) put me under huge performance pressure, and I find myself doing everything in my power to please them and get their approval. Why else would I have cleaned the house today in a way I would never bother for any other person - so I could fit their standards of cleanliness, and won't have to worry about looking like a "bad housewife", living under "horrid circumstances". People - my mother is so clean that at any given day under any given circumstance you could eat off her bathroom floor and not ingest a single germ. I am pretty sure you could even eat out of her trashcan without having to worry about anything. NOTHING in my mother's household has a speck of dust or dirt on it, and even after living with her for 22 years, I still have no idea how she does it. I can't do it myself, not as well anyways... and I hate being under her scrutiny about the way I keep my own place clean and organized. And I know that I WILL be.

With them (and even my sister) around I feel like apologizing for everything - even stuff that is out of my control or not my fault. I already see myself apologizing for the LA rush hour traffic once we'll be stuck in it (and we WILL be). I already see myself apologizing for the smoggy air, which is so much shittier than the air in Vienna. I already see myself apologizing for the food prices, and clothes prices, and dirty streets. I will apologize if they don't like their food in a restaurant, and I will apologize if it drizzles instead of California showcasing the blazing sun it is famous for. First apologize, and then try to justify it - as if I am somehow responsible, or as if I have failed in a performance I was to present in a certain way that didn't work out.

I guess I want them to see what I see in this country, I want them to understand why I am so in love with it, I want them to realize that I belong here, that I am doing relatively well, and that it holds up against their high Austrian standards. And if only ONE little thing won't be to their liking, I feel like they are disregarding the entire experience, and shake their head at me disapprovingly for doing what I do, liking what I like, living what I live.

This pressure is something I am not handling well AT ALL. Here I am, only hours away from my parents' long awaited arrival, which I really DO look forward to, but at the same time I feel like crying and not stopping anymore. I am proud of this life that I have built for myself here, I am passionate about this dream I am having, and I am determined to follow it and make it happen. This is MY life afterall, and I can live it however I choose to, and not according to what pleases and accomodates others - even if those others are my parents. The Fiancé tells me this all the time, yet I know that with one word my parents will be able to make me sway, will be able to make me feel stupid about wanting the things I want, and insufficient because I am not living a life according that what THEY wanted me to live.

I know that if my dad will ask me only once about "how do I reckon I will make a career with music, realistically", I will start to over-explain, and stammer, and stutter, and make excuses, and apologize for my dreams, and try to explain what it all means to me, to a person who has never shared deep personal feelings with me. How can you explain something that involves no rational thought but all your heart and soul in pragmatic logical terms made of rationality that will convince a person like my father?

There is nothing that hurts me more in this world than the disappointed, disapproving look of my father.

And he's good at giving me that look. My father is a person who takes everything personal. Everything that doesn't go according to what he likes and wants, he sees as a personal affront, an attack, and insult to his life and how he imagined it to be. My whole move to the United States was nothing other than a personal attack on him, and my not wanting to move back to my home country is just another affront to him. He thinks people do things solely to spite him... and the thought that I have my own life and my own dreams and my own goals, and that these might not necessarily coincide with his own, never even occurs to him.

I know that I will have to have the "but you promised us that you will come home this summer" discussion with him once they are here. And I know that all my reminding him that I said "unless the band makes it" will mean nothing to him. I know that I will hear all kinds of reasons on why my decision is stupid or hurtful or irresponsible or selfish, and "when will I start to be responsible and have a LIFE". Then, when I will try to tell him that I am a grown-up persons with goals and dreams and aspirations of her own, he will give me the disappointed and disapproving and hurt look, sulk, and not talk to me for the rest of the day. Or days. I don't know. I dread thinking about it.

I love my parents very much - but I don't understand why I am feeling guilty about leading my own life. I don't understand why I have to apologize for wanting to do whatever I want to do as opposed to what they want me to do. I don't understand why I am still connected to them via some sort of invisible umbilical chord, that renders me incapable of taking decisions in my life without feeling this tremendous amount of guilt and shame.

The only two people who have to approve of my lifestyle and my plans with my life are The Fiancé and me. We are the only two people who have to agree on a lifestyle, and on goals and plans. If he wouldn't agree with something I wanted to do, I should adjust. Yet I adjust for my parents. I am seriously considering to give up all the potential we are realistically having with the band, move back, leave the country I love more than I ever loved my homeland, marry, get a job, found a family - just to please them, to accomodate to them I am seriously considering not to think of myself and what I want and what I dream of, putting all that on the backburner, and surrender to the boring cookie-cutter life that I fled from in the first place, knowing so well how I will feel about giving up my dream, and how guilty I will feel for the rest of my life for giving up without ever having really tried. Knowing well that the nagging "what if?" will follow me into my grave. And what for? Just so that other people can be happy and get what they want.

I love my parents so very much - but they shouldn't play such a significant role in my life-altering decisions the way they are doing. Guilt and shame are HUGE cataclysts to make the wrong decisions for all the wrong reasons. In the end I will have my OWN family, with the man I chose to be with, and in the end it'll be all about this new family, with my parents playing only a rather subordinate role, supporting roles, if you may, without any decision power or influence beyond grandparently activities. It's about ME and MY LIFE, not about THEM and WHAT THEY WANT me to do.

I know that. It is clear as glass.

Yet come tomorrow I will grovel on the floor with my proverbial tail between my legs, whimpering for their approval, doing everything in my power to accomodate to their ideals and ideas. Obliterating myself and who I came to be over these past three years completely. Turning back into that little girl that I left behind on the Viennese airport a quarter decade ago. Swaying in my plans, swaying in my goals, labeling my own dreams stupid and immature.

Heavens help me... I know I have The Fiancé's full support, and I know that he will slap me and slap me HARD if he sees me turn into that little girl instead of standing up for who and what I am NOW, but I fear it won't be enough... it's never enough... not even three years on a different continent in a different world were enough...