It’s almost as if they didn’t want me to be me. They wanted me to be them, the Next Generation, keeping their personalities and values alive even after they have left this earth.
I’m not trying to disparage where I come from. Trust me, everything would be easier if I weren’t different, if I were satisfied with the pre-approved lifestyle that they encouraged me to live. It’s hard to think differently.
Actually, that part is easy. Thinking differently is intrinsic, natural, unavoidable. Choosing what to do with those thoughts, that’s the hard part. Do you ignore your instincts?—Live up to their expectations, attend law school at your parents’ insistence, marry a nice Jewish man from a good Jewish family, and raise reverent Jewish children in a traditional home.
The very essence of tradition is doing what has been done before. Repeating it over and over again. Every year is the same sequence of holidays, the same candlesticks, the same decorations, the same food.—Just like your mother used to do it.
I love my mother. But I don’t want to be like her. My mother complains a lot. She’s never satisfied. And she has a mild shopping addiction that I’ve only just recognized as I’ve begun to examine my own relationship with spending money.
I love my father. But I don’t want to be like him either. My father complains a lot. He’s never satisfied. And he is a sheep to the cattle call of Big Pharma. My father displays his prescription bottles like badges of honor, as if it is a flex to take whatever it is that he takes to manage his cholesterol.
I was raised to believe I wasn’t good enough, or special enough, or smart enough to be different. I was told to play it safe, to do what I’m told, and to follow in their footsteps. I cringe to think of all the time I’ve wasted, paralyzed by my fear of proving my parents wrong.
Do I sound ridiculous? I mean, I’m a forty-one-year-old married woman (Technically, we aren’t married yet, but only as far as the government is concerned. God knows that Justin and I are the real deal. For-ev-er.) How pathetic am I, still living under the influence of my judgmental parents?—Now who’s being the judgmental one?
The Cha Cha Beat is a judgment-free zone. We’re here for self-discovery, not self-deprecation. I don’t care who I am, as long as I am free to be.
When I think about my parents reading this, I imagine them saying, “Oh, so it’s all our fault?” They blame me for being too sensitive.—Maybe I have been too sensitive. Maybe I have been too weak, too judgmental, too afraid to dance to my own beat regardless of what they think.
I mean, I’ve danced a little bit. I did move three thousand miles away, from New York to California. And instead of a white-collared Jewish man, I fell in love with a blue-eyed plumber who is just as excited as I am to build something new and completely our own.
It is sobering to think what my parents would say about the Cha Cha Beat. It is embarrassing to admit that I let their judgments impair my creativity for so long.—I am embarrassing myself on the internet, my parents’ prophecy fulfilled.
I’m just being me. That’s all I know how to be. Judge me if you want, but that’s probably not great for your cholesterol.
