OFFICIAL SPEECH

As children we believe that our families have no flaws, right? Well, I too believed this growing up, that my family had no flaws and I was part of something that was the epitome of utter perfection. At such a naive age, I was unable to quite grasp the prospect that my family actually had flaws, nor did I even know what they were. My belief in my family mislead me over the years, and I never quite grasped the fact that all families have flaws until I was older.

Growing up I would always think that it was normal for my family to have favourites, that it was just a part of every family, never quite grasping that this was my family’s predominant flaw. I was around 10 years old when I first realized how deeply entrenched this sense of favouritism in my family was. It was after my parent’s second divorce and my brother and I were spending every other week at my dad’s house when he introduced the ‘child of the week’ scheme. In which his favourite child would be given a coca-cola on the Monday morning that we were to be going back to Mom’s house. Although I never liked the taste of coca-cola it was always the incentive of being liked by my father that made me want to receive this ‘coke of the week’ on Monday morning. Days turned into weeks, weeks into months and months into years as my father continued this scheme. Although I would do whatever he asked of me, it was never enough to receive even the slightest bit of appraisal that my brother would get every week through something as simple as a coca-cola can. The idea of for once my father liking me made me strive harder to be the person that he wanted me to be.

By the age of 7, I had already realized that my brother was liked more than me, but didn’t necessarily know what this meant. One summer’s day, which I remember in such particular detail, my brother and I were painting pictures out on the balcony, after a couple of hours, my dad decided to come outside after a day out drinking with his friends. Wanting the praise of our father, who we held at such high esteem, my brother and I asked him which one he liked best and waited in anticipation for a reply. Without a moment of hesitation, he replied “that one” pointing to my brother’s canvas. Deciding to test the boundaries, my brother and I switched paintings around an hour later, again asking which one he liked the best. This time, instead of pointing to my brother’s artwork, he pointed towards my painting which happened to be in my brother’s hands. I was overwhelmed with joy and proudly exclaimed: “That is my picture.” Before I could say no more he replied: “Oh I’ve changed my mind, I like your brother’s one better.” Words cannot express how heartbroken my 7-year-old self was after hearing his reply, however, at such a young age, I was unable to grasp what his words truly meant.

It took me 15 years to realize that my father would never change, however hard I tried to be the person that he wanted me to be, nothing was ever good enough. Although I tried desperately to change myself to be the person that my father wanted, it could never bring him the happiness that he wanted. The problem was not me but rather the facilitator of such treatment, my own father. I would never be able to change the way that he thought or treated me and thus I learned an important lesson; that you cannot change people, they must change themselves. People in general change but you, yourself cannot change people. I realized that in order for my father to change he would need to feel that the change was his own and not brought on by another person, and thus I could do nothing about his profound favouritism.