I have one last exam to write on Monday (Tax Law, ugh) and then I am done my second year of law school! I can smell the freedom of summer, and once you get used to the faint whiff of slothfulness and tequila, it smells pretty durn good.

With the end of my second year fast approaching, I feel a sense of entitlement and achievement. But of course, this can all come crashing down at my feet with a single comment from my father who, despite knowing the torture and achievements I’ve experienced these last few years, recently told me that one of my other friends is a better child. I must have heard comments like this spewing forth from his mouth, accompanied by his fetid breath and stinking hypocrisy, since I was a toddler learning how to walk in the face of his belief that babies are stupid and people should never have them. And even knowing the kind of person he is, I am still shocked by the throbbing sting of such a slap in the face.

I would probably learn to absorb such arguably normal jabs from a parent, if I wasn’t in the particular situation that I’m in with my parents. Children often feel like their parents don’t appreciate them, constantly undermine them, etc. But I just don’t think my father’s particular brand of insults is normal. I know I mention this time and again—mostly because I feel the brunt of it all the time—but I pay for my tuition, food, clothing, travel, my everything, and have done so since I was 15 years old when my mother tossed me my SIN card and told me to get to work. I have worked my ass off every summer and every spare moment in between classes to earn enough to keep myself in school without having to take out a loan, and still managing to get into law school. I realize a lot of other children have had to do the same, but how many of them have parents who consciously ignore that fact and belittle them at every possible opportunity? who tell them their obligation to their children ended when they were old enough to get a job? I try to tell myself that this is normal, so I don’t end up hating my parents.

Family is a weird thing. You want to love these people because they are supposed to nurture and support you, no matter who you are or what happens in your life. But what if they don’t support you, or only support you out of a time-limited obligation, and once that’s over, the bond is broken to them? Why do you continue to love them? Because my mom changed my diapers when I was baby? Because my dad paid for my Happy Meals when I was too short to see over the counter? You feel compelled to love them because you want to believe they will return that same unconditional love, but then that in itself paradoxically becomes a condition. You love them if for no other reason than you share the same DNA. But apart from that, you can be strangers living in the same home—strangers who actually resent and hate each other, but continue to call each other family merely out of a traditional respect for form over function.