It's been quite difficult at home lately...I've been getting into couple of humongous fights with my parents. Normally I wouldn't talk about it or mention it with people, but this is something I realized about myself...

These are my reactions in "argument" scenarios. Who's right and who's wrong is not really the matter, it's just how i react and how i deal with the conflicts:

1. When my parents point out something bad about me, I often get really defensive. I mean, typical of a lot of people right? We all have pride and we don't want to admit our weaknesses.
2. When I was younger, I use to get mad, but I would take it in really personally, cry INSTANTLY, and then sulk in private and my self esteem just goes way down.
3. Lately, I don't know, maybe it has to do with living in North America, this "free country", where the parent-children relationship is quite different...I've been feeling this surge of "unknown" "power" to resist. When my parents yell at me, my thoughts would be something like, "that's enough, I've had enough" and so I would talk back and never admit that I'm at fault.
4. I have a tendency to put the hand between my parents and my face. As in, I often have a really bad attitude, whenever they yell at me, I just say "OK OK OK OK", shut my door, and get really angry and reason with myself that I'm right and they just don't "understand me". In other words, victimize myself.
5. When I am confronted, can't leave the scenario, and 'forced' to stay to listen to them confronting me, I like to turn my head away, incessently whisper on the side, "whatever, whatever, i'm not listening, etc, etc", when they're "lecturing" me, pretending not to listen but actually taking in every letter, every word to heart. It's my way of resisting.
6. Family arguments are usually about bad habits, e.g. leaving dirty laundry around the floor and not picking up. When I'm yelled at for an issue like that, I usually think about: a) "I ALWAYS do it, this is the ONE time that you caught me NOT doing it, JEEZ" or b) "YOU leave dirty laundry sometimes TOO"
7. Finally, and most importantly, there's also a struggle in my heart, knowing that I am wrong, knowing that all i need to do is to admit my faults, that i have to be patient, and above all, obedient.

Really, when you're in the heat of the moment, it's just so easy to let go of your emotions and let all these hurtful words fly everywhere. I know i've hurt my parents deeply with my 'bad attitude' in the past, and I know my parents have hurt me quite deeply too with the words they've said to me. Speaking on a tangent, i think it's really lame that there's this "coolness" factor in being "badass", like these people with crazy hairdos, gesturing the "rock on" hand signal and sticking out their tongue. When you're in a real conflict, it's really not that cool to be like that, I realized it really does hurt/infuriate people and can perpetuate/heat up an argument further.

In the end, when arguments get heated up, it's really a matter of who wins.
What I realize is we're all really a bunch of hypocrites. We're all weak, and nobody's perfect. I think when we're arguing about family issues, it's really easy to pick up little things and compare yourself to each other's bad habits or think of exceptions.
So, really, it's learning to be a better person by being just a little more receptive to confrontation, being a bit more patient with bad habits/making mistakes, and being a bit more understanding of the person's situation.
It's how you deal with conflict.
I know arguments at home when you're arguing with me can heat up because my way of dealing with yelling and screaming is to just walk away and avoid it, which really doesn't help.

Sometimes i wish i could just be a bit more patient, a bit more humble, a bit more obedient. I'm still learning to be a better daughter, sister, and friend. Even though there's been so much conflict at home, I feel i'm learning so much from it.