Flying back to Taiwan was just as grueling as flying to the U.S., even with no delays caused by an incoming winter storm the day I left nor other travel-related hitches and having a whole row to myself on the 13 hour first-leg flight to Asia from Newark. I think I may have been the only person in economy with a whole row to myself.

I have just about no incentive for making that trip in the future. I do enjoy visiting my brothers and their families. We're not super close and don't necessarily connect, but we're cordial and pleasant enough and I feel nothing ill when visiting them. I don't know if they feel the same way about me.

I've shunned the stress and responsibilities that they've taken on in living normative lives. I don't know if they acknowledge that whatever stress they have in their lifestyles is the result of their own decisions; I don't know if they even felt they had a decision. Or if they feel my own decisions are a cop-out.

I look at all they have and made a conscious decision that I don't want any of it. Wife, family, career, mortgages, cars, stuff . . . no thanks.

On the other hand, I recognize that my attitude has some degree to do with the parents. And this is a bit of a revelation and something my brothers probably don't understand.

There was never any way that I was going to get married and start a family because of what that meant regarding my relation with the parents. When my brothers got married, the parents were involved. They had to be involved. When my brothers started having kids, the parents became the grandparents. They had to be involved.

The course of my brothers' lives involved the parents and even developed a deep appreciation for the financial assistance they provided to get them where they are. I certainly don't fault them for that.

They don't know the extent of my lack of appreciation, though, specifically in regard to their financial provisions making my being alive possible when being alive is a take it or leave it proposal for me. I don't even owe them that.

So I'm stating it for the record that my relationship with my parents probably has been a major factor in why I never got married or had kids or even wanted to.

Still that's only part of it. The other part of it is that I myself really didn't want to get married or have kids. If I really wanted to get married and have kids, though, my parents wouldn't have anything to do with it.

If I truly found my "soul mate" and wanted to spend the rest of my life with her and make it "official" through some ritual concept referred to as "marriage", and then to sire offspring . . . and I can't even project any sarcastic or cynical meaning to that since it's simply inconceivable, so to speak, none of it would have involved the parents.

In other words, if I did have the drive to live some sort of normative life with a love of my life and kids, I would have likely cut all relations with my parents. My parents couldn't have anything to do with any relationship of mine with someone else, nor with any kids that we had. No fucking way. All they were in that regard was negative and chaos, and not something I would want perpetuated.

My relationship with my parents, and what toxicity they cultivated, simply doesn't include a relationship that involves those things. As such, if that were a path I wanted to take, it would have meant severing all financial ties as well; meaning a strong enough desire and ambition to find my own financial way in the world would have been required. A career, making money, being sustainable; what just about everyone normatively does anyway.

And I never had that ambition or desire. I never found that love of my life that would have superseded my financial attachment and dependence on the parents. Much too lazy? Maybe. The point is that they aren't entirely to blame. They were a major factor, but the decision was mine.