Disconnected from my culture.

Any Persians here whom are cast out or considered black sheep by their family? I’m here because I am trying to make sense of my family dynamic and see if there are others who can relate.

Because it would be too convoluted to give every detail of this, I’m going to do my best to keep it short, which I’m sure it won’t be. I’m a second generation Iranian. My parents moved here (US) in the 70s and 80s. My father met my mom through her uncle and subsequently brought her here and got married. I was their only child as they divorced before I was three years of age. That divorce led to a bit of dissonance between both sides of my family and left me in a mental purgatory for a good majority of my life. I am 37 now. Guess you could call me a badbakht. I mostly grew up with my father who, despite his own hardships and traumas growing up in Iran and dealing with the heartbreak of my mother’s betrayal, tried his best. Bless him. He took it upon himself to have sole custody, not that my mother was ever really opposed. She was the key factor in the disestablishment of my position within the family and also the primary proponent to the denigration and aspersions cast upon me by both sides of my family. The psychological implications this had really affected the course of my life. She was an abuser in every aspect of the word. My father tried his best to keep her in my life in good faith… so that I wouldn’t grow up without a mother. Maybe not the best idea. I didn’t have that supportive element in my life. To come home to my mother after something bad happened in school. I was bullied heavily due to my middle eastern background in the primarily white neighborhood I grew up in. To add insult to injury she had convinced my dad to send me to a military boarding school for four years of high school. Freshman year was 9/11. Imagine that. I won’t sugarcoat things. I was a bit of a troublemaker but not to the extent that such extremes had to be taken on my account. There were always labels placed upon me by my family such that I wasn’t studious enough or conforming enough. Anything bad that happened to me outside the home I couldn’t bring to them because they would circumvent the issue by deflecting and saying that I should have walked away or perhaps, I caused it. High school graduation came and of course, she (mom) wasn’t coming. At that point, I was hardly bothered. I knew what to expect. My father left shortly later back to Iran to get married for the fourth time. Thankfully, that stuck and he met a good woman. I ended up bouncing around between a few relatives, even my mom, before effectively becoming homeless for about two years. My family turned a blind eye to this and nobody was willing to help me out. That felt like a dagger in my heart. I grew up in D.C. in punk culture which shaped my views on the world. They probably found that contentious but I didn’t resonate with that type of right-wing ideology they adopted which is the antithesis of their heritage. I found it disconcerting they abandoned a good moral outlook in lieu of idolizing money and success in a way that was self-aggrandizing and rude. This was more prominent from my mom’s side of the family. Either way, I was still cast aside on both sides of my family. By the time I was almost 20 years old, I ended up re-connecting with some relatives but didn’t really enjoy the interactions because they tried to give me pep talks on working hard and making it on my own even though affluence was rather ubiquitous in my family and any aunt or uncle could’ve taken me in and let me pay rent while I found my way. Admittedly, I spent a lot of time being wishful that something or someone would rescue me from the decrepit conditions of my life. I slept many nights near subway stations in D.C. Eventually, I told myself I’d do anything to make a life for myself. I was tired of living on the edge. Maybe if I got my shit together, my family would accept me and maybe even help me if I was doing well for myself and needed it. I was able to scrounge enough money and get a ticket out to Los Angeles to stay with a friend while I sought out a solution. I joined the Marines. It was an impulse decision, but I wanted to become a stronger person. Not the best idea but sadly the U.S. government did more for me than my family ever did. I did two tours in Afghanistan which left me emotionally vacant for some time and after six years of service I separated honorably. I met a girl while I was on active duty who I married when I left the military. A Persian girl who was after a lifestyle and not love. We got married (no kids) but let me just say at this point, nothing changed with my family. They ghosted me and didn’t come to my wedding “for my mom’s respect”, with the exception of my father and his wife. My marriage crumbled and while I thought marrying into my own culture and attempting to connect with my family again was something that seemed within reach, I was completely and utterly wrong. We divorced several years ago and now I am only in touch with one cousin on my dad’s side and my dad. I used to be very close to my mom’s mom, but my mom manipulated my grandma and we lost touch. I even found out she passed away a year after she died because my family hid it from me. I have two half-siblings from my mom’s second marriage. They remained silent and told me nothing. I’ve honestly never done anything malicious to these people but they’ve always treated me as an “other.” My only option throughout all this was to defect to my own cause because I intended to survive. I’m finally in a place where I feel I’ve made peace with some of these things but it still affects me psychologically. All my cousins and my two siblings are by definition, successful. And me? I’m nothing. I’m looking to go back to school to become a nurse. I hope I can save enough in the next year to do so. My divorce left me with a lot of debt and I didn’t make the best decisions for myself since then so I’m paying for it now. I know to some, it may seem like a story that’s not unique to modern Persian culture but even within other Persian families of girls I’ve dated in the past, I could feel their disapproval, either because of where I was at in life or because of my pragmatic belief system. They may view their position as self-preservation but I think it’s often compounded with something else. I don’t kiss ass for the sake of compelling the status quo. I’ve since stopped dating in that community as well, not that I’m looking to see anyone anymore anyway. I have to work on myself and my life. It just pains me that so many years of my life I now look in bad jest. Though I wish no ill by this, I hope there are others who can relate and tell me something inspiring or even something relatable. There are many beautiful things about Persian culture but I can only see them from a historical context. Some will say life in Iran was always very strained and the upbringing of the people who fled here in the 80s came with a lot of baggage. Understandable, but I’ve been through two wars and I’m not looking to hurt others, let alone my family. Something else that’s always torn me up is the one cousin I’m actually close with used to always tell me if I had the life any of my cousins did, I would have outperformed everyone in our entire family. I rather be dumb than live in my own shadow of lost potential. It’s burdened me too long. Remarks please. If you have something moronic to say, keep it to yourself. I’m not here to engage in some useless discourse with someone whose entire wardrobe is Gucci and lives out of their Instagram or TikTok or wtf ever.