I spent so much of my life trying to please my mother, trying to please my father, and...not really trying to please my brother, but just getting him off my back. Now I realize that I shouldn't have been having been doing that in the first place, at least, not to the extent I was doing it. I spent years trying to be the "good girl"--obedient, submissive, and docile. Educated. Hard-working. Polite. Courteous. All of these stupid adjectives. I felt as if I spent years trying to measure up to some standard that, once met, would always be set higher. And higher. While that's healthy and normal and even desirable to do with children, it wasn't healthy the way my family went about it. With insults. And unkind words. With emotional abuse. And making me cry. With taking away any sense of decision-making. With taking away my voice. And then my father would grow frustrated with me when because I wouldn't "act like an equal." Children aren't ever "equal" to their parents. Not really. Not even if the children turn fifty and the parents are eighty or ninety. Somehow, parents still see their children as, well, children. They go through this conflict of seeing their child as a child and then expecting them to be a full-grown, functioning adult. The same old argument happens all the time.
Parent: I am very disappointed in you. I expected that you would act better than this. I expected that you were old enough to know better by now.
Adult/Child: How can I act like an adult when you treat me like a child?!
The same argument goes on. And on. I was talking to Matt about it the other day, about how my parents treated me. Then I told him that my parents thought I was abandoning them when I moved far away from home. And I DID feel like I was abandoning them.
"You didn't abandon them," Matt said. "They drove you away."
When I thought about it that way, it seemed to fit my life in a different way. I remembered all the fighting my parents did and how they spilled over into their parenting. I remembered how they treated me and my brother. I remember how my brother treated me and I suddenly felt that it wouldn't be too much of a loss if I never saw them again. Actually, I've been feeling that way since I was thirteen, and because of that, I've worked so many years to escape from them. Escape from a religious fanatic mother who called me fat. Escape from an insensitive brother who ridiculed my feelings. Escape from an alcoholic father who repeatedly expressed disappointment in me for "not making something of myself." And I just got tired of it, you know? I got tired of crying myself to sleep. I got tired of angrily (but quietly) leaving home to go take a walk. Or drive somewhere to escape. I felt tired of escaping from a place I was supposed to call home.
Home. What a strange word. What an alien concept. What a goal to achieve. Something to look for. Something to wait for. Something to fight for. They say that anything worth having is worth fighting for. Maybe a place to really call home, maybe people to really be a family to me...maybe that's worth fighting for.
And maybe I'll get them someday.
Parent: I am very disappointed in you. I expected that you would act better than this. I expected that you were old enough to know better by now.
Adult/Child: How can I act like an adult when you treat me like a child?!
The same argument goes on. And on. I was talking to Matt about it the other day, about how my parents treated me. Then I told him that my parents thought I was abandoning them when I moved far away from home. And I DID feel like I was abandoning them.
"You didn't abandon them," Matt said. "They drove you away."
When I thought about it that way, it seemed to fit my life in a different way. I remembered all the fighting my parents did and how they spilled over into their parenting. I remembered how they treated me and my brother. I remember how my brother treated me and I suddenly felt that it wouldn't be too much of a loss if I never saw them again. Actually, I've been feeling that way since I was thirteen, and because of that, I've worked so many years to escape from them. Escape from a religious fanatic mother who called me fat. Escape from an insensitive brother who ridiculed my feelings. Escape from an alcoholic father who repeatedly expressed disappointment in me for "not making something of myself." And I just got tired of it, you know? I got tired of crying myself to sleep. I got tired of angrily (but quietly) leaving home to go take a walk. Or drive somewhere to escape. I felt tired of escaping from a place I was supposed to call home.
Home. What a strange word. What an alien concept. What a goal to achieve. Something to look for. Something to wait for. Something to fight for. They say that anything worth having is worth fighting for. Maybe a place to really call home, maybe people to really be a family to me...maybe that's worth fighting for.
And maybe I'll get them someday.
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