It wasn’t that long after I moved out of my parents house to attend school that I learned how unappealing it was to ever blame them for anything I experienced growing up. That was strictly for weak people. “You just gotta get over that shit and master your own destiny. Those days are gone and forgotten.”
It really has only been the past few years in therapy that I have felt comfortable enough to look at certain things from the past and acknowledge how f*cked up most of it really was. I don’t know too much about other people’s experiences, but I know that for me, much of my youth was spent submerged in a state of confusion. I would protest the treatment I received and was informed by all quarters that what I was experiencing wasn’t really what was happening. “No, we’re not playing favorites,” “You just have no sense of humor,” “We had more money back then when your older brother got…(fill in the blank.)
Knee jerk reaction to this was to point out how false a lot of these excuses were but the protestations did what they were supposed to do. When my initial anger wore off, I was left with the sound of their lame excuses ringing in my ears and in my subconscious, I began to, if not wholly believe them, at least question my perception.
Now, learning that much of what I felt was completely valid, it’s difficult not to be angry. Angry that it happened, angry that I was being gaslit, and angry that it took this long to process all of it. In retrospect, I might’ve been better off if I was allowed to feel my feelings when I had them. It just seemed like my parents were far more interested in defending themselves. They seemed more like politicians hoping to be re-elected than empathetic caregivers navigating the emotional ups and downs of the little people they brought into the world.
Nurturing didn’t seem to be too high up on their list of priorities. I could swear that I always felt like they wanted to be lauded for going to work and supporting us. Which is a little like relentlessly pursuing a woman for a date for an entire year and then bitching when the dinner bill comes or those people I see at work who feel they should get a trophy for showing up on time.
All that aside, I realize that there is nothing to be gained by holding onto any of this stuff. I need to process it, allow myself to finally feel the way it makes me feel, acknowledge that anyone else would feel the same way and then drop it. It’s over. They’re dead and I’m in the evening of middle age. I’d like to spend whatever time I have left being happy and creative.
But those ideas are easier to possess than to carry out. I get these pangs of anger at times. I question why I only seem to long for love that I can’t have and why I ignore all the love that is so freely given to me. Is it a pattern I developed from my formative years? It must be. I can’t see a person signing up for that sort of masochism arbitrarily.
Now whether this has been my cause for never being able to stay in a relationship or whether it’s because I constantly make the wrong choices, it doesn’t matter too much. Each is equally as destructive and the outcomes are the same. I find myself still, so many years later, trying to squeeze feelings out of my kid’s mom and they are the exact feelings that she just isn’t capable of. There will never be tenderness or warmth or the ability to fondly reminisce about anything. It’s so familiar. I was doing this with my father the whole time I was a kid and, I’m sure, long after.
The privilege of being able to sit down for an hour every week and hash over this mess is one I will never take for granted. Over the years, as my feelings for my therapist have evolved from the immediate reaction of practically falling in love to the more mature and tempered understanding that I am capable of a richer and more complex love than the romantic kind, I have learned more about myself than I have about her.
It’s my belief that this education, which hangs passively in the background, might be far more important than the anger I initially brought up. The anger will come and it will fade, but learning how to love and be loved by another person is what all of this is supposed to be doing. The first time we met, I had a very limited idea of what men and women meant to each other. That seems like ancient history.
And that’s where it belongs. Because as cliche as it sounds, connection is really the only thing we are here on earth for. When our ability to feel connected is damaged, so is everything else. And while I detest the overused “the opposite of addiction is connection” anthem, I do finally see that a lack of connection or the inability to feel connected is the first in a series of events that lead to self-medicating. Similar ideas, but a bit more complex than the Johann Hari “let’s wrap this in a neat little bow” ten minute TED talk.
And if I can finally share a complex love with another person someday, I guess that will be my happy ending.
As always, another weekend of musings from Billy and thoughts to ponder. Thanks!