DBPW - Day 63 Mommies and Daddies....

 I don’t know if you are aware but yesterday I had a talk with Mrs. Nature, as in Mother.  I told her I understood her heart break and pain, that her weather was indicative of.  Most certainly it was payback for some man’s jack assory behaviour and that we women would unite and surround her with love if she stopped punishing all mankind for one man!  And today I sit typing to you outside in the sunshine!  That’s right, your welcome world.

 Today on FB a lovely lady was trying to figure out her mother and sister.  Apparently they are co-dependant messes.  They both make her feel badly about herself, they are hoarders, and abusive of her, her husband, her child and use drugs and alcohol for their own demons.  I thought this might be a good topic for today.

Mommies and Daddies, and all their good stuff.

My Mom and Dad got separated when I was about 12.  They shipped me off to my grandparents and when I got home, both my father and brother were gone, they’d moved out.  My mother had lost at least 25 pounds in the month I’d been gone and she was a mess.  They’d left “us” she said and that was that.   That was how I was told my Dad and brother were gone.    “They left us” = me, = “holy shit I am not even good enough to keep a Dad and brother”.

My grandmother and grandfather rallied around my mother leaving me to make sense of all the bad things I overheard for the next few days about my Dad and brother alone.  After they left my Mother fell apart even more.  There was no being fed, no talking.  I just rebelled and laid in my room for days without eating (welcome step one into the world of food restrictions).  My Dad, well he left me for 2 years.  All my life I thought it was like 2 months and he bought me a ring because it was so long, turns out, it was a 2 year anniversary ring!!!  He stayed away for 2 years!!!  I didn’t even realize that until 25 years later when he blurted out how badly I should have felt for him because of his guilt over having to be gone for two years.  I guess he was so guilty he couldn’t face me for 2 years.  I am focused on the 2 years here not because it means anything to me today but more because I had blocked it entirely.  I still don’t remember my Dad being gone that long.  And left me with a Mom who was trying to figure out her own life and explain where he was.  It wasn’t ideal for sure.  I mean I was pretty angry too they’ve both shared with me.  Ahhhh uhhhhm duh.  I am sure I was.  I know my Mom hit me, I also remember hitting her.  My father lived with a twit, a 20 year old who when confronted with me moving in said “her or me” and my Dad actually paused.  My brother is the one that stood up and said, “your daughter is going to kill herself if she stays with her mother, she is coming to live with us.”  My Dad over the years has tried to take credit for that big move and my brother always gets hurt because it was his great move after leaving me somewhere he didn’t want too, he just wanted out of my Mom’s house.  

And that’s my point.  He just wanted out of my Mom’s house had nothing to do with me.  I made the entire separation out to mean I didn’t matter.  I wasn’t good enough.  My Daddy and brother would have stayed had I been better.    My parent’s lack of parenting skills meant I wasn’t lovable.  It was all about me.  It wasn’t until years later in a course where I was confronted with the idea that my parents were people with their own shit to deal with that I realized I simply didn’t factor in.  Should I have?  Of course but that was their issues NOT MINE.  Their separation, my Dad’s leaving, my Mom’s handling of it, my brother going?  None of it had anything to do with who I was or was supposed to be.  It was all their stuff.  My Mom hit me likely because as a child she was taught to hit and I was an angry kid.  I didn’t deserve it, didn’t ask for it, but it happened.  That simple, it happened.  It didn’t make me bad, or less than, or unloved.  It meant my Mom’s fall too place was hitting.  It wasn’t about me. 

 

 

Once you take your parents drug issues, alcohol issues, need to yell, to hit, to throw stuff and you pile it all back on your parents as THEIR SHIT suddenly it’s not about you and you can redefine who you are based on who you are right NOW and now who you are with that giant weight of history on your back.   Don’t carry their shit.  Don’t become them.  Don’t let yourself be defined by who?  SOMEONE ELSE.  The most important person in a child’s life is their parents until their parents are forced by life to say, “okay you are NO LONGER the center of the universe, Mommy has a job and this and that, Daddy has work too and this and that…..” but that is supposed to happen gradually.  Not with a rug of life yanked out from under you like divorce and separation can do.  You are supposed to learn you aren’t “all that” slowly over time.  If you don’t, suddenly you go from “all that” to nothing in a heartbeat and it takes the winds out of your sails and ego out of your soul.  You are nothing.  But that’s only what you think.  You are so much more.  You are your own kids, or a piece of your career, and your friends, and your beauty inside and out, intelligence, humour and all that beauty is comprised of.  The only way you ARE your parents is by choosing to be them or be defined by them. 

Your Mother and Father are who they are, as long as you let them, they define you.  But they don’t have too.  There’s a whole world out there to explore, study and learn to figure out who you want to be.  I get along with both my parents now that I have stopped letting them evaluate and value me.  I just have parents now.  No more looking for love in all the wrong places, no more looking for acceptance, no more no more no more.  They are who they are and I cannot change that about them and they can’t change who I am.  I most certainly no longer allow their actions to mean anything about me. 

 

 

Sooooooooooooo, are you defined by your parents or were you just raised by them?  Think about it.