I had a really horrible childhood, at least emotionally. I didn’t starve, wasn’t molested, didn’t have guys ride into my village and shoot everyone and chop my hands off. Not like Africa horrible. But I did feel completely unwanted and unloved. My sister and mother used to laugh at me and tell me I was a fat slob that no one would ever love. My father used to bark at me and seemed more interested in what he wanted from me than what I wanted. And then as I was about to graduate from college my mother committed suicide. It was very rough.
And yet, as I am now 52 and look back, I wonder if my childhood was like that. For instance my barking father. He was a Military Officer, career type, graduated from West Point, the school for professional Army Officers in the U.S.A. He would bend over at me and bark “how are you doing to day son?” I was so intimidated by that tone of voice, but when I think about it, he was asking me how was I doing? I used to think he didn’t care but the truth is I shut him out from fear. Not that he attacked me, but he demanded a lot of me and I didn’t want to do it. Now that he has retired, mellowed and gone to a therapist, and as I have done the same thing, we can talk about it. He did care, just not how I thought that should occur.
My sister and I fought a lot, and the few times we have communicated as adults we didn’t do much better. So that was and is still a bust.
Mom, I now have come to the impression she was always depressed and didn’t like her life. She was one the few women at the time with a college degree, but she never had the chance to use it. The military of that era, probably even now, had a role wives fit into. They supported the husband, went to clubs with other disgruntled military wives, and didn’t get to use their heads a lot. Any slight or social mistake was to be avoided. The military is like a Junior High School, a bunch of men trying to appear one way, keeping their gals in line so as not to be publicly embarrassed, and not that much time except for the boys plans. She wasn’t too interested in me either, except she had to raise me. She made maybe a couple cakes for me in my life, told me I was a waste, that if she hadn’t miscarried previous to me that I would have never been born, and that I would never be loveable. So that sounds not to supportive to me.
But then I was a demanding child. Was the lack I felt the result of how I was treated, or the cause of it, so annoying them that they got sick of me? Hard to tell. But I do know after years of pain and wishing it had been different, that there comes a time one has to let go of ones personal history, or it will kill you. I don’t mean bury it, or hide from it, or have a stiff denial of it. One has to let go of ones past.
Now I look back and remember my dad sent me a letter at college that he was essentially disowning me and not going to support me because he couldn’t support my life style. I was a long hair, trying to hold a job, never taken drugs nor drank alcohol and still a virgin, but apparently there was something wrong with me. This was a painful experience, but I also have let go of my past so it doesn’t cause me pain anymore.
Yeah, I think I had a bad childhood, but then, they did to. The pain doesn’t come from them, they are just as subject to it as I am. There is a power, an energy here that wants us in pain. And it uses our personal memory, personal history, to bind us to the pain. That is why you have to let go of your life, your history. To have freedom.
I am pretty sure I had a bad childhood, but it seems to be someone else’s life now.