seeking - stability?

I think what my family, and particularly my brothers, don't understand is that I missed an entire section of my childhood, somehow. I'm not entirely sure how it happened or what happened - I think it was a matter of timing, and poor emotional resources on my mom's part, and total emotional unavailability on the part of my dad.

I think I did my best to survive, but I was operating at almost a survival level in terms of getting my emotional and developmental needs met, in spite of living in a comfortable house and having most of the comforts an average, middle-class family might expect.

I keep wondering if those first seven years, when money was so tight and we moved so many times created a kind of instability for me that my parents didn't register and my brothers didn't experience? It's as if I have a different, separate history from any of the rest of them, and they just simply don't *get* it.

And without anybody to 'witness' it or who actually *remembers* how it went .... well, I'm not sure what to do.

I feel this strong need for 'validation' of my experience(s).

In the past, when I've tried to talk to mom about this, I've found myself getting angry with her because she never seemed to be able to see my point of view. She'd always get defensive, and try to make *me* feel guilty for being upset with her. And it would spiral down into one of those useless, pointless arguments that goes nowhere and before long you no longer have any idea what the discussion is even *about*. Down the rabbit hole.

I wonder, if I could talk to her about the FEAR and the TERROR that I have experienced most of my life (with brief exceptions, such as the first two years I was with ex-partner), I wonder if she would LISTEN? I'm remembering that another reason I'd often find myself angry with her was because, instead of listening to MY story and asking me questions and wanting to know more or understand, instead she'd constantly turn the conversation to herSELF and make it a competition to see who had the worse time of it. Which is totally pointless and a waste of time.

I think I'm still looking for a way in, a tiny crack in the sidewalk where I can somehow, some way, find closure, completion, understanding of this story. If I can find even ONE person who somehow GETS it, who was there, who KNOWS what I was going through - then maybe I can regain something like emotional solid ground? Instead of feeling constantly at sea, adrift, unanchored, floating (and not in a good way).

Staying away from them is one solution, but they're also the only people who KNOW me at that level, to that depth. No one else on the planet was around for that period of my life.

I keep trying to 'figure this out', over and over and over again. Like a dog worrying at a bone. I can't seem to let it go - even when I'm not consciously thinking about it, the insecurity of it seems to nag at me.

***
The problem is that money doesn't solve the basic issue of lack of connection. Or, "Money can't buy you love." Which is why it's hard to get motivated to go out and look for a job when I don't have any reason other than just my own survival to keep me going.

And it's not that I don't CARE about myself; it's just that it's not enough. Not enough of a reason to get up every day and slog through a tedious, mind-numbing pile of crap that I couldn't care less about. It just doesn't make sense.