At least by the time my brothers were born, my parents had made some kind of 'agreement' - they'd settled their terms of negotiation.
In other words, they'd gotten married, bought a house, and got on with the 2.5 kids/three cats in the yard/white picket fence business.
But when *I* came along, no such negotiations had been made. There was no structure in place to accommodate my appearance on the scene, no safety net, nothing to catch me when I fell (from my mother's womb onto this here blue and green ball of mud.)
Even my youngest brother, unexpectedly conceived in spite of an IUD, who was told, at some point, that he was an 'accident', was never out-and-out rejected at such a root, basic, elemental level as I was.
And I'm not 'competing for last place' here. It's a fucking miserable position to be in, that of the unwanted child; many children, I'd guess at least a third, if not half or more, are born into similar situations. That's the whole design plan: Children happen. The idea that they can, or should be, planned, is a lot of modern, Western, wishful thinking.
And I'm not saying that planning children is a *bad* idea; I'm just saying that, in most cases, people simply don't manage to do that thing. It doesn't HAPPEN, and it's not realistic to expect it.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
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4 comments:
I once said "I am never going to have children." My mother said well you don't always have a choice you should know that better than anyone else."
I knew what she meant.
I am kinda wondering now if that is not the way it was. That they kinda think that I choose to be born so what happened was my responsibility.
My sibling verify the way it was. We never had to worry about getting in trouble. That was what you did.
I am kinda all good with my relationship with my family. In a way I left and there perfect family was exposed and it pretty much fell apart. In a real way I kept them going when they had no real substance anyway.
They have commented how it is not the same and is not boring. That is because they have no imagination.
You sound like it doesn't bother you too much. I am always shocked and appalled by the casual cruelty of one family member to another, and the idea that this is 'love' or even 'family'. My definitions of those two words do not include that kind of behavior.
One thing I have never figured out is why some people *always* (or most of the time) take responsibility for their behavior and how it affects other people, and some people *never* take responsibility.
My best explanation is that it's a power thing - a simple matter of what one can get away with.
Though that doesn't explain people who *have* power but choose not to abuse it. Perhaps *they* were stomped on enough times as children to not want to hurt others in the same way?
It sucks when there is such a mismatch between one person and the rest of their family - the classic 'Ugly Duckling' story. But we know, in the story, the duckling turned out to be a swan! The ducklings couldn't see the swans beauty - all they could see was that he was *different* from themselves. I think that's a fairly basic human trait - that tendency to pick on people who are 'different'.
It does not hurt me like it did before. I know they were wrong and most of the time I see they lost much by not seeing me.
When I wrote I am all good with my relationship I meant there is no real relationship and that is best for me although I wish it was not so.
It does seem to be a either you take responsibility for your behavior or you do not.
Seriously no one in my family has ever made a mistake. It is always someone else that made the mistake.
You would have to look hard to find someone to say something bad about my family they seem to save their bad behavior for me. I actually liked when people were over at the house. I got enough to eat and there was a break in the meanness.
It does seem to help with the pain to know that you did not deserve whatever it was - that 'they were wrong', as you say. I think the hardest part about it is to stop blaming your*self* for things over which you had no control. At least, that was really hard for *me*.
Thanks for clarifying the "I am all good." Yes, it is a hard decision to make. And it is often not what we really *want*, as you say, so much as it is what we *have* to do to be healthy, or sometimes even just to survive at all.
I've experienced the same thing about mistakes in my family - it's exceedingly rare for anyone to ever make an apology, which is absolutely essential to mending rifts between people. In order to trust another person (at least, this is how *I* think about it), it is necessary to feel that they understand, at least somewhat, how their behavior affects you. Otherwise they can just stomp all over you and never notice how much they're hurting you.
Of course, it also helps to get really good at yelling, "Ouch!" at the top of your lungs, so that they're never in any doubt :-) I think *I* got in the habit of remaining 'silent' as a child because my parents never paid any attention to my emotional needs.
So I learned to bottle it up, and eventually, I lost contact with my feelings altogether. I think I was this muddled up ball of fear and rage through much of my teenage and early college years, but kept on going in spite of it, somehow.
And then my dad died the year after I graduated from college, and it all came boiling out, but there was nowhere for it to go - my mom was an emotional basket case and expected *me* to take care of *her*, even though I was just trying to establish myself profesionally and had no money and no emotional support system of my own.
Anyway. Yes, it helps to have other people around as sort of 'witnesses' - it does tend to keep the offenders on their best behavior.
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