Letting go of the idea to embrace reality
I’ve been living alone since I was 23 going on 24. Prior to that I lived with my brother. I envied my boyfriend’s family set up SO much. His family is the kind that gets together to celebrate anything and everything. I’m pretty sure they would get together to celebrate the purchase of a shovel by my boyfriend or any of his two siblings if they could.
I had this deep seated longing for belonging not just anywhere but in a family set up. I wished my family could get together like that, be there for each other the way I believed family had to be.
I lived with this idea of the perfect family in my head and I yearned for it more desperately each time. Seeing my boyfriend with his family ALWAYS triggered me. Why couldn’t I have THAT, I thought. Was I not worthy? Had I wronged the gods of family in a past life? I explored all these things in therapy all the while wishing my mum would be the best friend I shared my deepest and darkest secrets with. And my dad? I just wanted his approval.
I explored my family dynamics with both my therapist and my psychiatrist albeit separately. It was affecting my whole life. I was making every decision from a space of inadequacy because I thought surely if I couldn’t even get the family I thought I deserved I definitely didn’t deserve anything good in this life. My family wasn’t bad. We just weren’t together like THAT. Circumstances tore us apart geographically.
I long established I didn’t like being around both my parents at the same time. But admitting that made me feel like I was accusing my parents of being bad people so I fake smiled when I talked about spending time with them. My parents had heir own struggles while raising us but I was growing to see how that affected me as a child and was now affecting me as an adult. I resented them then felt guilty then threw love in there like a spice that’s meant to cover up that actually, you burnt the food.
It wasn’t until last year that my eyes would be opened to the fact that my parents were human too. The same way I had my own shit, so did they. Unfortunately by virtue of them being my parents their shit had a direct impact on me. BUT, I’m an adult now. Who I am no longer is their responsibility, I am now 100% responsible for myself. So I laid down all the issues. Claimed mine and reassigned my parents’ issues back to them. Their issues will always be theirs to deal with just as my issues are mine to deal with.
Between my own relationship with my parents and that of my friends and their parents, I am learning that parents don’t really know how to parent adult children. I am my parent’s youngest child. I am 30 and their baby. To them I’ll always be a baby. Not that they’ve said it out loud but I see in how they interact with me.
I am old enough to recognize my parents’ own childhood traumas that have informed their parenting. While I am not 100% behind their parenting methods I do acknowledge that they have done the best they could with what they had and knew. I cannot fault them for doing the best they could. The fact that their best isn’t necessarily my idea of best is my problem to deal with. I do that by going for therapy and also consulting with my (integrative) psychiatrist.
One thing my psychiatrist always says is that I should remember that EVERYTHING my parents do for me is and has always been out of love. I used to get mad at my dad and refuse to talk to him because I didn’t know how to communicate to him that I didn’t like the way he talked to me. Then my psychiatrist taught me to always reframe that and see everything my father does and says as being done and said from a space of love. Sure the delivery may suck due to the influences of the adults in his life but it is love nonetheless.
My parents were dealt cards which they may still not know how to handle. That is not for me to fix. I cannot change them. I had to give up the idea of the parents I thought I should have received to embrace the ones in front of me. I have not been a perfect child myself so it was my ego expecting perfection from my parents. No, we are not best friends. They are my parents and right now I can say without a shadow of doubt that actually, I am okay with that.
I am doing my own work to be a better version of myself in spite of whatever emotional needs my parents couldn’t meet. I feed that part of me. Accepting my parents and my family in general for who they are made me give up the fantasies of family I had in my head. I no longer entertain family members who are toxic. I didn’t choose any of them and I am not obliged to tolerate any of them in the name of “family”.
Thirty has truly come with so much freedom for me on that front. I am not responsible for my parents or anyone else. I am responsible for myself and myself only.
I have stopped longing for family get togethers cos in all honesty I can’t even stand some of the people I wanted to get together with all in the name of family. I actually LOVE my own space so much and I don’t even enjoy being at home with the whole family.
I’ve grown into my own person and I do not want everyone going out of their way to make room for me and my feelings because I definitely would not go out of my way for them to do the same. And honestly, that too is okay. I sleep soundly, the joy in my heart is pure, my laughs come from my belly because I gave up the idea of what I thought had to be and accepted what was.
I am thankful for everything my parents did for me while raising me. It was the best they could do and I honor that. I do not aim to please them with how I live my life now. It is my life not theirs. If they are pleased then good for them but my only goal is to please myself and be able to sleep with the person I am every night.
Every time I complain to my therapist about someone not doing something I want them to do for me she asks if I think they don’t want to or are incapable of doing that. That has helped me a lot in accepting people for who they are and not who I want them to be.
If you enjoyed this please do yourself a favor and go read this post: Stop Expecting Your Parents to Be What they Cannot Be.
