quote:

ORIGINAL: gungadin09

Looking back on it as an adult, i notice different things, like the sacrifices my parents made, which i didn't give them credit for at the time. The stuff i took for granted.
The biggest thing that helped me to heal is...taking a second look at my mother and father, instead of seeing it through the eyes of a child.  I had to see it again through adult eyes.  I had a LOT of issues with my mother, and at one time we became strangers.  I kept seeing her as a mother who wasn't perfect when she *should* have been, instead of a human being who was overwhelmed by the ugly choices she had to make and live with.  I had to learn to walk in her shoes, mentally and emotionally, before the healing began.  We have been very close for years now and there are no hard feelings between us.  She sees me for who I am now instead of the imperfect daughter that I was.  This is healthy, and healing. 

i was REALLY mad a my parents for a long time. i've been really mad my whole life, for one reason or other. i carried around this big knot in my stomach that never went away, like someone had laid a brick there. Sometimes i felt like something was crushing my chest and i couldn't get enough air.
This happened to me to, because I was stoic about it.  Dealing with it "properly" through denial and trying to be a good daughter.  Only by talking about it could I understand everything that was going on at the time...adults weren't psychic and they also had plenty of their own secret burdens that they kept from their children.  How could I ever have seen the big picture of our family dynamics when I never saw the big picture when I was a little kid or teenager...  I am glad some of the burden of those ugly feelings have been taken off of your body.  I say body, because stress causes physical manifestations.
 
But recently, it's gone away. i don't mean to sound corny, but i think it's because of collarme. Talking about all this stuff, letting it out, has allowed me to come to terms with it.  Good.  As a fellow human being who shares the same planet you live on  I believe we are here to help each other.  Part of the reason I share information is so that others can heal, and not feel so alone if stuff also happened to them.  Everything in my life is part of me just like the color of my eyes or length of my hair, and I won't wear a mask and be someone I'm not just to be acceptable to other people.  I already did that as a child. 

Sorry for bringing up all this stuff. i didn't mean for this to be a depressing thread, and i certainly didn't mean to make anyone feel bad by implying that i had some kind of perfect childhood.
Hon, hearing what you wrote was not a negative experience for me.  It was music to my ears and shows me balance in this world that is refreshing.  I know your life wasn't perfect, but it is so good to see people who have experiences unlike my own.  I never said what I said to make you feel guilty for starting this thread or sharing part of your life.  I worry about you because you have seemed depressed lately...and I am grateful to you for starting this thread.  I will probably add to what I wrote and give the mother part to my mom.  Even the part I wrote about my father had no sarcasm; I truly do have gratitude for all those things.  I am not glad he is dead out of vengeance (though at one time I did swear to my sister that when I got his ashes in the mail that I would buy champagne, spread them around under me and "dance on his grave"), I am way past that feeling now.  I feel sad for him, and regretful that I couldn't have been a more positive influence on his life somehow.  Would you please read my reply again, keeping this in mind that what I wrote is really what I feel, I was not being sarcastic just brutally honest .
 
i've always wondered where the darkness came from in my life.  Maybe you had a harder time making peace with yourself over the dark things...or maybe a harder time finding things to balance these out than your siblings.  Maybe you are just dealing with the darkness sooner.  Take me and my sister for example.  I started sorting things out while I was a very young adult, and it took around ten years to handle the worst of it.  My sister acted like there was nothing dark to deal with...stronger than me, superior in strength, more ambitious.  Then she had two breakdowns.  Even after those, it was just a chemical imbalance in her brain, corrected by meds...nothing made her brain freak out and crank out the wrong chemicals. <that last part was in sarcasm font>  Several years later, she finally went to some Dr. Phil workshop through her church and started some honest to goodness healing.  She didn't start until into her 40's.  Who knows what your sibs will be dealing with when they are in their 40's or something. 

i mean, my sisters have had their problems too, but it's always seemed like my life was darker and bleaker than theirs. i don't know why. Maybe it has to do with being the first child? Or maybe it's me.  It might mean that you have a more artistic soul.  Seeing the world a little differently can be a good thing.  It made me have more empathy for others, have more patience, and be a better parent.  Yes, I was a firstborn too...and my sister got off the hook for almost everything.  I had responsibilities from a very young age that never fell to her shoulders until she was completely grown up.  This also explains why we are so different, though we grew up mostly in the same house, so to speak, we had different childhoods.  Maybe like me you watched how free your sib/sibs were and saw the invisible chains you wore...and had some resentment because life wasn't fair.  I had to wait two years and four months more for EVERYTHING in my life than my sister did...except the one thing my mother could not possibly do.  <WEG>  I got my driver's license at 16 and as much as my sister gnashed her teeth and stomped her feet, the DMV wouldn't let a 13 year old drive a car.  

Maybe i really do have Aspergers, or some other mental problem.
There are so many Aspies out there, would it even matter?  There are positives and negatives with everything in life, even with just being female.  Mental problems can come and go, and often without the help of a psychologist...friends help us through the worst times of our lives, and wisdom helps us grow and recover over time.  My teens and twenties were all angsty years, and most of the people I knew were all on wild crazy rollercoaster rides of highs and lows.  I even had a teacher once call me neurotic, lol.  I was so scared of flunking a mid term, because the test was on Monday, after I had just spent Friday, Saturday, and Sunday working 11 hour shifts and had had very little time left over to prepare for it.  Walking home at night took over an hour, and I was taking two busses in the morning to get to college.  I had been sleeping 5 hours per night, and on Sunday night had stayed up all night studying and cranking myself up on coffee just to deal with several tests that Monday.  So...one person's judgment of a mental problem...might actually just be a nasty sleep schedule, a junk food diet, and stress overload.  And coffee...did you know that a lot of people who had trouble sleeping at night and who drank lots of coffee have been misdiagnosed with manic depression? 
 
As your earlier list showed, some of the best, creative minds of our time would have been diagnosed as mentally disturbed; imagine how the world would have been without them in it.  Our world needs quirky people, who are eccentric...and are harmlessly "a bit different." 

Anyway, feel free to share.

pam

Btw, about that black swan...get some whole meal bread from some day old bread store and feed it when nobody's looking.  

You did not tie people to their chair, taping their eyelids open, nor did you use a pain stick (Klingon reference here) to force them to read, nor to post about things they would rather not talk about.

quote:

ORIGINAL: LaTigresse

Most of what I am grateful for is the examples my parents have been, in what NOT to be.

How not to be a parent.
How not to be a grandparent.