A Slice of Life: A Lesson Learned In Youth

A Slice of Life

This isn't such an upbeat post but it's my reality and I can't change it. A lesson I learned in my youth was that I couldn't depend on my parents for stability or for help. The example that comes to mind is the year I started junior high school. I had a friend--I thought--and I used to walk to school with her. Another friend of my friend joined us and soon I was odd-one-out. I've always been a little different than most other kids and it wasn't easy for me to make friends. Anyway, these two soon figured out a way to drop me from the group by leaving earlier, going a different route and so on. I was crushed and didn't know what to do. I approached my mother and asked if she could drive me to school as my friends had abandoned me.

My mom turned on me in a fury and yelled at me. Why did I have to bother her with my problems? Didn't I realize that she had enough troubles of her own without me adding mine to them? Guilty and ashamed I crept away and just cried and cried. Later, my mom came back with a change of heart, said she was sorry and that of course she'd drive me to school.

This was a scene that was repeated over and over in my childhood. I never felt I could approach my parents with my worries without getting yelled at and made to feel like I was imposing. After this time, I just learned not to go to them at all anymore and kept everything to myself.

That was something that wasn't exactly reasonable either because I developed panic attacks at age 16. Once again, I had to approach them and ask them to take me to a doctor...and they refused. The kind of doctor I needed was a psychiatrist and that was just too shameful. I suffered with the panic attacks until I was old enough to get a job with benefits and go on my own.

I guess this is making my parents sound cruel and I don't mean to do that. Yes, I was angry with them for not being there for me but on the other hand, they were both deaf, both drinking to excess and while that's not an excuse, they just weren't the people they might have been. Maybe things would have been different if my mother hadn't seemed to have bipolar herself. Maybe things would have been different if they'd had good role models. But...they didn't and so I didn't.

And that is the lesson I learned from my youth.

Update on us: Things are sort of calm now that we are able to pay our mortgage and we don't have to worry so about losing the house. I still feel like a zombie, sort of roaming around aimlessly through the days. I chose to do this prompt to try and help get my writing kick-started again. I don't know if it will work.

We went to lunch with our neighbors Bob and Flo yesterday and that was nice.

Mostly I've been reading or watching TV when we're not running around to the doctors--and loving up the cats. They enjoy it and they'd rather I sit and pet them and pet them than blog anyway I'm sure. :)