Intro
What’s the nature of a typical relationship between a parent and child? Where should the appropriate balance of reprimand and acceptance fall? For my money, I’d guess that most parents consistently struggle with answering these questions until their child is mature. Many probably never have a clearly defined answer; they converge to an acceptable yet non-optimal solution. This typically works. The child ends up being a functional adult despite their parents’ flaws and is able to look past them to see who they are: imperfect people who did their best.
What happens when the solution is both non-optimal and also not acceptable? What is an acceptable response to this from a child’s perspective? How does a child rectify decades of abuse and mistreatment?
I’m writing this blog to try to answer these questions from my own perspective, for myself. The intent is to reflect on my emotional development and, in doing so, come to terms with my childhood, which was non-existent due to a dysfunctional and abusive household.
At the center of this lack of a childhood is an extremely intelligent, manipulative, bipolar, narcissistic, alcoholic, and depressed father who never had the empathy to see that his inaction in treating his mental illness weighed immensely on his immediate family.
To his left, a kind, loving, and caring mother, trying to navigate the hurricane that is extreme mental illness while also raising a family effectively by herself in suburban America.
To his right, two insane younger children, often themselves unable to control their own mental illnesses. What began as relatively harmless diagnoses as ADHD for both of them continued to develop into bipolar in my brother and suspected borderline personality disorder in my non-binary sibling.
On the periphery are relatives. A paternal grandmother too in denial about her son’s bipolar to do anything about it. A large maternal family that, save for a few select individuals, seemingly couldn’t give two shits about their sister who moved out of Detroit. Other relatives too mired by dysfunction in their own households to have the bandwidth to help, too self-absorbed in their own egos to care, or just too damn far away to get a flight all the way to Chicago.
Then there’s me. Somehow in the hurricane but also not. The last thought on everyone’s mind. I detest writing this because the “Woe is me” mentality isn’t helpful, yet it’s true. Wanting a father who I felt loved me, siblings who would sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up once in awhile, and a mom who would have enough bandwidth to see that I was also struggling. Somehow, I slipped through the cracks but still ended up a fairly well-adjusted adult by simply brute forcing my way through emotional hell. The soot from that hell has largely covered my emotional self; while I am happy that I made it out, it’s high time I begin to rinse it off. Welcome to my blog.
