Call it Magic

The saddest and most real epiphany has occurred. Looking back on thousands of entries. Literally. Looking back on all the written diaries little me started in the past. Just desperately wanted my feelings out there. Just needing to tell someone who would listen. Which was no one. It was just me. And that was lonely. And I wish I could tell little me so much. I have so much more grace and understanding for myself. Counseling was good. Sort of. It showed me I care enough to go. I care enough to change or learn. I don’t think I like my counselor though, so I’ll go in a new direction. She was always looking at the time underneath the couch. I could see it and it made me nervous. She offered too much of her own stories, which I get is a way to connect but sometime it didn’t feel that way. The final straw was some Zionist response she had to me saying it was deteriorating my mental health seeing dead Palestinian babies in my Instagram, but I didn’t want to look away and ignore the problem because so many people in my life just look away and ignore the problem. Like basically everyone I know. Anyway…she was a Rabi in her past life, which I forgot and then remembered after her comment about the music festival and blah blah blah….

Anyway. I have been reading Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents  and it’s not really rocked my world, but has provided the validation I was hoping for in my counseling sessions, but was not receiving. It was like my counselor was bored talking about my childhood issues. And I feel like everyone just tells me to “self care”…and that’s not going to fix some of the issues. But meeting them head on and really understanding how this shaped my personality and my loneliness. My inability to really form close relationships. My feeling of something wrong or always being unique or different. It isn’t a good uniqueness. It was the uniqueness that comes from having to raise yourself, which people don’t realize is what I did. And just because I had material things and food and clothes and expensive idiotic things…that doesn’t mean once…not once was my emotional growth dealt with, nurtured, etc.  When I felt something I was left to navigate that. And so I turned to writing. I turned to writing about one day finding someone who would listen to me, which meant I was very into finding a boyfriend or a prince charming. I wrote about that so much. But I was looking for validation and understanding. I was looking for someone to comfort me. I just wanted to be told it was okay. That I was feeling things that were okay. I’m so sad for little me. Reading that book has helped me put a stop to emotionally immature behaviors or at least be aware of them. I will not repeat any cycles with my kids and send into the world a broken soul.

I picked emotional distant friends. I picked a semi-emotional distant spouse who is absolutely eyes glazed over when I have intense feelings. He’s getting better, but he was not taught to have feelings and he was taught to be seen and not heard. Of course I found a pattern that felt familiar.

And of course when I found someone who was not like that, they didn’t meet my criteria of a boyfriend. Sorry, David. He’s happy now with some hot Texan so it’s really fine. But thinking of the other boys I liked. Absolutely emotionally unavailable. I thought I could fix them. That’s 1000% not how it works.

I have felt crazy all my life trying to get people to feel emotions and open up to me. And when I find friends I can do that with now it’s wild and uncomfortable. Physical touch is also wild and uncomfortable. If a friend hugs me I wonder why they’d want to do that. And I realize that is because I was not hugged as a kid.

None of this stuff is poor me now. It’s all just realizations. It’s all just helping me be the best person I can for my kids and learn to communicate. That’s all. I’m feeling empowered and more confident. I feel hate for my parents and it’s valid and I feel uncomfortable with their existence because the two of them had absolutely no fucking business procreating.

But. I’m here. My sister is here. We are here. And my parents had shit childhoods and they were stunted. I was stunted but refuse to to be. I continue to grow and learn and reflect. Something my dad can’t do because of dementia and my mom refuses which pisses me off. I’m in control of me. And that’s all. I can control my growth and how I deal with things. I can only continue to better myself. I’ll always be learning because staying in one place feels disgusting to me. I just wish I had one day with little me to tell her that her feelings were not her fault. That they are so important to being an empathetic good human.

I wish I could tell middle school me that it will get better. That no one taught you had to navigate any of these situations and that everyone is going through hard things and none of these people have any brain cells to fully understand their awful behaviors.

I wish I could tell high school me to stay away from emotionally distant uninterested boys. There’s no point in pining after boys that treat you poorly. I wish I could have told me to see past physical appearance. But that’s truly just not something you can do. You cannot force yourself to love someone you don’t have a full connection with, which is a bummer. To say the least.

I wish I could tell college me that you’re picking a broken boy who has no understanding of how emotions work. But also I would let me know that it still works out. I will say Dustin has learned a lot on how to communicate and cares to learn more. He’s not yet interested in completely reflecting on himself, but there’s a lot of progress and like no red flags that I am concerned with in my own empowerment and taking control of my own feelings.

I wish I could tell before kids me that this is going to wreck all you have ever known about mothers and childhood. This is going to rip every traumatic experience you had open and completely change your entire life in so many ways. I wish I could’ve prepared for that somehow.

I feel so much more prepared to parent my kids in all of their stages coming up now that I’m dealing with my issues. You best believe if my kids have issues with me I will listen and validate even if it hurts. I have a feeling they’re going to have less issues than I did and that’s all I can hope for.

That is really all.