resented

I’ve been thinking about my parents a lot, which I know I shouldn’t do.  It just makes me angry, and it’s counterproductive.  Or, at the very least, unproductive.

The simple fact is that my parents resented me. 

They like me better, now.  They don’t have to take care of me anymore, so they don’t hate me.  I don’t cost them money, so they can ‘love’ me.  Now that I don’t want anything from them. 

I gave up wanting anything from them about the time I turned twelve, but I was stuck living with them for another six years after that.  Which they hated me for.  Because I cost money, and it was my fault they couldn’t have nice things.

I kind of wish they’d thought of that before they’d had me?  I mean, they could have aborted me.  Put me up for adoption.  But they didn’t.

Wish they had.

I never asked to be born, but once I was, I couldn’t stop asking for things.  Things they couldn’t give me.  Medical care, for example.  If I was sick, I didn’t go to the doctor.  My mother would accuse me of malingering.  I had strep throat for six weeks once.  Six very long weeks.  Strep throat can turn into scarlet fever.  Didn’t know that then.

I was constantly reminded how much money I was costing them.  If I took a hot shower, I knew it was wasted money.  If I left my space heater on too long, even when we didn’t have central heat and it was 55 degrees in my room.  I used the internet.  I took piano lessons.  Every. Single. Thing. I did was accounted for. 

And they resented me for it.  Thought I owed them for it.  “After all we did for you,” my mother said, “The least you can do is…”

I owed them for conceiving me.  I owed them for raising me.  I owed them for the things that they were, I have since learned, supposed to give to me because they loved me.  Because they wanted to.

Not because they ‘had’ to.

They did not give these things willingly.  Many things, they did not give at all.  And three things were always crystal clear to me:

1.   I cost money.

2.   My parents resented me for it.

3.   I did not deserve anything.

So I think about them, now, and I get angry.  But they ‘love’ me now.  Now that I’ve been out of the house for eight years, now that I’m not their responsibility.  Now they can love me.

But I’m not really sure that’s how it works.