The one that was inflicted directly and voluntarily by my parents when they took me out of university and made me move back into my childhood home and, indeed, back into my childhood bedroom.
Is it any wonder that I fell apart? After two years of UPEI and my awesome group of nerdy friends, I was finally starting to blossom as a person. I was even thinking of trying to find or start a GLBT at UPEI type club so us fags could meet n’ greet n’ so on.
But then my parents dropped the news like a guillotine’s blade that they were withdrawing funding so they could take early retirement because my father just couldn’t take two more years of being a provincial civil servant.
And the worst part is, they did it with my blessing. When they took my brother and me out for dinner and told us about their plan, my mother added that they would only do it if we agreed to it.
Which I did. Because that was my role in the family. Everything was always A-OK with me. Whatever they wanted to do to suit themselves, I adjusted and adapted to it and never uttered a single word of complaint.
Did it cheerfully, even.
So I readily agreed to let them rip my life into pieces and leave all my friends behind to live in Summerside again and stop having dreams.
And in doing so, betrayed my brother as well as myself. When I so readily agreed to my parents’ plan, he felt there was no point in him objecting, so he tacitly agreed to this horrible plan too.
I feel horrible about that. I both betrayed him and misled him.
And there is an even more painful coda to that terrible night : the night a few days later when I cheerfully and blithely told my college friends that I was leaving for two years or so and they would not see me for that long, long time.
I honestly did not see why that would be a big deal. Then, as now, I have a really hard time believing that people actual enjoy my presence and that it matters to them whether I am around or not.
Part of that is low self-esteem. But another part is my deep down need for autonomy. A part of me doesn’t want any kind of attachment or obligation, and so it’s easiest to think that nobody really needs me around.
I don’t like that about myself. It’s irresponsible. I have a strong effect on those I am close to and I need to take responsibility for that.
II can still remember how shocked and bummed out my friends were when I gave them the news. Their crushed expressions haunt me to this day.
And there I was, acting like it was no big deal, totally in denial of my needs and my responsibilities and my connections.
That has to have made it much, much worse for them.
Later I found out that my friend group fell apart without me. I had been both the organizer and the spark plug that initiated getting together and without my leadership, they didn’t have what it took to stay together.
I was the lynchpin and the leader and I just walked away like it was nothing.
It took me many years and a total mental and physical collapse that lasted for almost half a year for me to even realize how badly my parents had fucked me over.
Ya wanna know why your bright little boy failed to launch, Mom and Dad?
It’s because you clipped my fucking wings.
And then you had the nerve to bug me to get a job when I was deep into depression by then and employment was simple not in the cards for me.
“I don’t understand. Why isn’t he automatically doing what makes things best for US?”
A boomer mystery for the ages.
More after the break.
Which wound is worse?
It’s hard to say.
The Wound from being raped as a toddler is certainly deeper and older and it hurts in such a deep and intimate way that it’s hard to imagine that anything could be as bad or worse for me than that.
I mean, I was only 4 years old. I hadn’t even completed primary brain growth yet. That means it hurt me on a fundamental neurological level.
It fucked up my brain, is what I am saying.
But being taken out of university by my selfish Boomer parents when I was just beginning to blossom as a person hurt me in a deep and terrible way as well.
A way which was made far worse by my inability to even recognize that they had done me wrong. Even when I was at my sickest, when I was dehydrated and malnourished and unable to keep any food down and I could do nothing but lie on the couch and watch TV all day, I did not think of it as my parents’ fault.
That’s how programmed I was to just do what I was told and to do so cheerfully and without even a hint of hesitation or reluctance.
Honestly, I was so glad to get any sort of attention or input from them that of course I would do what they said.
Most of the time they didn’t notice me at all. I might as well have been wallpaper.
So in many ways, these two tragedies bookended my adult life. One happened when I was 4, the other when I was 21.
Who knows what would have happened had I strenuously objected to my parents’ plans to take me out of school? My mother said they would only do it if we agreed to it, but maybe my father would have said, “Well we’re doing it anyway, like it or not. ”
I still would have been better off, though, for having stood up for myself and my right to have my rights and welfare be a priority in the lives of those close to me.
Maybe I would have had to break with my parents entirely and go on welfare in Charlottetown and learned to live on my own there.
And the sad thing is, I still would have been much better off if that happened. Instead, I went back to my childhood home and lost my fucking mind and rotted in place as I completely lost all life momentum and became the shell of a person typing these words to you today and that’s who I became after pulling myself out of being far, far worse off.
But it’s still not enough for me to make a satisfactory life for myself.
I’ve got a lot of repair work to do.
But I am going to make it, god dammit.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.
Oh shit…. and P.S., the lady from Assisted Living is coming tomorrow at 10 am and I don’t have the energy to clean up first.
Oh well. She wanted to see my living conditions. And I live in filth.