going home

Sometimes it's hard to go home. No. It is always hard to go home. The home I come from is filled with a thick and baleful tension. (To me, at least. But even Steven, who also gets an inside peek, agrees.) Everything seems to be sooo hard when it really doesn't have to be. My parents exchange bitter sarcasm between one another that stings beyond all stings. And strangely, they seem immune to such exchanges. Drama, fights and "moods" are common.

They drink every day. More than one drink. God only knows how much exactly. And to my surprise, I was just still shocked, after all these years, to see all the bottles in their weekly recycling bin.

I want better for them. But sadly (even though I believe divorce should be a last resort) I feel they would do and be better, for themselves as individuals, if they were separated. Maybe not divorced but just had a period of separation.

I feel like I psychologically digress every time I visit them. I probably do. I struggle to get back to everything I've worked so hard for when we return to home. I'll be damned if my children grow up like I did. I'm going to do everything in my power to be better and do better.

Not that my childhood was awful and I was irreparably harmed; Jeannette Walls goes to show how resillient children, in fact, are....
It's just it was far from perfect, and while I will not compare it to the rest of the world's upbringing, it had its flaws.

I always tire of saying this, but I am truly surprised I am here today. Alive. With all of you. Sometimes I wonder if I was meant to be. But then, as anyone believes in any version of the divine, I must have been meant to be here after all. And I look at my husband and our family and I believe it.

I look back upon my childhood and all my feelings, experience, and thoughts, and realize that all along, the problem wasn't entirely me. I'm not denying ownership; a lot of it was me. But had I been brought up in a different environment, I would have been a much different person. Do you have any idea how huge that is? For the longest time, I have thought it was all my fault.

And my visits back further support that I was, in fact, a normal adolescent.

Steven and I were actually watching some home movies from the late 80s and he turned to me and said, "You were a perfectly normal, happy, silly acting pre-teen." And I saw what he saw. And that's when the lightbulb went off that I didn't cause whatever happened while I was growing up. My parents dictated the family environment and dynamics and I responded.

We all grow.
Move on.
Learn better.
And hopefully do better.