There are two sides to every coin. Even when we can recognize the damage done by other people it doesn’t negate the good moments. This is especially true for children, whose continued existence is at the mercy of their guardian(s), and who essentially must repress the bad things in order to survive contact with their abuser who also happens to be their “protector”.
Even when we can begin to see our parents for who they truly were, and to put into context the years of neglect, abuse, and gaslighting, it’s in our DNA to love them. For some reason, nature has imbued us with the instinct to love our parents, and though it seems impossible, we can somehow maintain that love alongside fear, anger, disdain, and hurt.
It feels like betrayal to question whether our parents hurt us, and whether they were responsible for their actions. As children we accepted that the things happening to us and around us were our fault. We accepted that when someone told us they knew what was best for us, that they had our best interests at heart, they were telling the truth. We may have been taught to believe that we were responsible for the state of our life, the state of our parents’ lives, but the truth is that we were only children.
Adults are responsible for their own lives, and also for the lives of their children.
Children are not responsible for their own lives, and they are certainly not responsible for adults.
I can’t help but think, worry, and have feelings about my parents. I can’t help that I care about their emotional state. I was raised to believe that their feelings mattered and mine did not. I was taught to subdue any thoughts, emotions, or needs of my own and I was trained to be attuned to my mother’s dangerous, inconstant mental state. I was taught that if my mother was unhappy, my father would explicitly blame me and tell me that if my mother left us (as she threatened to do, to get her way) then he would be the victim and I would be the abuser, for not managing her needs well enough.
I can see the truth of my childhood, it is becoming clearer every day. I am sure that is why I (we) are more centered, more optimistic about the future. It is powerful to realize the truth about things. It is life-changing.
But there seems to be no realization, no memory, that can sway me from the love I feel for these parents.
I often have to remind myself that the love I feel for them only goes one way. That they do not know how to love me unconditionally, that they do not care about me as a person, that they can only view me as an accessory to their lives and not as someone who has her own life. I have to remind myself that when confronted with the truth of our abuse, my father waved it away as “not a big enough deal” and then made himself out to be the victim. I have to remind myself that he would rather call us a liar than accept that we have valid memories, feelings, and grievances. I remind myself that he is angry we are in therapy because he is afraid we will tattle on him.
Essentially, he hurts us (though he has less opportunities to do so since we cut off contact — which makes him even more livid and hurtful). But I am not a child anymore and I understand that he is an adult, he is responsible for his own life. He is responsible for his own thoughts, feelings, and needs. I am not responsible for those anymore. It makes him very angry and he hasn’t accepted it yet, though I have.
It doesn’t matter, though. None of it matters. I love him because he is my dad. He gave us lots of love, care, and attention. It wasn’t perfect, but it was real. And I love my mother. She may have done real damage to our psyche, she may have neglected us, played mind games on us, and even worse, but she is my mother and I love her.
Logic somehow fails here.
