my childhood spat back the monster that you see

[cupcake_goth]

Therapy seems to be getting harder. Which is good, because that means we're getting to the blackberry-like roots of some of my issues. A few years ago if you'd told me I was a perfectionist with control issues, I would have laughed in your face. (The first time I mentioned this revelation to the Stroppy One, he said, "You didn't realize this about yourself because you were comparing yourself to me. Of course you didn't think you were a perfectionist with control issues". Which, okay, he's got a point.)

My parents loved/still love me, and did the best they could. That doesn't change the fact that, as per yesterday's very helpful, very hard therapy session, I didn't really have a childhood after about age five. That I spent the rest of my "childhood" and adolescence being an adult and being a "good kid" so I wasn't a bother and was worthy of attention. That I parented up. Therapy was so hard yesterday that I tapped out of work for a few hours so I could cry everything out of my system.

So. Circling back to that Fall Out Boy lyric that's the title of this post? I've been thinking of getting it as a tattoo for a few years. Last night, while telling the Stroppy One about some of the things from therapy, I mentioned that the urge to get that tattoo increases with every week. He sighed, then said the unexpected of "Where do you think you'll place it?" Unexpected because he's been against me getting this tattoo since I thought of it, but even he sees the cathartic value of it for me. My Council of Advisors are split on if I should get it, but I'm giving it serious thought.

Hey, did you know that sometimes, if you've had the Brain Raccoons since childhood, you fall into thinking perfectionism is a substitution for hope? Wow did that statement hit me between the eyes. My therapist is awesome, but doesn't pull any punches.

Comments

[kore]

did you know that sometimes, if you've had the Brain Raccoons since childhood, you fall into thinking perfectionism is a substitution for hope?

OUCH. Jaysus.

[cupcake_goth]

RIGHT? I really wonder if that's true for a lot of AFAB GenX-ers. A whoooooooole lot of us took on major responsibilities when we were way too young.

I also wonder if this is an issue for AMAB GenX-ers. I doubt it; all the boys I hung out with didn't feel the urge to take on the types of responsibilities that we girls did.

[kore]

....omg yeah. Actually both my husband N i had to take on caring for suicidal mothers when fathers were absent, but he did it bc he's terribly kind and I don't think it's typically at all usual for men. my mom was one of those mothers who wanted a dolly/prop/companion/therapist/sister/BFF and was sadly just not that good at being a mother, for all that she was a v sweet and interesting (and highly neurotic) person.

[kore]

(plz excues typing, had a shingles shot yest in left arm and hsould be lying down!)

[sirriamnis]

Ugh, get out of my head. And yes, I am finding a lot of AFAB women our age are dealing with similar things.

[icprncs]

I was not, strictly speaking, parentified in the sense of having to manage my parent[1]; but my mother was (due to being the child of an alcoholic) and I learned many of my coping and relationship skills from her. And I *was* expected to be largely self-sufficient and emotionally regulated from a very young age, with a deeply embedded fear of becoming a "problem," which has created SO MANY of the issues and trauma in my life. I mostly suppressed the childhood incident that was the fulcrum for that; the day my therapist helped unearth it, I cried for HOURS.

So yeah, you are decidedly not an outlier.

[1] The risk of this was likely one of the reasons my mother divorced my father and I have long been grateful that she made that decision. I would be even more dysfunctional if I'd had to manage my own substance-use-disordered father like she did.

[staxxy]

Most of our generation took on way-too-large responsibilities waaay too early. I know I did.

I feel like our parents were too busy figuring out how to be better adults in the modern world than those who came before them (who, honestly, were largely automatons who did their best to follow in the footsteps of their progenitors). There just wasn't enough focus left over to put into raising children better than they had been raised, plus they had Dr Spock telling them to be very hands off and let us raise ourselves (trust and believe that I have days worth of rants on the subject of Dr Spock).

It still sucked then and it sucks now that we are facing all of those things in therapy.

[danabren]

Oh.

Oh.

Ah, shit.

[m_cobweb]

Some of us also have it in our heads that being perfect will protect us, and um, well.

I could see the "hope" thing...

[chicating]

Or, at least, Room for Improvement

Also agreeing with the iceprincess...

[chicating]

just because my mother escaped a lot of things, doesn't mean she didn't bring stuff with her.
I was also something of a...disability docent, in the sense of fielding questions about What's Wrong With Me from the time I was seven or eight. Not quite like *raising* anyone, clearly, but clearly a flip of the paradigm where the little girl asks questions and the wiser adult answers...