ARGHHHHHHHH I want a new life!!!!!

[KateTush]

I’m going through something atm where I wish I could just erase my identity and move far, far away. I’m sick of my family (narcissistic parent, narcissist enabler parent, dysfunctional siblings, drama, relentless misery and guilt). I wish I’d had a normal (not perfect) family to grow up in. I want to go back to a time before I was born and be allocated different parents. I wish I hadn’t been bullied. I wish I hadn’t thought that I was the problem for so long.

I’ve been in therapy for months and sometimes it brings out this awful, bitter, resentment at all the shit I’ve had to live with and through. I’m close to packing it in because for £260 a month I could cheer myself up with shopping trips, massages and restaurant meals.

I just badly needed to get this off my chest. I can’t be the only person to have felt like this?! I’m not normally as bad but I feel this so, so strongly today.

does this resonate with anyone else? Like a grief for what you’ll never be able to have? I feel fucking awful.

Yes I went through the same stuff. I started to get really irrationally bitter/jealous when I heard stories about people who's parents kept up a relationship with them. I did therapy for a bit, then realised it was better therapy to treat myself as you say, instead.

Literally don't give a shit if I go bankrupt, if I feel like trying a new craft or evening class or trip to a new city, I just get my card out and buy it. This has been the only way I've gotten my sanity back!

Thanks for your reply @Thehonestybox it’s so incredibly comforting to hear your experience. Makes me feel like less of an alien. I think I’m heading the same way. I want to try pottery. And watercolour. I’m so fucking sick of thinking about all the reasons I’m not like other people and never will be.

it’s totally human -but there is a saying that to be able to build your future you have to abandon all hope of a better past.

It should be better known because there is nothing truer. It’s not easy but work on accepting it as a truth for a start.

Maybe this is a sign that the therapy has worked - like you've processed some stuff and are ready for a new phase. I think I realised that my therapy had been effective when I got 'bored' about talking about myself... I was no longer frightened or ashamed to tell my story if that makes sense, i just felt like i was bored of it now.

I like it @Luredbyapomegranate

It’s pretty stark. Maybe that’s a part of why I like it. The naval gazing antidote.

I just want to metaphorically burn my past to ashes.

@Keepitonthedownlow That’s interesting. I’ve had a few flashes of that boredom. I hate the going round in circles-ness of it!

I feel the same way, KateTush.
I come from a family of 4 siblings, parents who both stayed married until my dad died in his 70s.
My parents didn't love each other or even like each other. They didn't have friends and my dad had practically no involvement with our lives. My older siblings didn't get on with each other and 2 of them bullied me as a child and an adult (I'm NC with them now).
All but one of my grandparents died before I was 2 and the GM that was alive lived several hours away and had no real relationship with us; ditto cousins and aunties and uncles.

I feel like history is repeating - my DH's parents are both dead, so my DC only have my mum, and she lives hours away and doesn't really have a relationship with them or her other grandchildren. She has never had any interest in "family" and has at least partly to blame for the divisions in our family.

I feel like I missed out on the sort of family life other people have - the Sunday dinners, celebrations, even just every day family chats. Even my wedding day was spoilt because my family couldn't let me have the limelight.
I can put what I feel I missed out on to one side, but what makes me really sad is that my children have missed out on grandparents and extended family too, and that breaks my heart.

My 18 year old gets really upset when I talk about my childhood; at least she has parents who love each other, and put her and her brother front and centre of everything.

I really like therapy (the navel gazy kind, loathe CBT) and find it very useful. But it’s a dip-in thing for me, y’know? 8 sessions, after that I’m broke and getting less out of it and not yet happier, but have a bit more understanding. And I find over the following few months things work through in my head a bit and I get a bit happier or things feel a bit more manageable. Then maybe I go back a couple of years later for another couple of months.

@Alsoplayspiccolo we were just like that! As in, one GM and some aunts etc who lived miles and miles away. There was no escape from it.

You have given your DC something that cannot be bought for any price. You should be proud of that.

I'm feeling a variation of this myself, today, yes.

I want a body that works and doesn't terrify me a few times a week.

I want not to have experienced the loss and bereavements I did as a young person that caused severe psychological distress that took years to overcome.

There's no going back. So what now?

I’m so fucking sick of thinking about all the reasons I’m not like other people and never will be.

Wow, I felt this.

@WashableVelvet i suppose the door is always open to go back. But right now I’m fed up of it. Like you say time is a factor in it all. I hope.