Feeling bad for wishing I hadn't had my upbringing.

[imverycold]

May not be the best place to post so apologies in advance.

My childhood has always been romanticised and I feel especially after the recent death of my father. My mum talks about it a lot like it was perfect and it mAkes me feel bad for how my life turned out but...

I'm the youngest of 5 siblings and we were quite poor for a lot of my life. We had no hot water too, no central heating and my parents argued constantly. Huge screaming rows. all my siblings grew up and left home (quite a big age gap) and I feel I got "left behind" and after some quite serious family trauma, my parents became very distant from me and I went slightly off the rails. Did OK at school but then got pregnant young and struggled a lot with mental health issues. Looking back I now know both my parents had MH issues which is probably why we were living as we were.

My mum is a wonderful mum though. She has bailed me out financially countless times and she looks after my DC's whenever I need which is wonderful. She's a lovely woman just all round.

Then on the other hand is my DP's mum. DP's parents very very wealthy and he had everything he could of wanted as a child plus more. 5 family holidays abroad each year, family payed his tuition fees, bought him a brand new car on his 18th, the works. He also had a lot of support from them education wise (being made to revise etc, help with homework which I didn't get)
But his mum is HORRIBLE. she shouts at him constantly and nothing is ever good enough. But DP has achieved amazing things. Things I couldn't of dreamed of and my life has pretty much resigned to me only being useful at looking after children.

So I feel tied. I feel sad about my childhood sometimes but sometimes I feel like I'm being mean. At least my mum was nice but I honestly at one point in my life (teen years) would of given ANYTHING to have hot water. To have been able to invite my friends round and the house be lovely and tidy and clean rather than looking like a hoarders house.

It's such a strange feeling. Anyone else have this?

Ah, I haven’t had this, so I can’t totally empathise, but your post hit home for me because I am the daughter of parents like you and your DH. My Dad grew up in poverty, really, and my Mum went to boarding school and had lots of money but little warmth. It’s a strange, jarring experience when the two worlds collide - they throw each other into relief in sometimes unexpected ways. I have family with kids at exclusive schools and family living homeless in a tent. Yanbu at all to feel the way you do and to reflect on what you feel about it - a therapist might help you do it more productively? But you are obviously doing really well, you can see good and bad in both experiences and that’s reality for almost every type of childhood to some extent.
I don’t know if you have kids or not but you mentioned looking after children. Don’t belittle what you do if that’s the case - you sound like a lovely, kind, thoughtful person who has some big experiences and wisdom to share. Looking after children is important!