Anger towards family over past

[Anon202012]

I don’t want to give too many details as I’ll most probably will feel okay tomorrow and embarrassed at what I’ve written! I get like this sometimes but then get over it the next day. I might get some comments that will make me feel better today and hopefully i can wake up feeling better tomorrow.

If you’re still with me here goes....I feel angry at my family, in particular my siblings. My parents were not the best but to be honest after years of therapy I realise yes they could have been better, but it’s just the way they were so couldn’t help themselves. I lived a very sheltered life in the sense wasn’t allowed to have friends, I never had a birthday party and just used to come back from school n just be at home. This didn’t bother me as it was my normal. I studied hard and looked forward to university as my siblings had gone and “escaped” and from their conversations to each other seemed to have a fantastic life very different to what home life was.

Cutting a long story short it wasn’t the same for me as I stood out from everyone at uni - bad clothes, no confidence and just kind of weird - Remember i led a sheltered life so had no idea about anything and made an idiot of myself in lots of social situations e.g. never went to a bar/pub/Restarant so imagine first time going with people I didn’t know. I lost confidence very quickly and just isolated myself which is to an extent even now but life is better now than it was.

I just feel angry at my siblings as they had each other (born within a very short time) so they did the whole university thing together and had each other to lean on plus lots of cousins their age but I had no one so went alone to uni. I feel they could have helped me, I had no life experience, skills etc, I had no idea how to groom myself or wear makeup (siblings did all this and learnt from our cousins whose parents were decent). I just wish they had just helped me with basic things and I wouldn’t have felt out of place. I remember asking my sister for some help with putting in makeup (Pre YouTube days obviously) and the two of them just made fun of me and laughed in my face and called me nasty words which I won’t post. Looking back at pictures It makes me really sad how I looked. I had zero confidence. When I look at my daughter I tell her everyday I love you and you’re beautiful. I just had no support and basically learnt everything myself even the most basic things your parents are supposed to teach their kids. Even now when I see husbands family the siblings help each other like doing hairstyles for weddings and going shopping together etc. I wish things could have been different for me from the start and I wouldn’t be here right now, I would be in a happier place doing all the things I want and not feeling like I don’t belong or deserve to be happy.

Wow Feels good to let it all out! I know might be too much but I needed to let it out!

Please be kind.

Seize the day. Get a bit more social now (post CV lockdown obviously). You can’t change the past but you can change the future. Sounds like you are doing everything right for your daughter. And treat your husbands siblings like yours and ignore you own if they are still cliquey.

Thanks Louise, yes you’re right but I often end up thinking (after a glass of wine!) WHAT IF? like what if things had been different what would life had been like.

Gosh my post is long isn’t it! Brief outline for those who want to read but too long:

I lived a very sheltered life. Had older siblings who had same life but with the help of each other and cousins bettered themselves, got confident and escaped the emotional abuse my parents put us through. I feel resentful at siblings that they could have helped me overcome the same issues, they knew I had no one. I was always treated like a joke when I tried to ask for help. I get the sense they didn’t want me to get better they probably felt good that I was miserable from what their responses were when I as a young person asked for advice or help from them. Lots of examples that still stick with me and I think how absolutely awful to treat a vulnerable lost child that I was in that way. Sorry again for rambling on!

I find it best not to dwell on the WHATIFS. They might have helped you. You might have been a different person, met a different man. That man may have been awful. You may never have had kids and if you had they wouldn’t be the daughter you have now. The grass may have been greener but it could’ve been a lot worse.

Your post wasn’t rambling, it was really clear and I’m not surprised you still feel angry at your family and are grieving for the childhood you should have had. Your daughter is really lucky to have you giving her the opposite of what you had. There’s a great thread on Mumsnet about experiences like these that I’ve found really helpful, ‘stately homes’ www.mumsnet.com/Talk/relationships/3786141-But-we-took-you-to-Stately-Homes-January-2020-onwards?pg=35&order=

@LouiseTrees yes I often think I wouldn’t have the same daughter, a bit like the butterfly effect where one thing different drastically changes life.

@unicorn79 thank you for the link I will definitely read properly tomorrow.

I know I should get on with my life but I have so many regrets. My main one being a really lovely guy, handsome, kind and caring showed interest in me in my early 20’s and as I had no confidence and according to my sister at the time “anyone who is interested in you must be so desperate” I didn’t respond to him and just thought he must be weird liking me. I’m tearing up like an idiot writing this!

Yes I’m married but not happy, I do realise now I attracted the type of man I thought I deserved so I’m married to a man whose cold, distant and unloving. Yes I knew he was like this before I married him and yes I chose to have a child with him but that was because I felt/still feel I don’t deserve more.

I don’t have a family to call back on, I do have casual friends that I text or chat to but I don’t open up to them.

fall back on not call

I could have wrote this post myself.

You know what I did? I cut them all off. My husband had to teach me a-z in cleaning and all sorts, social boundaries, the lot. It still brings me so much shame.

Distance yourself away, and focus on your own little family. Use this as power that you know you will be a better mother to your daughter than your mother was to you, and your sister.

Don't dwell. I dwelled first a long time, now I use the energy to raise my own dd the best I can!

What if thinking will cripple you.
I had the mother from hell, I’ve been NC for many years and I dont waste my time or energy looking back, look forward, be glad you have a lovely girl of your own and if your marriage is miserable, go it alone.
Make a life for you and your girl.

@alwaysmoody sorry you had to go through this too. I’m glad you’re happier now and your husband sounds lovely!

@JKScot4 thank you for your advice. Yes definitely need to think of long term when lockdown ends.

Thank you everyone for your replies means a lot to me. I’m going to try and get some sleep now. Stay safe and have a lovely weekend x

OP, alot of us didn't have help at college.

My father didn't want to know me at all.
My mother was barely able to look after herself.
My brother the same.

No one looked after me my whole life. When I went away to college I did everything by myself. Travelled up and down long bus rides by myself.

Alot of us don't have any support at all from our family. I know it is difficult. I have learned to rely on myself

Your upbringing was not ideal OP but grieving for the childhood you should have had as one poster put it is a bit fucking dramatic. Over the course of my life I’ve come across women who were in state care from childhood and adolescence onwards, because of backgrounds marred by abuse that would, by comparison, make yours seem close to idyllic. It is alright to feel sad about any aspect of your past and work through that (with the help of a counsellor if needs be) but elevating the circumstances you’ve described to the level of a modern day Greek tragedy is neither beneficial or realistic.

I think you need to put this in perspective. You were socially awkward and cut off from others for a time in your youth, while at the same time socially privileged enough to have a third level education. You were not living in a care home having been removed from the sink estate because your step father wouldn’t keep his hands off you and abusing narcotics by fifteen then pushing a pram as a single mother by your seventeenth birthday. Look at your good fortune in equal measure to your misfortunes. There is a negative leaning imbalance in the way you’re perceiving your history in your own head.

@LouiseCollina

Really?!

That was just spiteful and uncalled for. We don't say to happy people oh you can't be happy, people have got it better than you. It makes zero difference to how OP feels that other people had it worse. Grieving for the childhood you didn't have isn't at all dramatic. Have some bloody empathy.

I’ve name changed to respond to you properly @Anon202012, as I could not ignore your post as I identify so much with it.

I had a difficult childhood with a very non-conformist mother who was keen to make sure I didn’t fit in with the crowd and an emotionally abusive stepfather. I was academically bright and studied hard so I could escape via university. But my upbringing left me socially awkward, anxious and with zero self esteem. I cringe at photos of myself from that time. I want to scream at the girl in the photo to get her hair cut and coloured, put on proper make up and shop somewhere else. I did not fit in and found making friends impossible. I was deeply depressed during first year and considered suicide. I was on a very academic and sought after course at a top uni but I couldn’t stay due to poor mental health so I dropped out and was ridiculed by my family.

Things did improve and I later switched to something much more ‘middle of the road’ after a few years of working and some therapy. I now regret that I was unable to cope with uni the first time around because I could have had a great career. I had such limited ideas about what I could do and it makes me so sad now. It is so hard not to think ‘what if’ but I know that if I had grown up feeling safe, loved and permitted to conform I could have been so much happier, more fulfilled and successful.
‘Grieving for the childhood I did not have’ is precisely how a psychologist explained my first university experience to me. It is normal, ignore anyone who tries to belittle your feelings like this.
Can you access professional help? The happiest period of my life was quite honestly the few years I took antidepressants and had counselling. I don’t know whether antidepressants were just a band aid or a mask for how I was feeling but they let me take action and change things in my life that were intolerable. It sounds like your relationship might be one of those things?