Did anyone grow up in a really isolated area?

[Sarahpaula]

I was born in a city in England. When I was five my parents divorced,
and my mother moved with me and my brother to a really isolated part of Ireland.

The house was not even in a village, it was not even on a main road between villages. You have to drive one mile outside of a tiny village, and then turn and drive down another two miles down a tiny bog road.

We were so isolated. I couldn't even walk to the shop.

I have had many arguments with her about this over the years. She said "well I could drive, I could drive to the shops". I said "me and my brother couldn't drive, we were totally trapped there".

I feel like isolation is abuse. I went to visit her this week, went to the house, and I feel total rage at her making me live in that isolated area all of my childhood. My brother is angry about it too.

Anyone else grow up in an isolated area and feel anger about it?

Sounds like it is a lot more complex than just living remotely, which for lots of people Inc children is fine.

Sounds like you have focused the fallout from parents divorce, either abusive or mentally unwell mother, lack of parental support such as lifts etc and lack of friendships due to being ostracised for your country of birth. They are far bigger things to tackle than living remotely.

Hope you can work through these feelings, it may be a good way to get closure.

I grew up in the middle of nowhere. Absolutely hated it, very lonely. Only bus service was the school bus and by the time I was 14/15 I'd hitchhike or cycle everywhere. I missed out on the whole early teenage socialisation of popping to each other's houses after school and hanging out at the park that my friends did. The few teenagers who lived in the nearby big houses, were on a different planet - privately educated, horses, tennis, polo etc. I'd serve them at the pub where I worked and they didn't really like me because I was anti fox hunting and managed to attract a fair few of 'their' Argentinian polo players.
Used to go to the pub in town at 15 on a Friday night and not have any way of getting home so would get a lift from older male friends, or crash at someone's house. In hindsight being so isolated led to some pretty dodgy behaviour and there were many occasions where, if I'd have lived a reachable distance away, I'd have made my excuses and left!
Left home the second I turned 18. Moving to a flat in village with shops, a bank and a bus service felt like living in a sprawling metropolis.
I loved living in a city when I worked abroad, but DH prefers the countryside so we've compromised.
We live in a rural village now, but DC have loads of friends nearby, they can pop to the shop we can walk to the pub and there is a half hourly bus service into town. I'd never inflict isolation on my kids. My parents were obsessed with having a detached house before they bred but it's have much rather lived somewhere small but with plenty happening around me!

Growing up in a city where there are stabbings, rapes, murders and drug dealers is so much better for the developing brain isn't it Jeez if this kind of stuff is being said to kids who live in rural areas, they are going to be a nervous wreck in adulthood.

It doesnt have to be two extremes. A nice middle ground would suit most people. Maybe OP you wouldn't have felt lonely if you were in a city, or maybe it would have been worse watching people go on their daily lives. Who knows, your DM sounds abusive whether in the countryside or packed town centre. Sorry it was so rubbish OP try to find peace with your past, it wasn't your fault.

Thank you @maddening I appreciate it

Thank you @CoronaBollox ,

The abuse wasn't the location, it was the actions of your mother. You've linked the two in your mind, which is clearly why you feel the need to live in a city now.

There are plenty of children trapped in abusive homes in cities, unseen due to the anonymity of overcrowding.

FWIW, I would have adored living somewhere like that as a teenager - though without the abusive mother. I grew up in a village, but many friends lived on farms three or four miles out and had to cycle that distance to attend school, link to the odd bus service etc.

I grew up in the middle of nowhere and as a result had an absolutely idyllic childhood. Complete unlimited freedom. The surrounding countryside and farmland were my playground, and as such I have a deep love for the outdoors and nature.
If I wanted to go somewhere, my parents had to drive me (or my friends would get their parents to bring them to mine), but they were happy to do so. I imagine it would have been a bit isolating if you were just expected to stay at home all the time.

@Bumfuzzled

You are blaming the wrong thing. It’s your mother who was neglectful and abusive, not the location of where you lived. I’m sure being so rural didn’t help, but I suspect she would have been neglectful and abusive wherever you lived. Sorry you had such a shit childhood

This! I have a friend who grew up in the middle of a city. When she came home from school she wasn't allowed out of the house. She had to watch her her friends play in the street through a window. Her mother was a narcissist and destroyed my friend's childhood.

So nothing to do with living rural.

We live rurally. No bus route. My dcs cycle everywhere. It's not unusual for them to cycle 10 miles to see their friends. I also drive them to all their activities. They have a bloody Enid Blyton childhood. Have ponies and live in the most amazing countryside in the world. It certainly isn't abusive!!

Ass PPs have alluded to it's your mother that's the problem not where you lived.

[quote Byrtie]@SurreyHillsGirl

While I'm glad you enjoyed your childhood, do you think it contributed to your growing up into an absolute arsehole?[/quote]
Exactly this. What a complete bitch she is to tell a woman whose childhood made her and her brother attempt suicide that she is a drama queen.

My parents moved abroad when I was 9, to a rural area an hour's drive from town or my school. So during school holidays I never saw anyone except my parents - but given lots of books and the coast to explore, I didn't mind too much. Was very glad to go to boarding school for secondary, though.

Most of my family live in rural America, many in areas where the nearest store is an hour's drive. I loved it as a kid, but my aunts and uncles would drive people and from 14 a cousin could drive too. Visiting recently, fewer people in the houses, I did find it claustrophobic - especially as no-one will walk or cycle to nearby houses for fear of getting run over or shot. Even the ones in a 'city' - sprawling suburb - have no sidewalks so until driving age are totally dependent on parents or school buses to leave the house, which I found terrifying (the traffic is a genuine fear. I don't believe the fear of being shot is valid in their areas, but the parents all think it is).

My childhood home is isolated. No shop within walking distance and terrible public transport.
I would have preferred to live in a village. It creeped me out if I was at home on my own at night. Literally no one would hear you scream.
However it wasn't abuse. It didn't help that it wasn't a happy place for me for a while but that has resolved itself (too outing you explain) and now it's one of my happiest places. I feel grounded there, I learnt resilience there.
However much I love it I have decided not to impose such an isolated home on my children. They will visit relatives often enough anyway. It felt like I was constantly wanting a lift somewhere as a teenager and I hated being stuck there.

"I’ve helped the children maintain friendships (Im sure most parents do this, don’t they?)..."

My parents didn't, @HulaHoop2012. They had their passions - gardening for both of them, plus local history for dad - I'm not even sure they noticed how lonely I was, and I doubt they'd have done anything about it if they were.

When I told mum - in tears - about the bullying that was going on, she dismissed me and brushed it off ("Sticks and stones may hurt your bones but words can never harm you"), and told me to ignore it. This didn't work, and the bullying went on into senior school, and didn't stop until I went to sixth form college at 16 - and she didn't once ask if things were getting any better, nor did she notice me getting withdrawn and clinically depressed. There's no way she'd have bothered to facilitate friendships for me.

However, I do take the point that a number of posters have made on here, that it was the actions (or inaction) of my parents that led to me being so lonely and isolated, rather than the simple fact of living in a small, isolated village - though that did contribute, because we were complete outsiders, not speaking the local accent, and hadn't known our schoolmates from the cradle, as the rest of them had.

And there are things that I look back at, and wish I'd been able to give my sons - we always lived in fairly urban areas, so running wild on the hillside, damming up streams and making dens in the bracken weren't something they got to do, and I did. But we wouldn't have moved to the countryside without making sure that it worked as well for the boys as it did for dh and me - and that is the big difference between my parents and us.

The abusive mother was compounded by the isolation. The OP had no friends or adults she could turn to. Had they been living in a city, it might have been easier for the OP to visit school friends or meet other people as a teenager without needing her mother's input. Having some kind and normal people in her life, even in the form of school friends' parents she saw occasionally, might have made a big difference to her feelings of loneliness and social isolation.

Perhaps you could have phrased it better OP because you've effectively told anyone who is bringing their dc up rurally that you think they are brain damaging or abusing their dc.

Some of us are having to do that because we can't afford city living or the air pollution there causes asthma to flare so badly you end up in frequent hospital trips or because of work. So you've made some less certain of us feel really shit. Maybe we want better for our dc buut cant?

You've only acknowledged your own experience as valid but have made some sweeping really horrible accusations about rural living being abuse. Can you not see how shit you have made some feel?

@PippyShortsocks no I don't see that.

Every thread in AIBU is a woman talking about her own life experience on some topic. Are you saying - if she talks about her own experience in any area of her life, she should feel bad about making other women feel shit?

No one would talk about anything then

@Minimumstandard

The abusive mother was compounded by the isolation. The OP had no friends or adults she could turn to. Had they been living in a city, it might have been easier for the OP to visit school friends or meet other people as a teenager without needing her mother's input. Having some kind and normal people in her life, even in the form of school friends' parents she saw occasionally, might have made a big difference to her feelings of loneliness and social isolation.

A woman (or man) like that would just forbid any going out. Mine did. On the rare occasions she'd let something slide, I'd inevitably fuck it up somehow, like being seen with a friend or telling somebody's Mum about being hit, and then she'd clamp down again.

The only 'freedom I had was to and from school, strictly timed and punished if I were late back/prevented from leaving early. Had the nearest high school not decided to close to new entrants the previous summer, I'd have had a whole 3 minutes to myself, as it was 4 doors down. Instead, I had a luxurious 25 minutes each way.

Guess what I did the moment an older lad asked me out, taking in account that he had a car? I didn't even particularly like him that much, but he liked me and that was enough.

I'm never telling DD1 that's what happened, though. Or him, for that matter, even though we split up 27 years ago.

My friends live literally in the middle of nowhere, it's 5 miles to the main road where you can catch a bus 3 times a week! But my friend (the mum) doesn't work outside the home (it's a horse livery so she does that) and is her kids chauffeur, even picking the eldest up at 1am from the city 30 miles away.

Isolated doesn't mean cut off bug parents need to take on a lot of transport

OP, I resisted my DH's sustained attempts to move us from a city to a small town simply because I hated small town life so very, very much as a youngster. I would never choose an isolated existence in an extremely remote place and if it suddenly became attractive to me, I would certainly not impose it on my dc.

We live in a pretty rural area for a bit when I was a teenager. Not in a village about aile and a half outside. But it did have a regular of unreliable and expensive bus service. There was one tiny shop in the village which wasn't open loads. And as it was far away from where my parents worked (both worked around an hour or more away in different places) we were in on our own a lot. I felt quite isolated. Stuff like there nor being anywhere to pop out for bits of food and needing a lift to the bus stop were a chore. There were no street lights so walking in the dark wasn't really an option. It was very hilly too so cycling was a no too.

I do still wonder today what my parents were thinking. I don't think it was intentionally selfish. But they have form for not thinking things through or communicating well so therfore making bad choices. So I really feel empathy for you.

I don't think op is saying the countryside is abusive in and of its self. But isolating children and doing nothing to facilitate social contact is neglectful of not abuse. If a husband insisted on this for his wife we'd all be calling it out as abuse. So shame on the twats saying op is being a drama queen. You obviously have no experience of anything like this or any fucking empathy to imagine how it was.

@Plussizejumpsuit oh thank you very much. A kind word really does mean a lot. Yes living in the country as a child, really does mean that you are dependant on how much a parent is willing to drive you places.

Thank you! A few kind words really did mean something to me. I send you a hug

YANBU to feel angry about it. It was your childhood and only you and your brother know what it was like. If you were bored and lonely I suppose it was a lot harder, if not impossible, to go and see a friend or pop out to a shop and get some independence so I can only imagine that being isolated with a mother who shouted at you and didn't do much to help you can't have been good so no, you are definitely not being unreasonable to feel the way you do.

@Sarahpaula glad it helped. I've had experiences on here of people just really not getting it too. I've had a bit of counselling as I realised it effected my self esteem. As I felt I wasn't good enough to be considered. I'd recommend this for you too. Also I'm not sure on your relationship with your mum now but some sting boundaries seem important perhap?

I grew up very rural, loved it. Have spent a few years living in the city after university but it wasn’t for me and I wanted my children to have a similar childhood to mine. We live very rurally, primary and secondary schools very small but my adult and teen children all happy with that childhood. YABVU, your experience and personality is not everyone’s.

I wouldn't have liked it OP and I love getting out in the countryside. My friends lived nearby and I'm often sad that my 9yo DD can't go to her friends' houses easily - we aren't in the sticks at all, but she goes to a school a little further away as she didn't want to change schools when we move. I have been telling her recently that if she wants to see friends more, she will have to accept a school move and new friends!