I know there is no 'normal' but I am starting to think that I have had quite a lot of different traumatic events in my life and all before I hit 33. I am trying to 'readjust' my normal level because I think what I think is normal is completely wrong. Until recently I thought I had a fairly normal childhood.
In a nut shell:
I was born in a large city, then at 6 weeks send to live in the countryside with my grandparents. Sent between grandparents/ parents a few times until my dad left when I was 3 and I was sent back to my GPs full time. Lovely people but had loads of their own kids so I was mainly raised by different aunts, one was 14 who apparently minded me a lot. Then it wasn't that I didn't feel like I didn't fit in, I was told several time I did not fully belong there like 'could you get out of the real family photo and we will get one with you after'. Which really hurt.
I would see my mother 3/4 times a year which was confusing, I would be so happy to see her then it was very painful when she left. My grandparents wanted her to move back to our home town. It was a good time economically there was no reason she wouldn't have got work there.
Aged 12 she moved me back in with her in the city over 500 miles from everything I knew. We lived with my 'step dad'. That when things really went down hill. They both drank very heavily. My mother would get pissed drunk every night and I would sometimes need to clean up after her or get her to bed before we got in trouble.
There was some P.A. from her and some S.A. from him but there was so much emotional abuse, neglect, control, manipulation. It was an egg shells situation. She blamed me for her drinking and said if I had not been born she would have had a 'real family'. That I needed to watch what she drank and then got in trouble the next morning for letting her get drunk. And for not helping her enough with her dieting.
Started giving me alcohol aged 13. I remember getting drunk with my mother in a random hotel room when he kicked us out one night. I remember her buying me full bottles of spirits.
I was allowed out to night clubs from 14 and 'dated' men in their 30s. Lost my virginity through S.A. and was also s.a by someone in power when I was at university.
At 16 my mother was kicked out of the house and it was just me and my step dad. That was a weird time. Like he would take me all day drinking and encourage me to drink more. But then if I got food at the end of the night he would say 'you're not going to eat all that are you' that he lives of very little food. I will end up 'a fat useless b*tch like my mother'.
He used to sort of play fight like getting me into a headlock and ruffing my hair. When he once did it to my mother she screamed a lot, but he never actually hurt us.
He locked me out of the house on a snowy night because I was a few minutes late - because of public transport. I was never once allowed a friend over and he used to embarrass me if he drove me to school.
After a few months of that I made the decision to move back to my grandparents. About a year later my mother followed. After my grandparents visited her, she got so pissed she fell through a glass table and ended up in hospital for a few days
Grief started with my grandfather died when I was 19, he was only 68. It continued through my 20 with the death of my gran, my aunt and my 'step dad'. Also during that time my mother was hospitalised due to chronic illness (which I now know was due to alcohol) she was in intensive care for 6 weeks and I was told to prepare myself.
I then started drinking far too much myself in my late 20s. Checked myself into a MH hospital in 2020 and have been sober since.
Bar a handful of slips, the last one in 2024 when I was suffering sever and I mean terrifying post natal depression. I have since then been going to a therapist and starting to understand all this. My internal dialogue is/was very very mean.
I had 4 miscarriages, I often thought it was punishment for having an early termination when I was 16. That was a sad experience, my boyfriend at the time was mid 20s and went on a 'lads holiday' he was too pissed to even answer the phone when I was wavering on doing it. I think I called 20+ times. So I went and did it alone and never spoke about it again to anyone.
Now my mother is very very unwell again due to alcohol. I have been picking up the pieces of her life for my whole life but I recently started to distance myself. Which put her drinking into crisis mode. I wrote on here about a boundary I put in place with her before Christmas.
Is this a normal amount of things to go through?
I ask because I always minimised everything or had it minimised for me. Not that I want this to be my life and be a victim but I think I need to acknowledge maybe it was a lot. And that while I was just doing the best I could I now need to unlearn a lot.
AIBU to think that is is probably more than most people normally go though?
YABU - That was a normal enough version of childhood
YANBU - That was not a normal enough version of childhood.