I dont know what to make of this really. my parents are the type of people that others say are "lovely" "kind" "funny" etc. and they actually are all these things and i see it in the way they interact with others and fleetingly how they on occasion interact with me. i have a deep rooted anger and sadness about my family and i cant work out if it is all on ME. do i need to get a grip and start realising i cause the distance or was it them? hard, honest advice and views is what i want so if i am the arsehole here i want to hear that.
i keep thinking of being left on my own as a child. my parents didnt do anything one to one with me, i was always a side show to their life or my younger siblings life. one summer they left me for 2 weeks alone in the house (at 15), when they had taken my sibling on a course. i was the difficult child, asked why i couldnt just go and read a magazine, why did i always want attention etc etc. my dad in particular used to hit me (not to the point where i had to go to hospital or anything like that), but i would have bruises and my head would hurt from hair pulling. sometimes if they were very angry they would destroy my bedroom, throw things everywhere and smash it up. there were no locks on the bathroom door and my dad would come in when he thought i had been in the bath too long.
these are a few things that happened and i keep getting nightmares about it - all this time later! they are so nice, they do care about me and my sibling and they are good people who each had their own troubled childhoods. i think i was actually a difficult child, i had anxiety and would never go to bed even at age 8! so it cant have been easy. but i feel so angry when i think of these things. i feel sad. i feel like a fraud when the happy childhood is branded around, one full of privilege. as an adult, some of the hurt continues - last xmas, 2 days before xmas day i was in tears over being made redundant. my mum said on the phone "are we all allowed to enjoy christmas now, can you just forget about it?" .., after my dad telling me i would have to sell my house if i lost my job as he wouldnt be helping me if i was out of work for a month (fine, im an adult, but hurtful nonetheless).
is this normal stuff and was i such a terror that actually, my parents did what they had to do? why am i thinking of all this now, so many years later?