- 2025-12-21
- A sad thing about getting older is the way my family is deteriorated, and I have played a part in this
- When I was a kid/teenager, it was the only world I knew, I had no reference class. When I went to uni, I started to realise that my family had some issues. And as the next ~10 years went by, I drove myself more and more mad about these issues.
- I became a worse family member. I cut out my dad, I engaged much less with everyone, I was nasty to my mum, I had her go to family therapy with me
- This was all developmentally necessary, I suppose. But I feel like Iβm at a new vantage point now, a more dare I say adult perspective, and all of that feels very teenager-coded in retrospect
- My poor mum! She witnessed her son grow more distant, pissed off, impatient, scornful. I was once the most important thing in her life, and I became a real source of pain
- My poor dad! He lost us all when they split up, consigned to only see me and my sister at the weekend, a frequency that was bound to cause a gradually growing rift between us, especially as my sense of grievance grew
- No more! I am very lucky to have two parents, imperfect as all parents are. They love me a lot. They did the best they could with the resources they had. I donβt expect perfection to them, or anything close to it. Theyβll be dead in 3 decades or less, theyβve already lost a huge amount and suffered a huge amount. Am I going to be nasty to them because they didnβt do everything according to my specifications?
- This is partly born from doing my mythopoesis project, getting more in touch with how lucky I have been, and how my default narrative of grievance serves no one. Getting a more empathetic, detached view of their lives, the resources they had (and the resources that didnβt exist for them)