One of the most difficult things I’ve ever done was choose to cut off my biological family. Though I’m still in contact with two siblings and briefly reconnected with a single cousin (who stopped responding and fell silent at some point last year–or maybe the year prior, I really don’t remember), I haven’t exchanged more than pleasantries with any one else in years (barring one moment of connection with an uncle I thought would be cooler about everything than he eventually was and my multiple attempts to extend a hand to my parents in the hope that they’d be able to grow enough for me to build some kind of relationship with them). Only a few still try to keep in contact and while I absolutely could do more to stay in contact with my wider family, that’s not really something I want. I cut them all off, not just my parents. I would tell pretty much anyone that my primary reason for doing so was because I didn’t want to come between my parents and their siblings, or drive any kind of wedge into the family at large, but those are things I’m currently discussing with my therapist as a result of how reflexively I say them and how they all center the well-being of my parents and family rather than admit the truth, which is that I can’t just ignore the fact that they all bore witness to the abuses of my childhood in some capacity and chose to do nothing. Regardless of the reason behind it, I still made the choice to potentially never speak to any of them ever again. I didn’t do it as directly as I did with my parents and I didn’t go as nuclear as I did with my brother, but none of them know where I live and I haven’t responded to any of their attempts to draw information out of me despite knowing exactly what all that would mean. I did, after all, set a rule in place for what it would take to reestablish contact with any of them, like I did with my parents and pretty much anyone I’ve ever cut contact with. And like my parents and most of the other people I’ve cut contact with, I knew from the outset that it was incredibly unlikely that my rule would ever be satisfied.
Continue readingNeglect
Emotional Processing And Pain I Could Once Ignore
Content Warnings for discussion of childhood trauma (specifically neglect and abuse at the hands of my parents and brother).
I wish yesterday’s good mood had lasted a bit longer [it did eventually pick back up again, but today did not help much]. I made it through an entire day with it intact, but it did not survive a night of poor sleep and an unfocused day of finding myself browsing the internet because I needed something more engaging than my work to keep me awake. At least nothing bad has happened. I came by this poor mood honestly. It is a melancholy of my own making. A sadness of my own. Pure, homegrown sorrow. It was, of course, influenced by outside sources, as all such things are. It’s not like I want to think about my miserable childhood. I’ve gotten pretty good at not thinking about it, most of the time, but there’s little I can do in the face of something that will push past the blanket I’ve thrown over that portion of my mind and draw bits of my past out into the light. I’m only half to blame for it this time, though. Sure, I chose to watch last week’s John Oliver deep dive about homeschooling knowing that I was going to get myself caught up in the misery of the past, but I wasn’t exactly expecting it to be so focused on how homeschooling is used by some parents to avoid scrutiny while they abuse or neglect their children. Nor was I expecting an incredibly brief conversation with my friend about her trip to her local county fair to bring up oddly strong memories of the fairs I went to ask a child that eventually revealed to me that all the happiest memories I have of my childhood are from when I was alone or at least away from my entire biological family. But they did and now I’m trying to figure out if I have something I need to work through here or if I need to allow myself to be sad for a while since that’s a pretty reasonable reaction to my reflections and minor realization.
Continue readingAbdication and Abadonment in Earthbound: Why Do Adults Expect Children To Save The World?
I started replaying Earthbound recently. The game has been released in the collection of Super Nintendo games included in a Nintendo Online subscription and easy access to this old favorite has overcome the bright shine and unexplored appeal of newer games. It has been a long time since I last played the game, perhaps a decade, though I watched a friend play it a mere six years ago so the story is still fresh in my mind. After all, how could you forget a tale of a child who leaves home to make new friends and overcome a great evil that all of the adults in their life either fail to acknowledge or are actively serving? Forget the basic appeal of a JRPG, who could not be moved by a compelling story about overcoming a malignant evil with the power of love, strength born of friendship, and the sheer tenacity of heroes?
Continue readingGrowing Up Home Schooled
I’ve been watching a lot of my older friends (and a few of my peers) on social media post about homeschooling and trying to figure out how to get their child to engage with at-home lessons during this pandemic. There are so many tools out there for them to use: websites to crowdsource lesson plans, video tools for teaching lessons to multiple people (crowdsourcing education or stuff schools have set up so teachers can have lessons with their students without anyone needing to leave home), websites with all kinds of neat learning tools, and so much more. Some people are even choosing to forego standard education and instead focus on life lessons like cooking, home maintenance, simple car repair, baking, and the sort of things that schools no longer teach children that are still essential life skills. It’s amazing watching the world shift before my eyes.