posted on Aug, 7 2019 @ 08:58 AM
There’s a lot I agree with in the OP, for sure.
Regarding people who grew up f*cked, I was certainly one of them and it came to a head in my 20’s. I won’t go into details of my childhood but
essentially, I was raised by people who had no business being parents, who had zero coping mechanisms. Thankfully, I got to see what “normal” was
with my friend’s families, the few who actually let their kid hang out with a downtown, welfare kid whose stepdad was in the police log every 6
months.
I pushed a lot of it away by focusing on music and making a career of that, however, my inability to face life head-on was lacking severely. I barely
remember my 20’s due to drinking through the majority of it. Around my late 20’s I was pretty bad off, mentally and physically. I knew full well
that I was well on my way to alcoholism and didn’t give a sh!t.
I had a manager at work who was the only person who wouldn’t cower to my temper or mindf*cking (I was a master manipulator for YEARS) who sat me
down one day after a fairly violent outburst where I almost really hurt several people by smashing a large plate into a wall from 15ft away. “What
the f*ck is wrong with you?” was all that was needed to be asked and 20 minutes later I was at a bookstore checking out some new age-y self help
books.
The timeline of that isn’t in order, the plate incident happened when I was 23 and I didn’t start kicking my own ass until my late 20’s, but
some 13 years later, I see how that manager kicked off my personal responsibility.
Once I held the right people accountable for their actions and in-actions during my childhood, it cleared a lot off my plate. I no longer cared about
putting the blame on them while I resisted life like a bitch. After that it was down to finding out how to fit myself into a competitive world where I
had zero interest in the competition itself. What it came down to was “If you don’t do A, you can’t have B.”, and then figuring out how to
make a 30 year old child accept the fact that time has run out on living the childhood dream of being a rockstar because life has caught up, bills
need to be paid and I had to respect the fact that by that point, I was in a long term, successful relationship with an amazing person who carried me
for nearly years while I was a mess.
I’m friends on social media with many people I grew up with, who are still blaming everyone else for their failures. They definitely got handed the
sh!t end of the stick as well, but are doubling down on “This is how I was raised so f*ck it”.
Kids like me and those aforementioned people I grew up with certainly didn’t get coddled or admired for barely participating, we were held to the
flame regardless of winning or losing. If we did something good, it wouldn’t go noticed, if we did something bad, it was just another reason to be
yelled at or beaten. I’m just now letting go of the fact that I’ll never impress my father, who himself never achieved anything “great” and is
little more than a child in a 62 year old’s body.
Self-awareness is at the root of a lot of this stuff. Staying stuck in your head that your this or that when neither is true because it’s all
bullish!t and not realizing it.
I suppose a lot would be different if someone told me as a teen, “if you don’t push yourself in directions you don’t want to go, your life will
suck because this, this and that”
Whether that were a parent or a school counselor, it would have helped. Alas, I was a scrubby downtown kid and the overwhelming majority of teachers
and school officials in my town deemed us as already failures. As much as people want to push racial divide (which I’ve seen plenty in action with
my own eyes to know it’s an issue) economic divide is another serious issue. I grew up in a VERY white city in Maine, but because I was poor, I was
often looked down upon by the middle class adults around me. That’s something I have no problem saying as a level-headed 36 year old who is no
longer angry at the world. Between getting beaten by my mother’s boyfriends, having dirty diapers rubbed in my face while people laughed, my parents
telling me I was a piece of sh!t daily and successful adults unrelated to me looking down on me because my parents were poor, I came out thinking
exactly that, I was a piece of sh!t who deserved to be miserable in life.
Sorry for the diatribe/tangent, just trying to offer some insight to what it’s like growing up without the participation awards or recognition for
doing nothing.