Learning 40 year-old lessons

By the time I turned nineteen, my family had broken apart due to mental illness, depression, alcoholism, and abuse. My sister and I lived through all the highs and lows of it, all the uncertainties and fears of our first sixteen years. Our parents were always the cause, directly and indirectly. I saw it all clearly later, but while you’re steeped inside such a covertly toxic family bubble, you don’t see it objectively – it’s just your daily life, warped but also safely camouflaged inside enough conventional patterns to let you get through your grocery shopping without turning heads in Safeway. Nobody around you would want to scratch away at the accepted veneer of daily life, but as a sensitive kid, you’re certain that everyone’s eyes are on you. My first eighteen years were lived in an almost constant state of paranoia and self-consciousness.

As I came into my own independence around nineteen, I’d learned to take pride in how I’d survived and escaped my broken family. Any life lessons or earned wisdom was a badge of pride; I was living independently, barely getting by, but determined to survive in my new freedom.

I’d managed to keep contact with my parents, each in their respective hospitals in their final years. I balanced my desperate sense of responsibility and obligation to them as if it were my birthright. It was a desperate angle to keep dying relationships alive. Adult children of alcoholics tend to take responsibility for their parents and to manage situations that other kids wouldn’t know about. As a kid, when I saw other kids laughing and being happy, I thought they were silly, frivolous, or just oblivious to life’s truths. I knew how things really were, I was certain.

Back then, I probably needed more happiness, humour, and laughter in my life. I was too serious deep down inside. You walk through school carrying an invisible extra weight on your shoulders, and draining a pain deep in your chest. It’s just the circumstantial grief that you’re going through. Sometimes it turns into self-pity or self-loathing. When you’re younger, you can’t envision a brighter future. You’re just conditioned by recent experiences. A sad, bleak present is pretty effective at muting out brighter dreams. You just keep powering through each day.

I used to see healthy-looking families in public, smiling parents with their blissed-out toddlers, and I’d feel joy and compassion for them: those babies would probably never wonder if their parents loved them or noticed them. They would know that they were seen.

As a young man, I used to wear my emotional scars like a messed up badge of honour. Me and my sister had survived our fucked-up childhood and the chaos and uncertainty of a violent alcoholic household. I’d justifiably hold my head up proudly with an inner toughness that couldn’t be seen on the outside of my five foot seven frame. I didn’t grow up into a big and tall man like my Dad, but I did grow into my own man after all.

Now at the age of 60, I’m starting to acknowledge that my inner loner – that familiar voice inside that kept me company and consoled me since I was old enough to talk to myself – has recently begun to worry that maybe I’m not social enough anymore. Babies are still beautiful and seeing loving families still warms my heart, but I now think that maybe I need to find a way to reconnect to other people in a more regular way.

I’ve always had my family, my beloved wife, and a few good friends. Maybe I now regret not having had my own kids. Too late to do anything about that now. I still believe that I made the right lif choice for me.

It’s just an old fear of being left alone or being abandoned. It’s taken me forty years to understand how bent I was on the inside. I still kind of am, but it’s okay. Everyone gets bent or bruised by life in some way.