DREAMS OF A LOST MOONCHILD

It’s not terribly often I make real personal entries here, but this one I’ve been thinking about for a while, because it does actually have something to do with my writing.

It might sound really crazy to some but I actually never went to see a therapist, I never saw the need. I mean I don’t want to rip open the boxes that I locked and stacked away in the back of my mind. And I am of the opinion that you should not forgive people in order to move on, of course not! Point one not all things can or should be forgiven, and point two no one can tell you to forgive something but yourself.

I am adamantly against that whole ‘forgive and move past’, because you can absolutely move past things without forgiving or forgetting. It’s a question of placing blame where it belongs, and leave it there. See that is the hardest part, not to become bitter, but to know that someone did this to you, perhaps that someone is yourself – but this happened, and you simply cannot change the past, so what happened… happened. But you can change the future, and make sure this does not happen again.

Learn to love yourself a little more, and if you can’t – know that the hard truths, and lies you tell yourself, is inside your armor, we can’t see it. The rest of the world don’t think as lowly of you as you do, and sometimes kindness is just kindness, given because someone else thinks you deserve it, even if you don’t think so yourself. So when I say love yourself a little more, I do mean; ‘learn to listen’. Because as I said, even if you don’t love you, others might. And they will never understand why you don’t think you deserve it.

So no you should not forgive just to move on, but you need to leave it buried where it belongs.

And really that is what I wanted to talk about, you see I’ve been seeing a lot of shit online lately about trauma bonding, and I work as a therapist myself, so what I am about to say isn’t just something i ‘feel like’.

I will never forgive my parents for what they did to me, or rather what they didn’t do. Because they abandoned me when I was just a baby, and I struggled with understanding that all my life. And I might still struggle with understanding it, and I will never ever forgive it, because it can’t be forgiven. But I also don’t want any excuses, and so I never did ask them why. My dad died in 2004 and we didn’t really talk about this, and when we did he gave me some bullshit that was probably real in his head, but useless to me. I loved my dad dearly, but we had a very dysfunctional relationship to say the least, and he gave growth to some sides of me when I was just a teenager, that shouldn’t have been cultivated at all. And in so many ways he just pulled me down into his vortex of despair, making me just as miserable and unwilling to feel as he was.

I must admit I am largely unwilling to tell my story for real, because I learned many years ago to keep my mouth shut with all this, mostly because it sounds so fucking insane, that people think I am making it up. I am not, and it’s not more than a couple of years ago we did some exercise at work, and we told about our childhood and where we were from, and I decided to tell the truth because I could hear I was not alone, coming from the sort of background I do.

And this colleague said ‘I didn’t know it was a competition’ – I never forgot that remark, and I felt that shame all over again.

Not shame of where I’m from, but shame because I thought I could share some of it, and shame because I knew better. I have been hitting myself over the head with this ever since. And I feel like they all think I made it up to be special or something. And I truly wish I had just told a lie, mimicking normalcy which I have done so many times before.

And I know my siblings have similar stories… and really it was my siblings I wanted to talk about. Not my siblings as individuals, but really just that I am not tight at all with any of my siblings, and they aren’t tight with each other either. We are virtually strangers that share genetics. Sometimes we see each other like perhaps once every year, but no more than that.

And that is because we did not grow tighter, or stronger from trauma. Quite the opposite actually, it’s not like we ‘drifted apart’ because it’s like two different lives somehow. Like our childhood and adulthood are two different entities.

We are still the same people, sure – but not.

Trauma experienced with others doesn’t mean you create a bond. Sometimes it does, but often it just doesn’t.

Sometimes we pretend, sometimes we pose for photos like this. Now these are me and two of my siblings, I have two siblings who are not in this photo, and the reason that I decided on editing this photo to all hell – is because the two siblings not in this photo, doesn’t really share the trauma the three of us do.

One sister is too young, she was born when I was 17, and while she didn’t exactly escape this family without her own scars, and to some extent she does share them with us, but mostly in a way where we were trying to protect her, or be her parent. This is a whole different dysfunctional Pandora’s box of its own – and I would never downplay her trauma. But still it’s not shared in the same way.

My other sister is on my dad’s side, and she has her own can of worms, because let’s just say her family is almost as fucked as mine. And she carries her own shit, but it is not shared with us.

Me, my brother and my sister in that photo, we share something that is unique, like if infection was unique, but you know what I mean. And we dealt with our personal bag of shit-chips in each our own way.

My sister is so focused on normalcy that it’s actually laughable, she is still trying to have ‘that life’ like in magazines and tv series. Putting herself in crazy debt to do so, and she is straight up unable to emotionally embrace her children. Unlike my other siblings who have very questionable parenting skills, this sister, she gives her kids crazy shit, like the most expensive stuff – but she can’t parent. And that manifests in the way that they are insufferable brats – ngl. I hate being with her and the kids because they are just such bastards, to her and to everyone around them, because she spent a life giving them the material stuff she wish she had – but forgets there is more to parenting than giving your kids nice stuff. Personally I think it’s so important to her to come off as perfect, that she is the one who broke the social stigma of her parents (her dad and my dad isn’t the same). But perfect isn’t your fucking sneakers, or the car you drive – and she bends to the will of her kids, and expects everyone else to do so too, mostly because she don’t want anyone to know she can’t control them at all.

Behind closed doors she scream and blame, threaten and belittle them – that is her extend of parenting. Like she don’t understand why this new iphone doesn’t make them happy and perfect, because that is all she wanted – to be like the others, to have all that nice stuff. My sister has always been very materialistic, and peace be with it – and please don’t think I don’t like her, because I do, she’s my baby sister for fucks sake. But that doesn’t mean I agree with how she parent her children, or how she acts towards us or our mother.

I have a degree in child development, but no one cares to listen, and I know it all comes down to me being a weirdo, and chaotic. Seriously I know they don’t think my advice is valid because I suck at cleaning my house. what the actual fuck.

My brother is perhaps the one who took our childhood the hardest, and unlike me – both my siblings had professional help actually. My brother just didn’t want it, and he became very self loathing and introvert… like he just stopped speaking and interacting. He got an early pension due to trauma, and I think it’s basically the worst thing they could have done to him, this means he doesn’t have to interact outside the internet. He ordered his fucking groseries online so he didn’t have to leave his apartment.

He has three kids, and he spent years and years nagging and bitching about their mother, and how they are brought up, but he never did shit about it. When they came to visit, he fucking sent like a 17 year old to bed at eight because he wanted time to himself. It’s mad, he cannot mentalise at all, he is incapable of caring for anything or anyone but himself, and I would dare to say he has some strong sociopathic tendencies.

He only dates women from other countries, and he has been living with this one chick for some years down in another part of Europe. And just to give you an example, he told a story of how he was making himself a sandwich, and one of her kids (she has two i think), came and asked for a sandwich too, and he was completely baffled by this, and told this preschooler to make their own.

He did not think it logic to make the kids food at the same time he made himself food?

And why didn’t he do that… well because he always had to fend for himself, I might be his older sister by 4 years, but I didn’t care for him. Again, I was a teenanger when I met my siblings, so all those years before that, he has been alone.

And that is what happens sometimes, you know my sister is struggling to be super normal, my brother is struggling to have a family but can’t connect on a human level.

And me… what about me.

Well I write, I write my pain – and while I never did write a story that is ‘me’ I would never do a self plug like that. I write about themes, feelings and concepts that I know too well, and have the characters in my stories live it.

Heart Shaped Tattoos is about being forgotten, inconsequential and unwanted.

And some of the other stories in the series is about self sacrifice, self loathing, not living up to expectations, being different, and trusting the wrong people.

And that is the best form of therapy there is for me. The characters are fictional, the scenarios are fictional but the feelings are very real. And that is why I don’t care about sales, or if it’s even ever published. Because what these stories does, are to work my way through different parts of trauma, and loss. I write these stories for me, and when I share them it’s actually just a bonus that makes me feel good and accomplished – but in the whole, they did actually serve their purpose because I got to write out my pain on paper.

Thing is it’s okay to not forgive, what my mom did not only fucked up her kids, but their kids too. My mom never mothered, and so none of my siblings know what that is like, I was the only one who went into foster care, and therefore have another childhood to some extent than they did. And one thing it did give me, was a sense of parenting, values and ethics – something my siblings lack being brought up solely by the system.

And my mom’s biggest crime according to me, is never acknowledging it. If you touch down on something in regards to our childhood, she will gaslight the living shit out of you. I think she is not ready to feel that shame and dealing with the damage she dealt, and I don’t think she will ever do that. So never will any of us get an apology that is felt, not that I know why we’d want one. My sister is big on the blame game, and she will force our mom to apologize for past stuff, but we all know she doesn’t mean it, she is only apologizing because it makes my sister shut up. And that apology is actually worth less than nothing.