It is a hard thing to come to the realization that you never really had any loving parents growing up and still don't. I KNOW my dad loved me, he just loved drinking more. He was a pretty severe alcoholic and died a few years ago just when we were starting to reconnect. It was heartbreaking. I KNOW my mother loves me but has always been too consumed her own life (being married to an alcoholic, trying to raise three young girls on her own, getting remarried and acting like it was finally "her time" even though we were only 12, 10 and 8 years old, now being completely codependent on all of my sister's difficulties and her husband's Alzheimers. I understand a lot of that and don't blamer her. I really do think she was doing the best she could at the time. I don't think she was raised with very much love and compassion. She is from a Russian family who settled in Kansas on a farm when my grandfather was a child. I remember my grandfather (whom she was closer to than her mother) being very grumpy, staunch and hardly ever smiling and laughing. Certainly not loving. My grandmother was loving but not overly and not enough to overshadow the serious, hardworking, old school feeling of the farm. When my mother's family moved to the city, she changed high schools and from what I understand was pretty popular - on the cheer team, etc. Maybe she was a mean girl in high school like my sister. My sister never had to be wrong in high school or college. She was the popular girl all boys wanted to date and all girls wanted to hang out with. She was so mean. She would say the cruelest things - making fun of overweight people, peoples, clothes, hair, acne, mental disabilities - just to get a laugh from her friends. No doubt she is quick witted and I could see why others laughed but it was so mean spirited and may times directed at me throughout my whole childhood. Maybe my mom was like that. Maybe that is why they "understand" each other. Once my sister grew up, she still has always thought she is the shit - fake boobs, botox, fake eyelashes, fancy cars, etc. But now she is a divorced mother of 2 special needs kids who was living her life in questionable way. I don't think she can handle that her image is broken, that everyone can see the real her, that she does't have this perfect, rich, fabulous life that she always made fun of me for not having. My mom can not just be thankful for what she has and be happy. She is always the first one to point out the "it could be worse", but she doesn't live by it herself. It is really actually pretty sad. Neither one of them are truly happy with the way their life turned out but can't see that not only did they cause a lot of it, but it is all in your perspective. Everyone has their own shit to deal with. It is how you choose to look at it that determines your happiness. It all comes from the inside, not externally. They do not see that. It is always everyone's else's fault. I am trying to break that cycle with the way I handle things and the relationship I have with my children. I do struggle in certain areas (especially my weekend drinking) and am always trying to do better, but my children know how much I love them and think I am a nice person....so at least that is an improvement.
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