I’ve got a lot of screwed up relationships in my past. I’ve been responsible for messing up a lot of friendships over the years with my issues. I’ve got a failed marriage that I can accept equal responsibility for. I have ridiculously complicated relationships with my siblings. And I have parents who, as I see it, made some pretty spectacular failures in their parenting.
I will say that nobody is perfect, that not everything they did was bad, and all that, that my mother has an actual illness blah blah blah BUT they are still responsible for their actions, and those actions had some very serious consequences for me. This blog is starting to provide a bit of therapy for me but clearly its not the right place to be airing all the details. I need counselling for that. Expensive counselling. Bugger.
One of the things that makes me angry is that my family seem to honestly believe that I am in the wrong for not forgiving my mother for all of her toxic behaviour over the years. She’s mentally ill, I should put it behind me. But it doesn’t erase the look of disgust on my mother’s face as she told me “god you look ugly when you cry” and “It’s no wonder you can’t get a boyfriend when you’re so fat”. At 16. Perhaps she was right, perhaps her actions were driven by her illness, but she still said those words and they still had an effect on an emotionally vulnerable teenager. It doesn’t change the fact that my father sat back and watched or ignored her destructive behaviour. And that was one tiny tiny part of what went on. I am still scarred by these things, they hurt me and they changed me and my parents were the adults. They were the ones that should have protected me, not hurt me. But I have never heard any regret or apology. Its always about blame. I’m the judgemental one, I’m the unforgiving one, I’m the mentally unstable one. One day I’d like to hear not excuses but acceptance. I think counselling is going to have to help me deal with the fact that I’ll never get understanding and apology from them. I can dream, but I think it would be better for me to let go. And I hope that if they can never accept their fault or apologise that my family just stay away, because I’ve got enough to deal with on my own.
It’s different with my marriage. We are both adults and we are equally responsible for what we did to each other. I’d like one day to acknowledge what I did wrong and apologise, but he’s not ready to hear that yet – he just wants to pretend our relationship never existed, but it did, and we were happy once, even if those people are long gone.
Anyway, the point of this ramble is about saying sorry. I’d like to hear it one day. I’d like to say it to some people. I’d like to say that I’m sorry I expected a whole load of people out there to fix my problems. Preferably after I’ve managed to afford a whole load of counselling.
Strangely at the moment though I’m feeling quite positive. I’m not sure how much sense this rant would make to other people but it makes sense to me and helps to solidify some of the things that like to race round my head. Another baby step in my long long journey to health.
Continue reading Saying Sorry
