(no subject)
When my mom and stepfather purchased a house to move into together, I lost a great deal of my history. All of my childhood memorabilia. And now, it seems, also the photo albums of my childhood (which I suspected for a long time).
Ultimately, all of that is just an artifact of the past and no longer matters, but it's the carelessness that bothers me. The entire "effect" of my mother and stepfather becoming a couple reshaped my family dynamic, and it was a wake-up call that I was unable to see but felt the ramifications of for years.
Now, with my own child, I see it all very clearly. It's rough. I try not to feel anger, and I succeed most of the time, but right now I feel depressed about it. Not so much the wake-up call, but that carelessness. The carelessness that had me drowning in self-hate under the almost constant pressure of passive-aggressive behaviour; of controlling behaviour; of judgments; of a lack of empathy for the child whose life was altered, whose most significant parent couldn't actually see her. Misrepresentations.
I wasn't perfect either; I made assumptions too. The difference is that I was the child, and I was trying to protect myself (even when my mother gaslighted me with victim behaviour repeatedly). That's what defensiveness is unless we can learn a new way: an unconscious kind of self-protection.
I'm trying very hard to follow that new path, which necessitates recognizing that my relationship with my family is now an entirely different entity - it's not the loss of it that is saddening, but the loss of what I thought I had (and wanted to have) - and it's very challenging to avoid falling into the emotional trap of the things that trigger my defensiveness because family is so skilled at rigging the traps. Heck, even my mother's tone of voice alone can trigger me.
So I'm working on it, but, again, it's still sad confronting both the change in dynamic, but also the carelessness that shaped it at the same time.