my parents never wanted to know me -- realizing they would have erased me if I died

[belenen]

icon: "tenebrous (a shadowy orange-light photo of my face, looking down, with an achingly sad expression)"possible tw/cn for childhood neglect and abuse

Comments

[anonymous]

This is powerful. I can feel the unresolved pain in your words and i can relate so hard. I'm so sorry you were not nurtured in your childhood and hope you can heal from that one day. Sending you love.

[belenen]

thank you

[omnia_mutantur]

I am sorry for your pain.

The presents thing slayed me when I was growing up, I wanted to something that seemed like someone was paying attention so badly. Hell, I started drinking and smoking because I wanted someone to notice me, to tell me to stop.

Your entry made me think of this poem/monologue. http://creativetime.org/programs/archive/1990/TheBlackSheep/BlackSheep.htm

[belenen]

thank you for the empathy. I'm sorry that you know what this feels like.

[daphnep]

Oh, this one hurts.

It's clear though that your current self well knows how to say the words that your child self needed/needs to hear. The "you can do it" for writing, the praise and encouragement and reassurance. Somehow you figured it out on your own, and you've so long outgrown what they were capable of providing you.

But I'm learning too how ungrateful it is, to be with someone who doesn't say thank you, so that detail, and thinking of a child who never is thanked...that is a particular kind of neglect,

[belenen]

thank you. I spent my entire childhood repressing my pain because I wouldn't have been able to survive it, which means unfortunately now it comes up in bits and pieces and demands processing. I think I have become a very self-assured person and I don't need that approval or encouragement or attention from my parents now, but I still feel pain for the child who did need it.

[rachel2205]

I'm so sorry.

[belenen]

thank you

[flowerpower08]

I’m so sorry for your pain.

[belenen]

thank you