23 out of 25 of these fit strongly and one of them fits to a degree.
Another thing that happened in my house growing up was a lack of privacy. My parents wouldn't allow me or my brother to close the doors to our bedrooms.
When I was visiting my mother on Wednesday, she brought out a box she had found while cleaning. In it were a card that my great-aunt had sent me, some collector coins, dried flowers, and a still-sealed card that I had written to a person who died in 1980 who had touched my troubled life. I don't know what the card says inside (as I wrote it in 1980), but there was a message to the guy I wrote it for on the envelope. I think I intended to visit Australia someday (I live in the United States) and leave it at his grave, but that never happened.
My mother stood there gawping at my words on the envelope. I took it from her and put it back in the box. I said, "it's a memorial, and it's private."
My parents would always ask me for my thoughts and then tell me I was wrong.
I started sinking into a depression after visiting my mother last Wednesday. She's always very invasive, always has been. Even when I was doing my insulin injection, I had gone to the living room to do it rather than doing it in the dining room right in front of everyone. She came into the living room and stood there staring at me, which made me uncomfortable as hell. It's not that I care that people know I use insulin, and it's not like anything more than a bit of my abdomen was exposed, but I still felt like I was being scrutinized. I almost sarcastically explained that I was holding an insulin pen, not a rig for shooting up heroin, but instead, I gave her a pointed look and said "I'm just doing my thing here. I'll be out in a minute."
My parents always expressed disapproval of everything about me. Then they wondered why, as a middle-aged adult, I can still be crushed by the odious opinions of strangers on the Internet and why I'm an abject failure of a human being.
~cie~
Sigh.
ReplyDeleteSome of this is familiar. Too familiar.
Privacy? Not a happening thing when I grew up. And wanting it was seen as a sign that I/we wanted to do 'bad' things.
Exactly! My parents thought that if I wanted to close my door I must be getting high. Like they couldn't have smelled it if I lit up a joint, and like I couldn't have taken pills when I was in the bathroom? It boggles the mind.
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