Parents on a Continuum

Time to time I am called upon, in explaining my perspective to the people around me who do not know me, or who have only known me for a year or more – or less, christ – what exactly my childhood was like. Some people are lucky enough to see me around my parents and my sister, figure I get along with them just fine and that’s that bacon. Uni students however, who sit still long enough for me to regale and bore them, will wind up hearing a very, very superficial surface skim of my history and my relationships with my parents. They’re not good, and I know that amongst my friends I sit squarely in the middle of a spectrum. On one end, the parents who advanced their station, loved their children, listened to them, connected – somewhat – with them emotionally and did least harm. Then there is the other side, where there’s abuse both passive and active, violence, fear, isolation, emotional anguish and homelessness.

I look at what happened to me in my life, and was just tonight struck by how fucked up it is that I like my parents. And how fucked up it is that I am in the middle of a spectrum. That my parents, for all that happened, kind of did the best job they could.

I like my mum and my dad and my sister. I want them in my life. I can’t treat them the way I do other adults; I have to baby them a little around concepts I don’t think they can understand or handle; I love them. But I have a hard time arguing against the positions forwarded when people talk about Baby Boomers that Believe X, because, well, yeah. My dad’s said that stuff. My dad’s kinda a shitty racist. When people who hold his ideas are gone, chances are the world will be better.

But he is my dad. And I do love him. Not unthinkingly, I guess.

1 Comment

  1. It’s a toughie.

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