It's complicated.
Yes, I've lead a very chaotic life and that has affected those around me a lot and I feel really bad about the way in which I've affected certain people, but...........ultimately my parents 'need to answer', for why as an 11 year old I was drinking, smoking, smoking weed, doing poppers, sniffing glue and carving '
my name is dead' in to my arm.
It's only through therapy that I've really realised just how 'not normal' it is for a child of that age to be doing that, like really not the behaviour an 11 year old child normally displays. Essentially I can see the evidence shows that children basically don't do that unless they've been abused. Whatever was going on in my head it wasn't really my fault and the people around me had the responsibility to ensure that as a child I had an environment that
wouldn't end up making be behave like that. I used to think that I was some sort of fraud and dismiss things by saying I thought it was cool and that's why I was doing it. Taking a step back and looking on things as an adult I realise that even if that IS what was going on then what the fuck happened that made me need to reach for that as an identity?
It's difficult because I have a shit memory and I don't remember a lot of my childhood, especially before the age of about 10ish. Certainly there were some clearly identifiable issues in the way I was raised that I can say have affected my psyche negatively, but by the same token I don't think I was ever seriously physically abused or sexually abused. If I have been then it is fully repressed and I don't remember it whatsoever at the moment.
I'm in communication with both parents and the relationships are superficially 'OK' in some ways but all the time there's this undercurrent of me trying to workout wtf happened to make me be in that relatively extreme place at such a young age. It's an odd one tbh, but I'm just 'keeping my options open' as it were and trying to take it slowly to work out how to unfuck this mess as far as is possible. Like I said I do feel bad about the way I've affected certain people, namely my brother, but it's worth noting that whilst we have an open and caring (but a little distant) relationship with each other he hasn't spoken to the person I would suggest is responsible for quite a lot of damage (my father) for seven or eight years.
So yeah, it's complicated.......






