Healing has meant peeling back layers of

Abuse

Coping mechanisms

Neglect

Instability

Fear

Anger

Only to reveal….

The one person in your life

Who is to keep you safe and loved,

Has been rewriting YOUR past

In ways that alter

Just enough facts

To have you question your own history,

Identity,

Reality.

My head is left spinning

Not knowing what parts

Of me are not based in reality

But a fabricated story

To make her a bigger, better martyr.

I feel like I don’t know me

Anymore.

I’ve been told

Who I am

How I am

What I do

What I want, like, and need

And equally what I don’t.


I’m going to use this space to find me.

Again?

No.

Further. Deeper. Better.

Your mixed feelings about your parents are valid.

growingracealways:

jewlesthemagnificent:

halfbakedidea:

lavahag:

theworldisfulloffloozies:

vajeentambourine:

Shout out to people like me who have parents who are loving but are black holes of emotional labor… It took me a long time to realize that it’s okay to have mixed feelings about your parents, about your relationship with them.

Sometimes parents can love you but be somewhat toxic to you and your growth, and that’s a very hard realization to come to if you, like me, grew up extremely close to them.

Sometimes parents can love you genuinely but lack emotional maturity, forcing you to perform disproportionate amounts of emotional labor. Some parents manifest symptoms of their mental illness in ways that are toxic to your mental illness.

Some parents, like mine, try so hard to be good parents but fall back on habits of emotional manipulation because they haven’t processed their own traumas and are modeling behavior they grew up with. That doesn’t make their behavior acceptable, and it’s okay to feel exhausted and hurt when they betray you. You don’t have to forgive every mistake.

I want you to know that it’s okay to protect yourself, to need some space apart from them. The love you have for your parents is still valid, and you are making the right decision.

Placing a safe emotional distance between myself and my parents has been one of the most difficult, heartbreaking processes I’ve ever gone through… it hurts to try to curb the strength of your own natural empathy around people you love. It feels disingenuous to your heart’s natural state.

But I promise you, you are not hard-hearted or ungrateful, and you are not abandoning them. You are making a decision about your own emotional, mental, and spiritual health.

I know what it’s like in that confusing grey area of love mixed with guilt and anxiety, of exhaustion and quasi-manipulation and unreciprocated emotional labor, and I promise you, you are not alone.

Your mixed feelings about your parents are valid.

wow.

I so needed this after spending three days with my mom.

Wow, this is basically 100% me and my parents. 

I need to print this out and frame it I think. Especially the “haven’t processed trauma/modeling behaviors” part. Woo. That is dead fucking on.

Whoa whoa. whoa.