Missed Opportunities
My mother suffers from borderline personality disorder and, sometimes, it is hard not to lament how much better my life might have been if I hadn't had to deal with continuous emotional abuse.
Even when I was as young as 5 I fantasised about being able to press the 'reset' button on my life and start again. (My father had a NES and there was something fascinating about being able to return to World 1-1 as though none of it had happened).
That's a fantasy I carried with me all the way into university. I constantly had a sense that if I could just start over then things would be okay. It was super unhealthy.
I struggled with both social anxiety and addiction, both having their roots in my mother's abuse. And, for sure, I could have achieved a lot more and had a better life by now, if she'd been an actual mother rather than a monster disguised as one.
But I can't change the past. And, my experiences have made me who I am. So I try to focus on where I am now and how I can move forwards. The lessons from a traumatic past can be carried forth as the seeds of growth for tomorrow. It's not easy. But if I fixate on what could have been I see it as wasting even more time because of her. In a way, lamenting how things could have been is another victory for her.
So fuck her. And fuck how's she's fucked my life up. I'm going to keep stepping forwards. Not even to spite her. But because since I was a child I wanted to grow. And now that I understand what she is, at last, I finally can.
It doesn't matter that, at 32, I'm a mere fledgling sprout. Now that I'm no longer suffocating under her shadow, I can see that the sky is right up there, that there's plenty of sunlight, and that one day I might even bare the fruits of success.
Or something. I might have taken that metaphor a bit too far. But hopefully you get the point--I try to be grateful for the chances I do still have.