There was a neighbor kid I played with for 4 years or so. He was a little bit older than me, maybe like 5-7 years older. I don’t really remember how old he was, just that he seemed way older than me.
When I was really small, I thought he was fun. He knew a lot about everything and he had a really fun sunporch that felt like the command center of a spaceship. His family has tons of cats around and we have a few too. I liked hanging out with him when he wasn’t at school and I wasn’t at the babysitter’s house. My brother liked him too, but he didn’t like my brother.
Yesterday I spent a lot of time trying to remember more about this kid. I got caught peeing outside with him and I got a ridiculous lecture and shamed in a way that now feels very excessive. But yesterday I started remembering some other things about this kid and shame-like how when this kid broke something of my father’s, I was blamed for not telling him to stop what he was doing. Or when my brother tried to jump on him from our back porch, he refused to catch my brother. I was screamed at when my brother ended up on his face in gravel. I moved away from this house when I was 7.5, so how could I have controlled a much older kid who as probably in middle school by then?
And when I think hard about this kid and how he makes me feel, I was filled with fear. Weird fear that makes no sense. Initially I thought it was something this kid had done directly TO me, but I am starting to think it was about a bunch of times he did something wrong or something my parents felt I could’ve stopped him from doing. Being around him became scary becuase he was slightly feral and he broke things often. Or I got hurt trying to do things I was too young to be doing when I was just following him. He became unsafe to me, but was it physically unsafe or emotionally unsafe because he got me in trouble? I am not sure yet. But thinking about him specifically raises feelings inside me that are very uncomfortable.
And then I had a sudden flood of memories from this house, when I was between 3 and 7 years old. Times where my brother did something wrong and I was blamed for not stopping him. Even into teenage years, I was blamed for “exposing him” to certain things that were morally wrong in my parents’ eyes. They neglected to take responsibility for their lack of supervision. They still do this. They will never acknowledge the things they did that have hurt me.
In a few weeks, we will drop Child #2 off at college. We’ve got plans to meet up with some of my family members that I haven’t seen in 17 years since we will be within a couple hours of where they all live. One of my first thoughts as I was making plans with my cousin was “This is going to upset my parents.” And then I realized that I don’t need to worry about that anymore. I don’t need to internalize their displeasure because they don’t wish to have relationships with these family members. It’s my mom’s older sister and brother, her brother’s wife and their daughters. Plus their daughters’ spouses and children. And also my uncle’s wife’s sister. So she’s not technically my aunt, but she was around all the time and she is a kind hearted person.
This is going to negatively affect the barely-there relationship I have with my mom. I have already thought through all of this and decided that I want no part of their nonsense. I am just going to do this because I miss these family members. I want to see them, potentially for the last time with the older ones. It feels right to me. My parents came between me and these people years ago by constantly putting them down, complaining about them, and creating “evidence” of them being rude to my parents. Being on the adult side of a relationship with my parents, I now understand their fabrication process and how they can turn anyhting into a slight.
All this to say that I haven’t exactly figured out what it is I am working on healing from, there’s a few clues in relationships my parents intentionally undermined and this feeling of dread thinking about a neighbor kid from years ago.
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