While parents may not always give their children the tools they need to be able to function in their lives, but for me I am irritated that I'm still having to work things out to learn about me.
I've done it to understand my disability, understand me, something that wasn’t afforded to me as a child. As parents, we may not get the parent thing right all the time and that's accepted, but anyone who is born with a disability should know and have strategies in place to help them deal with what they have to deal with, to know who they are living alongside their disability.
And even if living with a disability isn’t forthcoming because the information isn’t always out there, parent and sibling support is a big part of our existence. It wasn’t my job to have to work out my symptoms, let alone learn about myself in this way.
There is still an intolerance through other people's attitudes towards disability. Ever since I was a little girl, I've always tried to find acceptance. My being a pleasing child was part of that scenario, I just didn't realise at the time.
What I had to deal with was kept separate from my siblings with my mental and emotional issues ignored.
You can't turn back the clock, but you can certainly learn from that time as you have done. In turn, we can all learn from your sharing your insights on your journey.
Thank you. You're welcome. Yes, as you say I can't turn back the clock, but I do need to continue to work out what my struggles are and what makes me, me.
It's important to know things about us. But it is something I feel we should all have afforded to us.
Yes, it would have been very nice for the both of us if we had received the proper tools from our parents to deal with the issues we had.
I was always very sickly as a child and also the youngest, so I tended to get a lot more attention than my siblings, which they kind of despised me for.
They always thought I was extremely spoiled, which in some ways I was, but in other ways it was a trade off, where I had to pay a very high price for my mother's attention.
She expected and demanded 100% loyalty to her and her alone, which meant that I was kept apart from my siblings in a lot of ways and I know they hated me for it.
What I learned from an early age, was that I was better off to be invisible, which works great for survival but not for living. I just want to be able to live my life and not feel quite so guilty for even existing!
Thanks Randy. The dynamics we've had to work through although that's similar, our circumstances are different. It would be hard to see where one starts and the other ends.
The sad reality is that we get to learn from a young age how things are, what works and what doesn't and we then box our lives accordingly.
We can see it, we're aware of the dynamics, we just can't change those. But like my life, the guilt was never yours to carry.
Sadly, we tend to come through the other end, then question how things really were. My not knowing what was wrong with me, means I'm still learning about myself now.