I did not like being a child.
Starting with being smaller in size than the adults, being unable to reach the top shelves, the table, having to sit on phone books to be as tall as others while eating.
I did not like as well the fact that everyone seemed to be in charge of me and my time but me - an issue than then developed into a resistance to discipline which I perceived to be the "real Mind Control' of existence, hence I rebelled to discipline and in line with this I reacted to the post about Jesus having Disciples - meaning people with Discipline applying his message, a wave of annoyance came over me as I read the word 'discipline', a word I connected to the Catholic schools, summer camps, life with parents and then with partners and ultimately, to prove discipline was in fact a fuck up, to the Army.
It's interesting to revisit my past to see how shaped myself into the person I am today, often I get pissed off as I realize how much of this system is deliberately built to create ineffective human beings, what if we had embraced discipline from childhood as a tool to greater effectiveness vs something to rebel to, just to end up slobs without a spine that can't push themselves to complete tasks for the goals they set out to accomplish? And we call our spineless existence "Freedom" and then we fight to defend it, not the clever lot we like to think we are.
I never went to a Montessori institute, instead I went to a Catholic kindergarden for 4 years and not the prescribed 3, because my mother was working, and then 5 years of elementary school, the nuns would be the other end of the spectrum from Maria Montessori, they lived to dwarf children under the weight of fears, guilt, shame and gender issues, they depicted a world of giants, the trinity, saints, martyrs, all great people I never wanted to emulate if for no other reason for the fact that they had to die to become that great.
On the other hand, Maria Montessori understood that children did better and developed more healthily in an environment were the world was sized for them, she may not have got it all right but she did put herself in children's shoes, in the Montessori world you would have child sized toilets, tables, chairs, it was to support them to feel "au pair"/Equal to the adults and their environment, having their world sized for them vs feeling dwarfed by it, but then again, why not dwarf children, that will turn them into spineless adults because hopelessness and helplessness start at home, in the family, who else could imprint those feelings and emotions more effectively than the family?
I remember thinking that I would grow up soon or later and the need to ask the adults to hand me over the things I could not reach would be over, I always looked forward to growing up, to the freedom that I didn't perceive I had as a kid, born dependent to be raised dependent to become dependent human beings.
It's possible that addictions start when we are in fact kids, our addictive minds are forged at home, not only through copying the behavior of our families, but through internalizing the need to be helped out, the fear of not being as big as others, to not be able to manage tasks as well as adults hence the dependency from family that then turns into dependency from substances, the abuse of sub-stances until there is little left of what we could have been and become in a proper supportive environment.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to believe that without my family I would have died
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to hate being dependent on my family for survival from the big points - like being fed, clothed and housed, or the small points such as having to ask others to reach for things I could not reach or for permission to do what I wanted to do with my own time
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to resent being a kid among adults
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to believe I was diminished by the presence of adults in my life and for blaming them for my experience of 'smallness' when in fact my experience was the result of my comparison to them in terms of size and ability to do things and not real
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to desire to have a place for myself where adults would not continuously interfere by checking what I was doing or planning my time as this resulted in the perception that I carried on throughout my life of not being free and then seeking for freedom in the guise of an undisciplined life where I could do whatever I wanted to do whenever I wanted
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to believe that life sucked because I was shared among family members in summer like my step grandma who didn't like me but pretended to when my grandpa was around or my uncle who liked to kick me in the butt to prove 'who was boss' both of which left me with extensive suppressed anger that I did not express in fear of their retaliation and a feeling that I just had to wait to grow up and then I would tell them all to go fuck themselves
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to have a fixed thought as a kid "just wait til I grow up" that I used to get through my childhood, imagining that I would leave and never turn back to those people that I believed were the cause of my anguish instead of realizing it was my participation in thoughts emotions and feelings that created the energetic experiences that I then blamed on my family and their behavior
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to feel humiliated when my uncle would kick me around in front of others to prove his authority when my mum was not around and for holding a grudge and hatred toward him together with spiteful thoughts on how I would just leave one day and never turn back
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to feel like an outcast with the kids of some of my relatives when I went to spend part of a summer with them, ending up sitting on the steps of their summer house imagining my mother walking through the gate to take me away, without seeing realizing and understanding that I was busy creating the 'loner' personality as I ended up assuming that you can never trust anyone to have your interest at heart, not even your family and that being alone would be my safest bet in my life - which then created friction inside of me every time I had a relationship and I felt my partner walked all over my resolution and commitment to aloneness by just being around
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to feel torn between my mother and my grandparents as I was asked to take sides once a week by hiding some of the things that happened at home to my grandmother and some of the comments my grandparents made about my mother, never feeling like I could be honest and just exist but having to always be on the lookout to remember what could be shared and what must not be shared to not anger anyone
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to associate Life with living with my family as a kid and being alive with finding ways to navigate the dangerous emotional minefield of my family, ending up always putting myself in a state of stress and anxiety, which resulted in me splitting in various personality that could handle and manage my family dysfunctions at their best, investing each character with the specific role to handle just one side of my relationships so as to make sure nothing would be overlapping and causing problems to myself and others
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to feel guilty regarding my inability to be myself, to be just one and not many different 'me's as that felt like a betrayal of myself and a point of constant stress when the different parties would gather and I would have to choose how to handle myself within a Character that could please them all and within this for giving in to addictions later in life to cope with those personality switches I believed I had to keep up for survival that were extremely energy consuming
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to fear that I would turn out like my family, to live in anxiety for not knowing how I could prevent that as I felt that their very presence around me was toxic and yet I had nowhere else to go, and for believing I was not free and I would have to set out on a journey to Freedom which included leaving my family behind as within this I defined my freedom as dependent from being away from my family and as I came back to Italy, I walked back into the feeling of entrapment that I left behind when I left, without going to the root of the problem to sort it out once and for all
to be continued
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