My parents taught me the kind of love I deserve.

This journey of healing that I am on, I have often wondered if there was ever going to be a moment of rest. Or it being in a constant state of being uncomfortable. Sometimes, I just want to be done, I just want a break from growing. I know, life is all about growing, but this is exhausting. I need a recharge. I need a pause hard stop to catch my breath. I need the changes I started making 3 years ago to show. And in some ways, I know that my life is better. But in other ways I still feel I am fighting BIG demons. Demons that I was born into and demons I created. Healing was always I thought I was doing but until I found a trauma therapist, I was just surviving and reliving my childhood trauma. I realized I was falling into similar relationships that mimicked the relationships with my parents. It’s an odd feeling to know that you actively tried to avoid to repeat patterns. And then learn that you repeated patterns that you weren’t even aware of. It might be obvious to you that when someone withholds affection or money from you that it’s in an unacceptable behavior from a partner. It might be obvious when you meet someone and they don’t want to know your life story that they don’t want to know you. It extends into how you allow your friends, co workers or bosses treat you.

My father wasn’t around growing up and when he was drunk or high which caused him to be angry and jealous. I don’t have a specific memory of him hitting me, but I do have many memories of how he hit my mom, throwing her very pregnant body down steps, yelling and berating her. I remember wanting to build a bomb shelter to protect us. Because often the fighting was so bad and loud I thought bombs were going off. My mother was around for about 9 years of my life. My mother sober was amazing, loving, creative and fun, best mom ever stuff. But my mother drunk and high, she was worst mother ever stuff. Black out drunk, slaps across my face for not keeping the kids quiet or not cleaning up the kitchen after I making and feeding my siblings and I meals. Constant yelling about how I need to grow up, how I am a baby and spoiled brat. She made me lock away her secrets. I was scared to ask for help, scared to make mistakes, scared to want. And when her addiction worsened, we were no longer safe. She left us with strangers that hurt us, bugs that ate at us, and a life that I would compare to pure hell. And then she left. I was cared for collectively by her family. I know they love us. I know they did their best. But, we rarely talked about it. It was our little dirty family secret. My mother and I and my siblings were the dirty messy secret.

What I didn’t know is that even being aware of not repeating the same behaviors, I would in fact invite those behaviors into my life. Even though I “knew” better, it’s still all I knew in my body, in my heart. My parents taught me the kind of love I deserve. After children, the trauma felt unbearable and I had to do something. I have to learn to love myself, the way I deserve to be loved, the way everyone deserves to be loved. And on some days, I love myself enough. But most days those demons win. And I just wish the enough days out weigh the demon days.

"Love yourself unconditionally, just as you love those closest to you despite their faults." -Les Brown