Let me preface this by saying that I never felt unloved as a child. Looking back as an adult, these are the conclusions I have come to.
The mother I knew was very different from the woman who had raised my older siblings. The mother my sister talks about bears little resemblance to my mother. I feel like my mother tried to raise me very differently than my brother and sister, but I could be wrong.
My mother died when I was ten, leaving me with my father. So, I will always remember the mother of my childhood, before I became a teenager. My brother and sister have the teen and adult experiences with her that I missed. I don't doubt that our memories and experiences were very different.
I was the child that my mother wanted, and my father had obliged. Now he had me to raise on his own and I became his burden. I don't doubt that he cared for me in his own way. I was often referred to as a daddy's girl, but I was a mama's girl, too. Raising a pre-teen girl as a single father was not on his bucket list. He remarried soon after my mother died, too soon for some.
My step-mother had a daughter my exact same age - to the day. I am sure that they had disagreements on how to raise us. My step-sister and I were very different and I know that brought challenges. There came a time when my step-mother's response to any question for permission to do whatever was "Go ask your father." I don't think that she and I ever really connected. I have come up with many different explanations throughout the years, but I will never know what the truth behind that was. She had chosen my father, not me.
By my senior year in high school, I presume that the disagreements had grown. My father gave me a choice. I could go live with my sister or my brother. I was told I had to make a decision quickly. I was not given a reason that I can recall. I was gone by the next week. My father helped me to move the 5 hours to my brother's house and enrolled me in school. My brother saw him crying as he left.
I have never learned the reason why I had to leave.
This isn't about blaming my father. It's about looking back at childhood with the perspective that only adulthood can give us—and wondering about the burdens the people who raised us were carrying that we were too young to understand.
Add comment
Comments