Day Five
I continue to feel okay and see myself getting better. Writing about things in this journal has become helpful to me. Ass i write, things from my past come up and I get the chance to examine them with a fresh perspective. Yesterday I wrote about trust issues, and after thinking about it a little more, I can see how this has held me back throughout my life. When you grow up reluctant to trust, you really cheat yourself out of a lot of opportunities to grow as a person. i think that the older I got, the less I was willing to trust and therefore limited even further my opportunities to enter into rewarding relationships with others.
i think about my parents, too. I don't think either of them had a deep friendship with anyone. they went through life pulled in on themselves, viewing each new person with mistrust. When they died, there wasn't even anyone to come to the funeral except for family. My father, in particular, could really have used some friends in the final months of his life, but there was no one around him.
One of the ironies of my childhood was that I learned while growing up that I couldn't trust my mother. She had a quick temper and inevitably lashed out at whoever was in front of her. It was second nature to her to let out with a cruel remark or a slap or a threat. I was terrified of her as a child and wary of her when I was grown up and no longer had to fear her. She never once told any of us that she loved us, not even when she was dying.
It was hard being a parent with that kind of legacy. I had to watch myself to make sure that when I opened my mouth that my mother's voice didn't come out of it. Sometimes it did in spite of my watchfulness. I have a son who hasn't spoken to me in years, and although I know that my inability to give him money is at the root of it, I still wonder if he remembers things i said to him while growing up that he uses as an excuse today to remain estranged from me.
As I've noted before, there's no way you can go back to earlier times in your life and do things over. All you can do is live with what you've done and what's happened to you and try to do better. That's one of my goals in life now and I have to work at it every day.
i think about my parents, too. I don't think either of them had a deep friendship with anyone. they went through life pulled in on themselves, viewing each new person with mistrust. When they died, there wasn't even anyone to come to the funeral except for family. My father, in particular, could really have used some friends in the final months of his life, but there was no one around him.
One of the ironies of my childhood was that I learned while growing up that I couldn't trust my mother. She had a quick temper and inevitably lashed out at whoever was in front of her. It was second nature to her to let out with a cruel remark or a slap or a threat. I was terrified of her as a child and wary of her when I was grown up and no longer had to fear her. She never once told any of us that she loved us, not even when she was dying.
It was hard being a parent with that kind of legacy. I had to watch myself to make sure that when I opened my mouth that my mother's voice didn't come out of it. Sometimes it did in spite of my watchfulness. I have a son who hasn't spoken to me in years, and although I know that my inability to give him money is at the root of it, I still wonder if he remembers things i said to him while growing up that he uses as an excuse today to remain estranged from me.
As I've noted before, there's no way you can go back to earlier times in your life and do things over. All you can do is live with what you've done and what's happened to you and try to do better. That's one of my goals in life now and I have to work at it every day.
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