“All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.”
- Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven
This quote made my breath hitch when it popped up on my dashboard some days ago. I read this book back in Freshman year but I've forgotten much of what transpired in the story so I don't quite remember this part anymore.
I guess I just want to delve deeper into this topic.
I didn't have such a happy childhood. Most of it was spent inside the house reading books and I guess I was perfectly content with that but now that I think about it, it was actually a bit of a sad life for a kid? It got to a point that I was scared of meeting new people and I mostly stuck to myself during social gatherings and more often than not, I had my books to keep me company. This was primarily due to the fact that I loved my father too much for my own good but he was almost always somewhere else. I didn't like my mother and whenever she came near to me, I would skitter away because I was so afraid of her. If she wasn't angry/screaming, she was a mess/crying. I didn't know what to do with her. And I guess the fact that my parents fought almost every night, shouting and slamming doors and waking the house up with their goddamn noise, they have - in a way - broken me.
But see, I am trying to be whole again. I love my mother so much right now and maybe I'm still afraid of her, but it's not the same fear I once held. Right now, it's me that's afraid of breaking her. My mother is so fragile right now. One wrong word and she tends to cry. One wrong move and she ends up in fiery tantrums. This is why I am trying so hard to be strong. For her. Almost everything that I'm doing right now is for my mother.
I can't say the same for my father though. The damage that he has done is beyond repair. I can only forgive him but what he's done... I can't blame my mother for her indifference and apathy. She is mainly just trying to save and protect herself from more emotional pain.
My parents have damaged me. But I'm trying to fix myself. You can too.
No comments:
Post a Comment