When Parents Are No Longer Gods

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

My parents divorced when I was five years old. I realized that my life changed when my mother and I moved to another apartment with my younger sister. I still remember this gray day - bare trees outside the window, boxes with our things and strange purple wallpaper in my room. My parents didn't get along very well before, but this move finally separated them not only in my life, but also in my head.

Since we moved everything familiar, where I felt safe, collapsed. Everything has changed: my house, the area in which I live, the kindergarten, the financial situation of my family. And most importantly, dad was never, never at home, and mom was busy solving everyday problems. As a child, I lost the basic safety of my loving parents, whom I used to always find at home in the evenings. As a child, it was all the same to me as a child, whether they swear or not, the main thing is that these are big people who make my world a better place, just be at home.

Life with only mom was very different from life with mom and dad. This divorce coincided with big changes in my social life: going to a new kindergarten, then to school, then to a new school, the need to learn new responsibilities and responsibilities and everything-everything-everything that carries a child's life from 5 years old to 18 -ty. All this I had to live every day without my father, but together with my mother.

At the time, I dreamed of another mother - the one serving a three-course dinner for my return from school. My mom couldn't do it because she was busy with work. But then I could not understand it. Since my mother was the only main person who was constantly present in my life, all claims for the injustice of my life were directed to her. Mom was to blame for everything: that we do not have enough food at home, that I do not have new fashionable clothes, that we constantly do not have enough money, that we do not go on vacation abroad like my classmates … The list is endless. Later, quarrels that often occur between a parent and a child at a transitional age were added here, and my mother became a completely negative figure for me - in my mind she merged with the image of a bad mother.

Dad appeared in my life like a holiday and mostly only on holidays. He brought something unimaginable to my life at that time: some new toys, brought multicolored ice cream to eat and showed a movie. As a child, I was very happy that my birthday was exactly six months after the New Year holidays. Such a calendar distribution was a kind of guarantee that I would see my dad at least twice a year. A typical morning of every holiday began with my question: "Will dad come?" At that time, I learned to use my magical thinking with might and main. I was sure that if I behave myself, for example, clean my room or read a book, or give up sweets, then dad will definitely come. If dad did not come, then I thought that I had not tried well enough for this and promised myself to do my best next time. Dad was the perfect father for me. I believed that he always did everything right, even if it was objectively wrong. I believed that dad knew everything better than anyone else and did not notice his mistakes.

For a very long time I lived in two poles: I denied everything my mother said and completely agreed with everything that my father said. This approach to life actually left me in the role of an orphan, because I could not build a real relationship with any of my parents. Falling into this split, I lost both of them. I could not feel love for my mother just as I could not feel hatred for my father. Plus, I could not live my life, since my life was a continuation of my relationship with my father and mother: many aspirations in my life were an act of devotion to my father or an act of rejection of my mother.

If you translate my feelings into a metaphor, then you can imagine two statues. The statue of my father has been very high all my life - so that I can't even see it, you can only see how the light of the sun is reflected from its white stone. And the statue of the mother is hidden somewhere in a dark dungeon - expelled, but not forgotten.

And so, in the 32nd year of life and the 5th year of personal therapy, I begin to notice that my mother was a good mother. Every evening, when my mother put us to bed with her sister, she sang songs or read books to us. She did this until we fell asleep or until she herself fell asleep from fatigue. I then woke her up with the words: "Mom, read on!" And she read. These were both fairy tales and stories by Mikhail Prishvin and my favorite Myths of Ancient Greece. I knew the stories of all the characters long before they begin to take place in school. I think that it is thanks to my mother that I have a taste for good literature, and hence the imaginative and logical thinking is well developed. Despite the lack of money, my mother taught me what it means to dress really well, but from her I learned to sew, see and create beauty.

As the image of the mother rises into the light, feelings of love and recognition for the mother become available to me. At the same time, I begin to notice how the image of my father descends from a high, sun-drenched pedestal. Suddenly, a puzzle is formed in my head, so noticeable from the outside, but hidden from me for so long - in many problems, my father is not to blame for my childhood. With a strange feeling of vague doubt - I still find it difficult to admit that my father can be bad - I begin to reflect on the fact that my mother worked so hard and did not give me warmth, because my father did not give us enough money. With awkwardness, I remember my father's mistakes: how on my birthday he handed a bouquet to my sister because I thought she was the birthday girl, how he went to rest abroad and told his mother that he had no money. Having made this discovery, I understand that my father acted badly. I live resentment, hatred and disappointment. But I will not stop there. Over time, I just feel sad that everything turned out like this.

And also strange feelings appear in me: relief and freedom. The moment two powerful images meet in the middle between heaven and hell, I find my real parents. I have no need to lower my father into the dungeon and exalt my mother. Thanks to my father, my character has such qualities as ambition, composure and a healthy dose of selfishness. This is not the whole list, I took much more from my father and I am grateful to him as well as to my mother. I see in my parents not all-powerful gods, but ordinary living people with a set of all human qualities, both good and bad. They tried to live as they thought they were faithful. They strove for their dreams and it is not their fault that everything turned out this way. I no longer need to be faithful to each of them and periodically deny one in order to earn the love of the other.

Despite the fact that my parents still practically do not communicate with each other, inside me they are together. No, this is not a picture of how cute they are drinking tea. This is a story about my recognition of each of them as they are. Today, every parent has access to the whole gamut of feelings, and I know that I love both my mother and my father. I stopped being an orphan, because with each of them I have my own special, not always simple, but real relationships. By recognizing the right of each parent to their own life, I received the right to live my life. If earlier I made a choice not to be like my mother or to be like my father, today my choice is my opinion and my path. My parents stopped being my powerful gods, and I stopped serving them in one way or another. Now I am the most ordinary mortal who has the right to my own life.