So that is how I got this way

Gentle Reader

If you really want to understand yourself go live with your parent again for a while.

Not visit from far away with a start and leave date in advance when everyone is on their best behaviour and can maintain it the whole time
Although I understand for every family the ratio of annoyance to self control is different but in mine the added factor of British descent weights our ratio very heavily to self control




I mean live in their house with their rules and stuff, never having control of the television until they are asleep and they wake early and stay up late and watch far too much weather channel.




I miss my stuff, I miss my routine, I miss my dust bunnies. I miss not be judged for being who I am. I like who I am. I am a triple dipped lollipop of crazy with a light dusting of psycho on a you can't live forever stick.
I have worked very hard to over come bad traits I developed and spent a lot of time trying to dig down to those roots and pull them out, chuck them in the trash bin, and start again. Some of those traits I liked and I kept and have served me well and faithfully in some of the hardest times. Some of them were not as good as they portrayed themselves to be, having some usefulness but also caused damage.

I suppose some people would link my bad traits to a few or all of the seven deadly sins. Pride, gluttony, sloth, covetousness, envy, lust, and wrath lots of wrath. After all why take responsibility for yourself when you can blame a demon for pushing you to sin and get a clean slate with a few Hail Mary's, a rosary, and dirty knees. Yes I was raised Catholic.




When you have been reduced to your teenage self again all the while actually a grown up with all your grown up responsibilities and know all the right social mores but are treated like a partially developed being that is less not equal to the other person you really see a side of yourself you likely buried.
When you are constantly interrupted and talked over and corrected only to be proven right with no apology you really get a good look at yourself as well.

Do you simply swallow it either with another glass of alcohol or a handful of tums? Do you eat it with an entire chocolate cake you might also throw up or simply savour the guilt? Do you suddenly find the need for pain killers well beyond the suggested max dose all day? Do you find a way to sleep though it and secretly wish you were not waking up?

GenX didn't have a mental health system, we barely had parents, but we did have a great love of trial and error. We learned to fix any problem, please every adult, keep our heads down and suck it up. We were all waiting for the day we could call the shots out in the open not sneaking around. For many of us we did our own parenting, there were a few guidelines set out for us no setting fires, stay out of the liquor cabinet, don't get pregnant, and be home by depending on your age sometime between the streetlights coming on and midnight (it increased incrementally as you successful completed another year of school). We didn't age, we didn't set goals beyond Saturday night, and we had zero expectations for our lives it seemed a waste of time.




If you have ever watched some of those 80's movies either slasher films at summer camp or rebellious going to dance anyway or the incredibly popular nerds triumph over jocks themes all had a suspicious lack of adults. The few adults that might be present were caricatures or the villain to be outsmarted and beaten. I am not sure if I should tell you this but they were far closer to documentaries than entertainment. Don't believe? Go watch the 2020 documentary Class Action Park directed by Seth Porges and Chris Charles Scott III.

I guess what I am trying to say gentle reader is it can open your eyes if they have not been already. Giving your power to someone is far easier than most realise. We do it every day unintentionally and when you are trapped in close quarters with the ultimate authority figure from your life, the person you are tied to from start to finish, and yes it even goes beyond their death and lasts until yours, that shield you built melts away and your power drains and you hate yourself for it.

Ever aha moment that made you better, stronger, helped your self worth turns against you into a pile of doubt and frustration and silence. The whispers in your brain say: Don't talk back, Respect your elders, What do you know you are just a child, Do as I say not as I do, Grow up stop crying, It is not like you broke a bone, Pull yourself up by your bootstraps and get on with it. They go on and on they are relentless all the adages and sage advise from wise elders that didn't have a clue where you were all day, who you were with or what you did. As long as they were not called to the school no police appeared on the doorstep and the house was still standing it was all fine. You just had to show up for school, get a passing grade at least, and only come in the house for meals and after dark. Worse case scenario there was always your room to hide in and live inside your mind thanks to books - we had access to the world through books - no internet.



I also realized how proud I am of the generation I had a hand in raising for not falling into the same trap. They are standing up to their jailers. The power brokers that won't raise the minimum wage but gouge the hell out of every necessity of life, prices rise, portfolios bulge, and the average person struggles while being fed excuse after excuse and being told "If you didn't buy a coffee everyday and learned to budget you would be fine - it is your fault"
We would have just put our heads down, swallowed our wrath and kept going. I guess we are to blame for the current state of things as much as anybody. We sang songs about not going to take it but we did, we took it. We settled for the hand me downs from the boomers, the leftovers, the scraps from their table and we lived in our dreams and self medicated our pain.
But not our kids they are saying NO and they will live in abject poverty if they have to but on their own terms. They would rather scrape by then live a soul sucking existence in worship of the almighty dollar. They know their worth and they are demanding it.



Try to remember you cannot be upset with how your offspring turns out if you took no part in raising them.



We lived where the wild things are catching frogs and climbing trees until puberty hit, then we were the wild things no fear, no hope, just surviving.
We survived well beyond our expectations and now we are a little lost and we keep recreating ourselves until we find the right fit. But deep inside we are still those fearless tinkerers, those trial and error fixers, we are unchaining ourselves from the please everyone keep your head down habits, we are not just surviving anymore we are learning to live like we once did, with wild abandon and insatiable appetites for adventure and joy.



Gorge yourself on life gentle reader
Until we next meet