The Truth Must Be Told

~ Posted by Melissa ~ 10/08/2002 09:40:00 AM ~ ~

I've figured out something so simple but something that has affected my life tremendously since I became a teenager. Around the age of 14, I remember having something important on my mind that I wanted to discuss with my mother. I don't even remember the subject. However, for some reason, my mother felt that I needed to talk to a counselor, a psychologist, for some reason. I assure you that whatever was on my mind was a perfectly normal topic for a 14 year old and definitely not within the realm of needing professional help. What came of that, at least subconsciously, was the realization that I could not count on my parents for emotional support in anything. Unfortunately, this incident was only the first of many incidents in my life where I felt completely unsupported emotionally by my parents and, later, my husband. Don't get me wrong. I do realize that I have some very wonderful, close friends that I can count on to care about me and to listen when I need a shoulder to cry on or just to talk. However, for various reasons, I stopped counting on my friends as much in the last ten years, pretty much around the time we moved out here to Arizona. Just one talk, however, with one of my close friends could bring me out of any doldrums I was in, at least temporarily. The depressions I have experienced since 1990 can all be attributed in one way or another to not feeling like my emotions were being validated by either my parents, my husband, and/or my step-mother. Now, I really never expected my step-mother to give a damn despite the fact that her youngest daughter, Janice, always gets her complete support, emotional, financial, what have you, on a daily basis. I get nothing. I've also made the mistake of thinking that my husband would some day care about my feelings. Fat chance when he didn't care about me to begin with. Why should he care about my feelings.

Realistically, there are many people who may be mature in many aspects of their life while remaining immature in one or more aspects, stunted as it were, remaining in childhood in that aspect. In regards to my emotions, I would have to say that I have had the naive belief that my parents and my husband, the people who were supposed to love me the most, would care about me and my feelings. Unfortunately, I had a dysfunctional family life growing up and I now have a dysfunctional marriage. I do not want to perpetrate this dysfunction onto my children. I want to avoid that at all costs. One thing I have learned from my negative experiences in life is that I want to do the right thing by my children. I want them to have what they need from me while growing up so they can be independent, self-supporting adults some day.

I've thought about this a lot and come to realize that I really don't need to harbor any more negative feelings towards my father, my mother, my husband, or my step-mother. My parents and my husband each felt that they did not get their emotional needs met when they were growing up and didn't know how to handle my emotional needs. Of course, my husband is an unusual case as he is the first person I've ever met who is literally so selfish and self-centered that his philosophy of life is "if it doesn't hurt me and I want it then it's ok." Obviously, this is extremely immature thinking, the kind that is usually taught out of 4 year olds. As for my step-mother, I used to think that she was just a mean woman but I now realize that her beliefs about me she got from my father who had a huge "I hate Janet (my mother)" thing going for several years after her death in 1996. I had thought that my step-mother had changed my father's opinion of me but I now realize that he changed his opinion of me simply based on the fact that I was related to my mother and he didn't want any reminders of her whatsoever. I’m learning to move on from this and realize that this is something he had to go through but that I don’t have to let myself be hurt any more by him or my step-mother even though separating myself from them separates me from the last of my birth family (my only sibling died in 1997).

I have been blessed with some amazing friends, the best in the world. I also still have extended family although they are largely unaware of what’s been going on in my life for the last 13 years. For all intents and purposes, I don’t have a father any more and that’s ok because I’m a grown woman and don’t really “need” a father figure in my life any more. I haven’t had a true husband either all these past 13 years either but that’s ok because, God willing, I shall find happiness again someday with a new husband who truly loves me. This is not easy for me to say as I was raised to believe that divorce was a sin. However, I do not believe the God intended for me to go through the abuse that my husband has put me through.

I’m trying to look at what good can come of all these bad things. Hopefully, I will be able to learn from them, turn my life around, become the independent person I need to be, and then take what I’ve learned and help other people. I truly felt called in this direction whether I make a career out of it or help others outside of my career. I want to give back to the universe for the good I have received from certain people in my life. I also want to learn to forgive the people in my life who have hurt me. Life is about learning and loving. I want to strive to love others whether they love me back or not because that is as it should be. Truly loving someone else is not based on whether or not they love you first but is completely selfless and unselfish. May we all move in that direction in our lives.