" Let’s raise children who won’t have to recover from their childhoods ".
-Pam Leo
It may haven been written "Run as fast as you can the other way" , it most likely wouldn’t have made me change direction. The forbidden fruit is too tempting not to give it a bite, right? Adam and Eve showed us firsthand how we seem wired to seek the wrong things.
It doesn’t matter that I’ve been around the block a time or two. I could have been around the block 10 times – and still, my taste for danger wouldn’t have diminished. Living on the edge comes with a cost, and sometimes, the consequences don’t outweigh the cost, or so I thought.
Life is one heck of a ride. But the good news is that you have control to choose which way you want to be headed on your journey of life. I could have known better. I should have known better. I knew that this meant risky business. I decided to commit to it anyway.
Until one day. I remember cringing like I’d just swallowed poison. I remember having a feeling of déjà vu. I finally realized why I’d derailed from the perfectly crafted path that I should have been on. The palms of my hands were in sweat. I looked around and saw what I thought were the eyes of my lover. Only to realize that they were the ones of my father. Right then and there I knew that I should have turned around and run as fast as I could in the opposite direction. But I didn't.
On some level, I was aware of the fact that I was repeating my troubled childhood history. Knowledge still doesn’t always guarantee a change of behavior. My delusion that things could get better was so fucking bulletproof. My heart has always been one filled with hope. I’ve been trying to see the best in every single human being that has crossed my path for as long as I can remember. Aren’t the softest souls often the easiest targets?
The fact is that you can’t wake up someone who doesn’t want to be woken up. Up until my waking call point, I had been running around my whole life trying to fill this void that couldn’t be filled. That’s what happens when you grow up seeing what love looks like through the broken marriage of your parents. You don’t know any better. And so here we are – running around re-creating the toxic dynamics we know so well. Reliving the emotions that we used to suppress as young children because they were so bloody painful.
You aren’t living life at this point – your subconscious is living it for you. He’s generating the madness that has that familiar smell, kinda like your mom’s comforting spaghetti. Except that what you are doing to yourself and your inner child is the opposite of comforting.
I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t have to be that way anymore. When you embark on the journey of healing your own heart, one of the first things you ought to do is obviously to heal from all the pain that you have endured in your life until now. Healing requires to make peace with our story – and that story includes our past.
You need to stop trying to feel "at home" in the arms of someone who resembles your toxic parental figure. Don’t let your familial history bleed onto your present. It’s time to make a change and put an end to a pattern that has caused too much harm along its way.
