This was me up until a few weeks ago. At a certain point you have to accept that some people get luckier than others with the environment they’re born into. Grieve what was lost if you have to. But you’ll have to accept it. There’s a lot I’ve had to accept. The pain that’s come with that has been immense.
I was born to two tremendously traumatized parents — one who was absent emotionally and one who was absent physically. The one that was absent emotionally was neglectful and abusive in that way. The one that was absent physically was abusive physically. We had no money. They both lacked any sort of communication skills and raised me and my brothers in social isolation. A lot of opportunities were missed. And I was conditioned to see the world in ways that were counterproductive to my growth, leaving me with a ton of work to do as an adult to learn and unlearn so many things.
I was mad and depressed for a long time. But eventually you get to a point of, “what is being mad and depressed about something I didn’t choose and can’t change doing for me?” It’s just hurting yourself in the long run. It’s energy that could be better used to change your circumstances. So you get up one day and realize that you don’t need to use your chaotic upbringing as a reference point for every aspect of your life. That’s how you keep the trauma alive. Let it die. And the world opens up.
The irony of everything I’m saying is that it is my girl who’s shown me all of this — someone from an upper middle class two-parent home who had every opportunity available to her (and has done well with those opportunities). When I first started dating her I was jealous of her family. I didn’t think she could understand my pain. The reality is she could never understand it as I felt it, but she understood the impact it was having on me, and has been helping me heal.
So, OP, the pain isn’t going to just disappear. It sucks to be born into a shyt situation and to then develop the lens to see how a different situation would have opened different doors personally, emotionally, financially, academically, athletically, etc. It SUCKS breh. But you can’t keep carrying the burden. Make the best of what you can with the time that you got. Yesterday wasn’t under your control. Today is. You may have missed out on some dreams because of the bad luck you were born into. That sucks. But there are other dreams you can still create. Chase those.
Let yourself be happy. Let yourself be free.
. They'll judge someone else not even knowing their story or how they got there, meanwhile, they had their whole mom's yellin out, "jimmy! Time for dinner!
" as they run through their picketed fence right after they played with their friends in a safe suburban neighborhood
