Why do I feel the need to write about personal experiences
that have had such a profound impact on my life and most of all, why now? What
is it that I want people to understand about life by reading about mine? Or is
it not about others at all but my own desire to share my difficult family
circumstances and finally, once and for all, face them head on?
Yes, like many
others I have successfully dealt with hardship and have been fortunate enough
to gather enough strength to manage, but it is more than that. I feel like I am
a better person, a stronger person, than I would have been without these
difficulties. How can so many negatives ultimately equal a positive? It’s
amazing that this is even possible, and I know that there are people out there
who can’t see the benefits of adversity and instead focus on what should have
been, or what would have been better. There is no fault in that and there were
definitely times when I felt that way as well.
Of course I wish more than
anything that there was hope for my dad and that the last 8 years of his life
had not been lonely and alone while roaming the streets homeless, or in jail or
mental hospitals. I wish my mom could function in society without having to
escape every so often to a psychiatric hospital because she can’t handle emotions
or maintain interpersonal relationships. I wish I had been better equipped to
raise my brother Ian as a parental figure rather than as a frustrated sibling.
I did the best I could throughout my 20s, but had I known then what I know now
I would have done better. These are not the type of wishes that can ever be
realized though; the past is the past.
Overall, I did a pretty good job of
living in the present amidst all of the
chaos lest I start pitying myself about not having a family to take care of me,
but one for which I had to bear the responsibility. But time does not occur in
a vacuum; the past, present, and future are intertwined and it’s impossible to
understand oneself and others in any one of these contexts without
acknowledging the whole. So despite turmoil and instability in a family plagued
by severe mental illness, I am ready to try and understand how my past provided
me with something (and more likely some things) that made it possible to
survive in the present, and ultimately believe I will thrive in the future.
But
what? And how? All of this makes me who I am today which I wouldn’t change for
anything, although I acknowledge that is somewhat ironic given the value in
evolution of self. One of the greatest gifts that I am thankful for is the
ability to self actualize, or continue to grow and change, to evolve and to
learn.
