The Human Condition

We are only human, I am only human. I often have to remind myself of that.

I expect too much of people. I demand too much of myself.

I was a troubled child or a trouble child, some might argue.  I questioned everything and agonized over the way things in my universe unfolded. I ranted, I raved, I fought the fight, I clawed my way through the jungle of adolescence and was lost, wandering, alone, for many years. With no guidance, no beacon to show me the way. I made my own rules and carved my own niche.

I coped with neglect by becoming indifferent, I competed with friends for their parents attention since my own seemed unreachable. By becoming indispensable, if they need me they couldn't ignore me. If I was smarter, faster, stronger maybe they would love me.

I hurt before they could hurt me. I built armour, to protect that lost, forgotten child.
I watched friends hugged by loving parents, I watched parents smile with pride at their children and praise them. I felt worthless and undeserving, I felt bereft. Tortured with self loathing, ugliness, hatred and anger, so much anger.

All I ever wanted was to be valued, acknowledged, validated and loved. To feel welcome, secure and safe. To have what any child deserves from its parents.

In the end I ripped them from my life, self preservation, rebellion or perhaps as an act of desperation and was thrust into my adult life with few of the tools I would need to survive.  Blind folded and reaching out for guidance, fumbling in the dark and emerging into a grey pre -dawn light with no idea where I came from, where I was or where I was going.  My childhood was hell on earth, like so many other children. Too many children. I was sensitive, until it was battered out of me, I was idealistic, until it was taunted out of me and I was hopeful, until all hope was taken away.

The reason I write these personal realizations is not to glorify, ridicule or judge but to enlighten, just myself.

I am at a cross roads in my life, where without careful examination I could take the wrong path, one I am all too familiar with, the wrong path. Miscalculation and lack of insight has been an all too familiar failing and I am striving to get to know myself.  I start at the beginning and oddly enough, as I gaze at my life through objective eyes, my beginning has always been with me, it colours my entire life experience and is to this very day, with me, is me. Like a tapestry, interwoven and knotted, the scene is a blending of all parts.