Fantasy

I raised myself in the company of two of the nuttiest people ever to live.  Needless so say, my maturation was delayed (although I appeared older than my years from a young age) by lack of parental guidance - and worse, by strange and often perverse pseudo-parental messages.  Consumed by their obsession with each other,  finding fault with every other person on the planet, and believing that their progeny were there only to bring them glory, they were hardly the stuff of any child's fantasy- but they inspired me to fantasize about other parents, my "real" parents, who might just come and find me one day.  (I've mentioned in a previous post that the WWW often told me that I had been adopted - difficult to believe since I looked so much like Nfather, but a child can hope...)

So I fantasized the perfect parents - and it turns out that they were a hard act to follow.   It's pretty clear that I was a significantly better parent than my parents - but the bar was remarkably low.  A chimpanzee is likely to be better at parenting than the Nparents were.  But the fantasy parents - they were good!  They held me on their laps, they tucked me in at night with stories and songs, they comforted me when I was sick instead of locking me in a room, they listened to how my day was, they made my favorite foods, they asked about who I was dating, they didn't call the police when I was out late, they told me I was pretty, they got to know my spouse, they liked my kids - you get the idea.  They were more real than my real parents were!  And I imagine that if they messed up, they apologized.  Goodness - they were never mean-spirited, they never had a bad day, they never raised their voice or became impatient.  See???   A hard act to follow.

But it gets worse - I saw a train wreck of a marriage, so I fantasized the perfect marriage.  I never saw decent grandparenting, so I fantasized that, too - the whole array of human relationships was created in my head and I had to live up to some really remarkable expectations! I wonder if all N's did this to survive living in so much dysfunction.  I remember driving in the car as a child and looking into windows and wondering if those people were happy and how "happy" looked.  I didn't go to other children's homes very often - we weren't allowed to bring people home, so I could never ask anyone back.  (And really, it was too scary, too - the Nparents were a bit volatile and Nmother couldn't tolerate having her house messed up by children - or anyone else, for that matter.)  The more I write about this, the more I wonder how I survived these people at all!

Fantasy helped me survive - but it also kept me in the mess longer than was good for me - I fantasized that it was possible to have real relationships with my Nparents, with my Nsibs, even with some of my sibs who aren't N's, but struggle also, I think, with fantasy.  Let's  all pretend that.....  we're close.....  we're a normal family.....  any of us got out unscathed....
it wasn't so bad...   only some of us were "hurt" by the family...   being horrible to each other is normal...  bullying doesn't exist in our family...  Nfather was the only problem....  Nmother was a saint.... Nmother was a victim of the abusive Nfather...  This could go on forever - family mythology is strong and when you give it up, you're an outcast.   This is one thing I think I'm at the end of, finally -  there is nothing to go back to.  I have one sister,  a couple of friends with whom I need pretty strong boundaries, and a lot of scarey aquaintences.