One good thing about having bad parents
Having daddy issues, mommy issues, and family issues in general is a huge nerf to anyone’s development. I’ve experienced it firsthand, and I’ve also seen it and talked about it with others—especially with those who don’t share the same trauma as me.
For a long time I carried the role of the victim (not anymore, thanks to therapy), and although I had my reasons for walking around with the banner of the traumatized kid, the best thing I could have done was take responsibility for my life and my future.
Once I did that, everything improved. And one of the benefits of healing what had to do with my childhood and adolescence was beginning to see my parents as simply people, not as those glorified figures of authority and responsibility that most of us see when we’re young.
Toward the end of my adolescence and the beginning of my 20s, I was consumed by anger for having been an abandoned child, especially when I started facing the first challenges of adulthood and their support was scarce or nonexistent. Feelings of frustration dominated me whenever I remembered how much my parents had failed me throughout my short life. It was a mindset that gave me license to disrespect them, to do or not do whatever I wanted.
I judged them a lot for several years, analyzing in my free time and in therapy why they had treated me the way they did.
The funny thing is that they didn’t care, nor did it affect them nearly as much as it affected me. In the end, I was the one carrying the weight of their mistakes and the sadness. Their lives kept moving forward, while mine paused every time I reopened the wounds.
Ironically, once I started seeing them as human beings with flaws and virtues, not only did the anger and sadness diminish, but I also began using their mistakes as life lessons. Like a manual that, instead of focusing on the steps toward success, warns you about the traps you shouldn’t fall into.
- What led them to fail in their romantic relationships?
- Why do they have the financial problems they have?
- How do they handle their emotions, and how do they express them?
- What were the reasons behind the way they acted as parents?
These questions are just an example of the countless things I’ve asked myself about my life experience with them.
And at some point I had to accept something very painful for someone with these kinds of traumas. I had to accept that I was acting like them; like everything that had hurt me so much and that I had judged while growing up. I hurt others the same way I had been hurt.
But thanks to their bad example, I’ve been able to stop myself in time. On several occasions I’ve noticed how their life experience and my wounds have actually benefited me, especially in my relationships, my professional life and how I treat others in general. They’ve even served as fuel to reach several life goals I never imagined I would achieve at my age.
Would my life have been better if my parents had been responsible? Of course. I know nothing is perfect, but when I compare my life with that of friends whose parents were there to support them at key moments of their development, I can see the differences, especially in areas like self-esteem, confidence, and their mental health in general.
In the end, it’s about getting something good out of the bad, and I understand that not every case is like mine. It’s just something I’ve been thinking about recently, because other people’s mistakes have been very useful to me lately.
If my mom or dad read this, they’d probably say something stupid like, “See, son? Everything we did was good for something, even the bad", trying to downplay their actions, haha.
It’s funny, because one of the reasons that led me to the conclusions I reach in this post was realizing they were never going to hold themselves accountable for their actions. And every mistake they’ve ever admitted to, they’ve done so halfway.
So many wounds in this world could heal if people simply learned how to apologize.