Since I've been reading your tumblr and getting an idea of what you experienced in your early years I've been curious. What did you want to be when you grew up. Did you ever get to a place where you could think 'I wanna do such and such and this sucks?'
I don’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was interested in journalism, especially investigative journalism, but I never had the opportunity to pursue it, because my father didn’t care about me, and never encouraged any of my interests, and my mother was using me to chase her dream of acting fame. I frequently thought “this sucks” because going on auditions every day after school was never something I asked or wanted to do. My mother made me do it, because it was her dream, and she never gave me a choice. Up until the moment I ended contact with her, she maintained that (at seven years old) I asked her to give up her own career so I could be an actor.
Yep. She gaslighted me and told me that, at SEVEN YEARS-OLD I said “mommy, I don’t want to play with my friends. I don’t want to be a good student who will go to college someday. I don’t want to learn sports and develop my own interests. I want, as it turns out, quite miraculously, to do exactly what you want me to do. And I, at seven years-old, have chosen this career and life for myself. Now, let’s go sit in traffic for hours every day while you listen to talk radio in the car, because THAT is where a child wants to be.”
I think she believed the lie she told herself. She’s so selfish and incapable of seeing beyond the event horizon of her own desires, she put her wants ahead of my needs. And as a consequence, I don’t have parents. I’m pretty sure I never did.
I’m mostly a writer now, and a narrator, and I’m about to become a host (which is where I expect and hope my career will live until I retire). I’m happy and proud that I’ve managed to forge my own path away from the man who abused me and the woman who used me, but the pain and suffering that have come along with it have been really, really tough.
Parents should love and nurture their children, so their children can find their passions and live their best lives. If a man or a woman isn’t willing or isn’t able to set aside their own bullshit and their own issues to give their children the love and nurturing they deserve, they shouldn’t become parents.
I honestly have no idea why the man who was my father wanted to bring me into this world. He never loved me, never took an interest in me, never supported and encouraged me to be the best version of myself I could be. He treated me like I was an annoyance who was not worth his time and attention.Â
What kind of man does that? And what kind of mother stands by idly while he does it? What kind of mother allows her husband to hurt and neglect her child?
The people who were my parents were and are deeply selfish narcissists. I don’t regret ending contact with them, and my life is better and happier and less painful without them in it.Â
But I will always feel an endless void where I should have had parents who loved me, and that will hurt for the rest of my life.
