Childhood trauma vs. parents in the trenches

I didn’t have the picture perfect childhood. From the outside I did. My family were masters of masking. We’d be put together from the outside but internally, everything was held together with a single piece of sticky tape and a paper clip. I blamed my parents for my “childhood trauma” because, well, who else am I supposed to saddle with that responsibility? 

And while they were the architects of my childhood, the older I get the more I realise, they were just regular people in the midst of failing, winning, trying and grappling with issues I could have never fathomed. 

 

Everyday heroes 

 

I was a daddy’s girl. My father’s shadow would have to compete with me for closest proximity to him because just like his right hand, I was next to him every minute. I was close to my mum too. Daily, if not hourly, art projects declaring my love for my mum were delivered to her like a creative stream of consciousness. Straight from my heart, onto the paper, shoved into her face immediately post completion. My parents were strict but loving. They could have fun but you didn’t question where the boundaries were. 

My dad was my hero. But at a very young age, it was revealed to me that he was not only human, he was severely flawed. He was an alcoholic. Not the chatty, super social, personality becomes louder and more hilarious type of alcoholic. The type that went missing for days, only to show up in the jail cells. The type that came home in the early hours of the morning and you didn’t know if he had come home to pass out or to bring the party home with him. The type that scared the living shit out of pretty much everyone. 

The experience I remember most clearly was around Christmas time when I was about six years old. Family and friends were over and the drinks were flowing. As the night went on, the mood shifted. My Dad had stepped past an invisible line. The line where something that would have been laughed at an hour ago all of a sudden became fighting words. I don’t remember what sparked it but I do remember everyone running. In all directions. They  were claiming the nearest vacant room and slamming the door shut. My mum, sister and I ended up in a bedroom and he was pounding on the door determined to get inside after he heard the lock snap shut. Mum had an old wooden sea chest with blankets in it and before she could do anything else, she emptied it, put me inside, lowered the lid and told me “no matter what you hear, don’t make a sound.” I was left there listening to the muffled chaos outside the door as the men lured him outside while I heard everyone's car doors slamming and taking off as quickly as they could. We used to joke about him being our very own Samoan version of Jake the Mus, but if you’ve seen the movie “Once were Warriors”, he’s a dead ringer. He didn’t get into the room that night. But I never forgot. 

He wasn’t just flawed, he was defective. My mum loved him so much that even the hidings I received as a kid, leaving bruises unfading for weeks, wasn’t enough of a reason for her to leave. The number of transgressions he’d committed was something she tried to ignore. She wanted us to have a dad around, forgive him for his shortcomings and mend as a family. I resented her for that. I had friends who had single mum’s as their only parent. Selfishly and perhaps immaturely, I wondered why my mum didn’t love me and my siblings enough to play that role too. Just like him, I saw her as flawed but in different ways. Too in love. Too forgiving. Forgetting too much. They both performed equal parts of the hero’s and villains in my childhood. Not because they set out to, because that was just how their human nature played out. As a young kid with little understanding of the stressors of marriage, kids, work, addiction and life in general, I held a very black and white lens over pictures that were nothing but shades of gray. 

Welcome to adulthood 

My parents eventually divorced when I was 17. He was leaving mum for his mistress, one of many over the course of their two and half decades long marriage. You couldn’t have coloured me surprised by the news but you could colour me whatever shade represents anticipatory relief. My father still lived in the house but would be leaving soon. I was waiting to exhale. The divorce was announced at a family meeting and for the first time in my life, I was given the opportunity to speak. Kids didn’t speak at family meetings, it was strictly a ‘listening only’ event for me my entire life. But I was 17, he was leaving. It was more of a “say your piece while you have the chance to” type of thing. So I did.

I felt like I was going to throw up and my hands were shaking like it was a two degree day outside instead of the warm sunny day that it actually was. Without looking up from my fidgeting fingers, I quickly spat out words before I chickened out all together. “I don’t think it’s right for you to do what you did to mum, or to us. You always told us to use common sense. I don’t see a lot of common sense in how you’ve behaved or in what you’ve done. I’m really disappointed in you.” Exhale. “Well, look who thinks they’re a big girl now and can talk like one” was his reply. My breathing halted. Even though we were outside, it felt like all the air in the universe had been sucked into a vacuum. 

When he finally moved out, I felt relief but also a strange void. I wasn’t prepared for it and like most teenagers with the unknown, I chose to fill it with anger. My mum fell into a depression and my life went from structured nuclear family to fending for myself. I spent my time trying to figure out why mum wasn’t getting out of bed and why  my father didn’t love me the way I wished he did. While mum processed a nearly 30 year long marriage coming to a less than satisfying conclusion, he didn’t bother to stay in contact. He called once and that was it. No birthdays, Christmas, holidays of any sort warranted a simple phone call from him. From there, my expectations of men were set. For the next decade, my bar for men was set so low, hell was looking down at it. 

Four years later, I’d be moving to Australia solo at the age of 20 with no plan other than to work at my job and figure it out. Instead of coming to see me before I left! he called the night before my flight. His request was for money, for help, for things I simply didn’t have. My answer was no and that was the last time we ever spoke. 15 years ago, not a peep. I realised the man I thought the sun revolved around wasn’t the hero I made him out to be. He was a deeply hurt, broken, desperate man who lost everything. It's a pretty devastating blow to watch your idol reduced to rubble, not just figuratively, almost literally. Health, money, mental capacity, family, career - gone. And no, there’s no comeback story there. His decline bottomed out and he’s still there. He was the person that fixed everyone else's problems and now he can’t call on one person, family or friend for support because he didn’t just burn every bridge, he blew them up, set fire to the ruins and buried the ash. 

My relationship with my mum was far more complicated. Year long bouts of not talking. Being too alike and too dissimilar at the same time made as both oil and water, and two peas in a pod. Over the years of struggling to maintain civility, we somehow worked our way back to a healthy relationship. It took me years to forgive some of the stuff that happened and I’m sure it’s the same on her end too. But I realised, I had to meet my mum where she was. She wasn’t the only adult in the room anymore. I couldn’t expect her to be the only one leading the conversations, figuring stuff out, compromising, doing the grown up thing and extending not just compassion but grace to the other person. Our journey has been rough and incredibly insightful.

Step back, refocus

 

At 36, today I see my parents as completely different people to who they were while I was growing up. Not just because they are literally different people, but because now, who they were back then has context. I didn’t just get my eyebrows and dark hair from my father. I inherited his struggle with alcoholism and addictions. While going through my own struggle, my eyes were opened to the grip it had on him. That doesn’t excuse anything but it damn sure made me see things from a different angle. He was a man who achieved a lot and had many great qualities, but mental health struggles combined with addictions slowly eroded everything he created for himself. That’s not just sad, that’s terrifying. Terrifying enough for me to become sober six years ago. 

Becoming a mother naturally makes you see your own mum differently. I realised why my mum wanted us to have a dad around, to maintain the family unit and how she looked past certain things. Could I do that with my husband and kids? Never. But I no longer hold that against her. I can see that those years of my childhood was her in the trenches. Trying her best to love her kids, support her husband and make sure everything looked fine to the outside world. I used to see that as weak, now I know how much strength that must have taken. Wearing the pain in silence and holding it all together, even if it was only with a single piece of sticky tape and a paper clip. 

Today, I see my parents as more than just the couple that raised me. I see them as flawed, passionate, interesting, desperate, loving, hopeful, broken, determined people who are living life for the first time like the rest of us. They were never just characters in my story. They were main characters living through their own.