The post that was thinking back to its childhood

I was thinking about my childhood this morning. I received a text in the early hours from my Dad telling me he was coming to the UK (he lives on the other side of the world) in a few week’s time but it was just a flying visit so there was no time to visit.

Yeah, no worries man. It’s not like we’re father and so… oh, wait.

No, I’m only joking. I’m a big enough boy now to not need his Dad around.

However, I confess I was a little bit… I don’t know… hurt? Disappointed? I see him once a year tops as it is and can’t actually remember the last time I did. But then I realised I shouldn’t be surprised.

He’s kind of always been that way.

And that’s when I started thinking back to when I was a child. My strongest memories of my childhood are of being miserable and sad. Of my parents constantly, and I mean constantly fighting. Not physically. But in every other way.

Shouting and screaming at each other day in and day out followed by days and days of them not talking to one another.

And when they were, you never know when the next World War was going to break out, the only thing you were damn sure of was that it was never far away.

I can’t remember what they fought about to be honest. It never seemed like anything in particular.

I remember things being thrown at each other. Cups and plates smashing. Food and drink being hurled. If the battle broke out during a meal time, you’d have to watch your head (and guard your food) because if that got hurled, you’d be going to bed hungry.

I remember often wanting to step in, get off the top stair where I was listening to them swearing violently at each other, go down and scream at them to shut the hell and to please please just separate for everyone’s benefit.

But I never plucked up the courage, though I really wish I had.

When they finally did separate, I was about 16 years old and I remember feeling so relieved.

I sort of remember feeling sad about it as well though I was happy it had happened. Despite that, I started getting into drugs and doing much worse at school. At the time, I thought it had nothing to do with anything that was going on at home. Looking back, I guess it was kind of obvious this was my way of escaping it.

I had to witness my Mum being really weird towards my Dad in an attempt to convince him not to leave. It was tragic and pathetic. I thought so at the time and I still do now.

After seeing this text this morning and then trying to back to sleep (it was like 4:30am), my mind wandered in the way that they do at that time in the morning and I started thinking about how much a childhood like mine has an impact on adult relationships – whether that’s friends or love interests.

Now, I’m not saying it’s all their fault or anything like that but I suspect that on a subconscious level, there has been an impact. Maybe contributed to my resistance to having relationships with anyone. Of course, it’s impossible to know for sure and I never will.

I know, people have much much worse upbringings than I had and probably go on to have healthy relationships. I’m really not trying to absolve myself of any blame here. Rather, I’m considering what impact it may have had, if any.

You are the result of your personality plus your environment, after all.

I suspect it’s contributed to my singleness, occasional lack of desire to want a partner, tendency to see having someone as a hassle rather than a blessing. I’ve never had any desire to get married and I don’t see that changing.

Nor can I see myself ever wanting a child. On that front, I always think how much I hated school, how hard I found it to make friends, and then how fucking shitty it was at home and I think, why on earth would I want to put someone else through that? Especially someone I love? It’d be painful for the both of us so on a logical level, it makes no sense.

And marriage? Yeah, my vision of marriage is waiting for the next fight to happen followed by the next bout of silent treatment, and regularly seeing a sofa turned into a bed to sleep on. The level of ‘shitness’ felt as a result of that environment far outweighs the level of joy felt as a result of a happy marriage in my opinion.

Anyway, I just thought it was an interesting notion to ponder. I bet there is some interesting stuff about this sort of thing on the interwebs so I might do some Googling later.

Cool, so now that’s off my chest.

Have a good evening, folks.

N x