To Be List

Today’s prompt from the 30-day blog challenge intrigued me.

“People come to your blog or website to learn from you,” Frank Taub exclaims. “So teach them something! Maybe a step-by-step guide …. ” Right.

That got me thinking.

I write about healing from an abuse-riddled childhood with addicted parents. Essentially I write about how I got from there to here where life is now stable, happy, and largely peaceful. Quite the leap if I do say so myself.

Frank Taub is right. There were steps to get here.

1. Be born.

2. Ensure one (or preferably both) parents are addicted to some kind of substance.

3. Make super sure they both come from dysfunctional childhoods that were riddled with abuse and neglect.

4. Try to be born into a professional, middle-class family where it was very important to keep up appearances.

5. Have the parents make their primary values making money and acquiring prestige.

6. Have the parents believe: “Children essentially raise themselves.” Another handy belief would be: “Children’s characters are formed by the age of seven and cannot change in adulthood.”

7. Make the parents generally oblivious to the pain or damage their addictions are causing.

8. Be sure your parents don’t take your fears and concerns seriously and dismiss you when you raise them.

9. Push a parent to a suicide attempt. (Having both try to off themselves would be excessive.)

10. When their marriage fails after the suicide attempt, either have them abandon the children or inappropriately parentify them. Now the kids are cooking the meals, doing the shopping and keeping the house clean. So Mommy or Daddy can rest.

11. Withdraw all financial support and necessaries of life in their mid-teens so the kids will have to figure out life and how to make money for themselves.

12. Expect those kids to have a mountain of issues in adulthood that are left for them to work through and overcome.

13. When they raise complaints about their childhood with their parents as adults, have the parents demonize them and make sure everyone knows what bitter disappointments they are.

14. Make sure the parents lie, refuse to take responsibility for any of your troubles, and are there for you only if and when you succeed. Do not object to this.

15. Finally, after years of pain and confusion, and destruction in both your personal and professional, walk away. Leave those parents to the beds they have made for themselves. Love them but from a distance. Preferably a great distance.

SUMMARY: Have kids. Settle down. Start writing about your childhood. WARNING: This could well take years. Your parents may actually have to die before you are able to do this. This is not unusual and does not mean you a bad person.