Wounds of a Stolen Childhood

Just take a breath in the body, say what it was like to not have parents who were attuned to what was happening with you while chaos was happening in the house.

I know by starting with this preamble, like, I'm already doing the thing I was doing, which is kind of protecting them, but there was a lot of love there. But they were so caught up in their own shit that it was just confusing. It was like things would be one way at one point during the day, and then they would be different the next hour. And with my dad, that was for alcoholism related reasons. And with my mom, that was for just life choices related reasons. So I'm just on standby and I don't know how to move. People would say, like, oh, he's so mature for his age. I resented that so much because I didn't want to be mature. I wanted to just scream and cry or whatever and just be like 10 years old. I didn't want to be, you know, wise beyond my years. There's some resentment for that.