Therapy thoughts

I went to therapy today. I feel like I should get a gold star for that most weeks.

I'm glad that when my life was less chaotic and insane than it is right now ( yes there was a time)  I found a therapist who got adoption, attachment and trauma. Luckily for me she is sticking it out through this super insane portion of my life where I frequently feel as though life is never ever going to get to better. She is hopeful, I am not so hopeful but every now and then I have a good day and think this time will eventually pass and things will get better. Today is not that day.

So while we were talking about all the damn trauma in my childhood she made a comment about my parents that got me thinking about why I have made so many of the choices I have made as an adult. So many things in my childhood were chaotic and crazy and as an adult I searched out stability and relationships that were safe with little risk because I was terrified of losing anyone that I cared about.

I just wanted to have people who loved me.

The thing is, my parents did a really shitty job. That isn't news to me but what I hadn't ever really thought about was how if they had just changed some of the smallest things the outcomes for me might have been so different...

That hadn't really ever occurred to me before. I hadn't ever really though about the trajectory of how things went and what might could have been different.

Not that I can go back and change it.

But as I struggle with trauma that I now need to work through, I can't help but wonder what would have been if things had been different. If I lived in a world where they talked about the elephant in the room instead of ignoring it and hoping it would go away. I have always said that my parents did the best they could with a crappy situation  because addictions, trauma, and PTSD were all part of their lives. But, the thing is, they could have done better. They could have stepped up and changed things and when I challenged them as a young adult, they could have apologized. They could have been there for me as a kid instead of leaving me all the time so that they could go off to wherever with little regard for what that meant for me or who was supposed to be taking care of me.

But they didn't.

And here I am, an adult working through things I didn't remember happening until now. I don't have the safe loving family I longed for, instead I have a partner who can't see or hear my pain and kids who are so broken that loving them with my whole heart was not enough for them to heal.

But that is not the end of my story. I am not the person I was two years ago but I am still here.

I am changing the endings. I am talking and apologizing and seeing what I did not see before. Not because I was not paying attention but because Kevin was so manipulative that he would have found a way to hurt them regardless of what I did.

I tried so hard for my kids.

I wish someone had done that for me.