It's A Good Thing My Parents Are Dead

Most people, in Britain and the USA at least, become restive and at odds with their parents in their teens, and leave home at 16 or 18 or 20 - this is the normal start to adult life, and usually leads to confidence, independence, a career, a partner, a family of one's own.

I never did, having been robbed of my confidence by my father's extraordinary combination of furious bullying combined with his needy insistence that I forgive him for his anger, which left me in the position of not being allowed  to be angry with him, yet still subject to his fury. Indeed, it meant that I became morally responsible for the outcome of his fury. I also became responsible for protecting my mother psychologically from the realisation that she had thrown her life away on my father and that his influence on both our lives had been malign. I think that had he realised what he was doing he would have been very sad and sorry, but he never did.

I never left home.

Given that I never left home, I suspect I needed my parents to die for me to get to a place where I can move forward. Sadly for me this happened very late in life, when I am ill from the effects of incorporating my father's negativity and the self-hate his treatment engendered in me.

Nevertheless, it is a good thing that my parents are dead. At least now at 50 I have a bit of a chance, even if it's a limited chance, for a little contentment and an end to loneliness, for a little abbreviated experience of life before the end of my time.

Mam and Dad, I am weeping, and my tears are as much for your wasted lives as for my own. At least I have a little chance now, but you never will have the chance to put things right for yourselves, not ever throughout all the long aeons to come unto the end of eternity.