There’s four in the family. Mum, dad and two boys – one three the other a toddler. They’ve come to fish in the enclosed fishing park. Dad and mum delight in the thrill of easily catching the rainbow trout whilst the toddler remains strapped in his pusher and the three year old plays in the enclosed sand pit. Mum and dad are at the waters edge with the toddler behind them. I am standing watching and helping with the caught fish.
The toddler has a dummy in his mouth. He struggles to get out of his pusher, no one other me is aware of his struggles. He’s desperately straining himself to get free, but he doesn’t make a sound. He gives up, something has caught his attention – his mother’s voice at the fun of catching a fish.
The fish is dealt with and for the parents it’s back to fishing. The toddler struggles to free himself again. He makes a noise. His mother turns around and tickles his tummy. He squirms and giggles, she turns back to the fishing. Their other little boy is looking at them through the perspex door and has been doing so wanting to get out of the play area for some time. He doesn’t call out. His parents are too involved having their fun, he gives up and goes back to playing in the sand.
The toddler has thrown his dummy on the ground. His parents whilst waiting from me to attend to the next fish notice it, it’s sucked clean and returned to its rightful place. He seems happy with this stopping his struggles.
The young boy is again longing to come out. His father sees him, walks over and lets him out. He runs past his brother and over to a long line of small fishing rods used in the pond. His mother hurries after him, sees he’s about to start touching the rods and reels, grabs him lifting him away and convinces him that that best place from him to be is back in the sand pit. He seems okay about this idea. The fishing recommences.
The final fish is caught, the three year old is let out of the play area and off they go. The two parents are very happy about the very enjoyable time they had – mum even caught a fish! When usually she never catches anything.
Are they are a happy loving family? Do they all love each other? Do the parents love their children? This is what I want to portray in this blog. Superficially I would say yes. No one cried, they all had ‘fun’, so the parents declared, and the children mostly behaved themselves and did what they were told. And I’m sure the parents if asked would say yes they love their children – a BIG YES! And they would also probably say that yes their children are happy. They are happy, happy with each other and happy with their family and how everything is going. And if one were to ask the children if they are happy, would they too say yes?
So is this just a normal regular loving happy family?
Where I asked before I started my childhood repression healing I’d probably say yes, why not, everything seemed okay with everyone seemingly enjoying themselves. There were no fights, the parents seemed kind and caring, they didn’t chastise, humiliate, criticise, shit on their children like some other parents who come to the pond do. So yes, it all seems good, not great as the children weren’t included, but they were too young and it was probably better that they weren’t free to wander around being a nuisance nor get themselves into any trouble.
But now where I to ask myself the same question, it’s the things I didn’t notice or weren’t aware of before I started my childhood repression healing that greatly disturb me. Now I empathise with how terrible it feels being confined to your pusher unable to be free to wander where you like. Strapped in, all but caged in, without anyone – your parents – wanting to fully include you in their lives. The horror of only being a part person in your own family. A person that is coming into being but is forced to play a role as defined by being ‘acceptable’ by your mother and father. And so long as you play that role everything seems okay, but the truth is you feel unwanted, rejected – hated. Your own so-called loving parents don’t want to bother with you toddling all over the place. They have come to have their own fun all under the guise that it will be a fun thing for everyone to do, and yet you’re not included. They don’t care about you, not really care about you and your well-being, for if they did, then you would be the centre of their lives and everything would revolve around you, fishing or no fishing. They wouldn’t be turning their backs on you and getting on with having their fun.
And where you truly loved you wouldn’t be pushed off to the play area there to stay until your parents have had their fun. And when you came out you would be allowed under their watchful and caring guidance to explore the pond area, to look at all the rods and reels, to touch and play with them. No one else was at the pond, and you can’t accidentally fall in. The parent can stop the child from damaging the rods and reels not that this three year old would do any damage, he wasn’t like that. But no, he couldn’t be free to move around enjoying his new world together with his parents and his little brother, his life isn’t about himself, it’s about his parents, he just has to fit in with them. And how does it feel to just have to fit in with your parents? It feels awful. It all feels awful, and you feel very, very bad, right to the core of your being when you’re not allowed to be as you want to be.
So I look and feel-remember how the same sorts of things were done to me. Done to me by my ‘loving’ parents, ignorant people who are that way all because they too were treated that way, all being made to shut off the real and true person, to stop being able to fully and freely express all the feelings they have. The parents are still shut away in their little play pen worlds, now including the fishing pond. And being so do the same to their own children shutting them away in their own little false worlds.
So as I look deeper I wonder where is this so-called love? And what really is it? And all I can come up with is that it’s not love, or if it is then it’s something of a superficial, even artificial and belief generated love, but it’s not true or pure because it’s all based around denying personality expression.
So all I can conclude is that this contrived love is the best these little children will get. It’s the best their parents got. It’s the best I got. It’s the best anyone got or gets, even though it might appear some people got or get more of it than others.
So is it love or is it something else – hate perhaps? Or is hate too harsh a word? But what is the opposite to love? Or maybe it’s something in the middle, a sort of friendship – being together, sharing life together to some degree, even if it is in a self-denying negative state of mind and will. Or is it as my mother often said: ‘It’s just your lot, so get on with it, don’t worry about it, of course it’s love, of course I love you – I’m your mother!’.
We are not aware or in touch with our true feelings. We’ve never been allowed to have and express them. We’ve had to deny this part of ourselves. And what we’ve been left with we have learnt to call love, being loving, living in a happy loving family. But how much is real and how much is false? And how can we tell when we’re not aware or allowed to be aware of what we really feel and what we did feel during our forming years?
We live denying our true selves, and so deny our children their true selves. And we call this way of life ‘loving each other’. And this is what we have to become aware of, at least those of us who want to live true and come back to their true self.
I present such posts not as a judgement and criticism of us or of these specific individuals at the fishing pond – we’re all in the same boat and we’re all fucked, only in different ways – but to make it be known. To make it be said. It has to be said, it has to be brought out before it can be accepted, spoken about, and then dealt with – the truth seen. And it’s the cause and at the root of all our problems, of every bad feeling we have, and mostly we just accept this is right, normal, generally ‘good parenting’. And because we don’t want to do anything about our bad feelings so far as uncovering the truth of why we feel them, we mostly do as my mother advised and just GET ON WITH IT, wrongly believing there is nothing we can do.
And it’s all so sad, and it IS all so wrong, and there IS something we can do about it.
