I think a lot of the time my mom thought I was happy because I was good at finding ways to entertain myself, but the smile of being amused by a thing was a completely separate from happiness. I just remember being so sad, lost, afraid and helpless all the time.
My dad was different. I learned to smile, to pretend to be happy because the outcome of him thinking I was anything below euphoric was disastrous, it led to incredible breaches of privacy and trust.
I also just realized I’m scrolling Tumblr to force myself to not think about my childhood right now because I’m afraid that if I think too hard about it I’m gonna cry.
I learned yesterday that my mom is going to a recovery center for her own alcoholism. I know she’s an alcoholic, we’d talked about our addictions in the past, but it just clicked how many of my childhood memories of her are much easier to explain assuming she was toasted half the time.
Processing all this is using up so much energy for me that I don’t really have the patience for my own kids right now, which is making me feel guilty and thus using more energy.
