My father told me I was too sensitive. I spent fifteen years trying to become someone who wasn't. Now I'm trying to find my way back.
— BurnerSoul
45d ago
◁
CHILDHOOD
what you carry from the beginning
// 3 voices in the void
Childhood is the original context — the one that set the parameters for everything that followed. The patterns absorbed before you had language to name them. The version of love you learned, the version of safety, the version of what you were worth — all of it arrived before you could evaluate or consent to it.
The examination of this is slow and often disorienting because the patterns feel like the way things are, not the way things were. The critical parent's voice that became your inner critic. The instinct toward certain dynamics in relationships. The things that felt normal that you later realized were not.
This thread holds the honest account — what was given and what was taken, without having to protect anyone's feelings, without having to balance it with the good things, without the caveat that they did their best.
// your voice
// the thread
I was the good kid because I was terrified. It took me until thirty to understand those aren't the same thing.
— SaltedHash
45d ago
My parents never fought in front of us. They were perfectly cold to each other for twenty years. I thought that was what love looked like.
— RustedKey
45d ago
// end of thread