The Truth- Long Story Short

People say ignorance is bliss, I guess that's completely true.

Because no matter what, my mother cannot seem to connect the reason for my behaviour as a child. She knows that I never smiled and that I always cried when she gad to leave me. She knew that I could never get rid of my security blanket and that I woke up in the middle of the night and needed to sleep near my parents for the longest time, but she can't put the pieces together to figure out why I did these things. She doesn't understand that the things my parents did, every action they made as I was a child, deeply impacted me and who I am today. She doesn't understand at all how her behavior can affect my quality of life in any way and what the effect is now.

I made her fill in the pieces because I did boy want my perspective to be incredibly skewed or biased (even though most of the time I am a heavy realist who sees things literally as they are even though I like to play with words), and by no means was my childhood, not my brother's for the matter, normal.

When my brother was born at 3 months, my parents had my grandma take him to Taiwan to live because they couldn't take care of him since they had to work all of the time.

My mother didn't even get my joke when I interjected and said that my brother and I were just check marks to be crossed out. She just laughed and blatantly agreed at my joke that indeed we were that. I'm never really sure if she understands when I speak in English to her because of the language barrier.
Okay so after a year, he was brought back. So ever since we can remember, it's true, they were never around. So that's that chapter.

Then I was born when my brother was 5. My grandma wanted to take me overseas, just the same, but this time my mother didn't want to because she wanted to keep her babies with her.

But throughout everything, they were always working and had other people take care of us.

I clearly made her specifically explain, so I would not get it wrong. She put mee immediately in school the moment I was potty trained. So at one year old I began school. No wonder I remember being carried in blankets all the time in a car, waking up getting dressed and going to school.

She also said that she always made are she had someone there to take care of me and my brother. She found different neighbors, nannies, and tutors while they were always away.

"Shit, so you guys really were gone ever since I can remember. You were never there, no one was."
"No, we were there."
"No, all I remember was crying alp of the time because you weren't there."
"You weren't always crying, you weren't crying with me."
"That's because you were there, with me, that I wasn't crying, you guys weren't there." (see the disconnection there that she can't seem to get?)
"But we always made sure someone was there to take care of you guys"

Those last words are what haunt me. There's a difference between having your parents there taking care of you and then having a series of related bodies, authority figures, taking care of you out of obligation because this is the way it has to be.

But she said they didn't have the time to take care of us.
Typical. I told her she should've waited then. "Then you shouldn't have had us." (it's of no wonder why my generation is so screwed up) She said, but they wanted babies. We were all part of the carefully thought out plan. The list to be checked off.

I use my sense of humor as a huge buffer when speaking to people. Especially those related by blood. It makes it easier, I feel, for them to handle my bluntness and harsh honestly at times. Softens the passive aggressive blow, if you will.

It's no wonder I am the way I am and how I can form any healthy relationship/friendship in my adult (yet still very immature) life. And how I can't seem to isolate my emotions sometimes so I end up feeling like everything's my fault.

So I actually didn't get it wrong with my childhood perspective and I actually remember the right things quite clearly.

See, my therapist thought that my perspective would be quite skewed or biased given that I only have ny own experiences to go off of, she doesn't know how much of a die hard realist I really am. (why does everyone seem to assume that I live in a fantasy world? I know what's real)

But everything in my childhood and upbringing was in fact worse than I originally thought it to be.

Yet, rather than feel bad for me, I feel for my brother instead, because all of my tragedy already knew. But I seriously misjudged him on the basis of our childhood and the great tradition of the lack of communication our family has enabled and continued to spurn for generations. I respect my brother so much now for the way he is. We misjudged each other. And I am in awe how much more well adjusted he has come out of all this despite our childhood. Because what we remember is just part of the real picture that was even worse than what we could've ever imagined without the help of my mother completing the storyline puzzle.

Funny how childhood blurs the lines for you because it has to protect you from something.

But my parents are in no way bad people. In fact, they have the best hearts and I am very lucky for everything they have given me. They love me very much, it was a different time then. They immigrated here without anything and had to make something out of nothing. I'm very lucky. It could always be worse. All childhoods are good and bad. It's just something we learn to accept and hopefully can move on from.