I just wanna hug so tight and never let go… adulthood is so scary 😭
I think with time, trauma can get covered up… it fades…
But the problem now is that I’m not a kid anymore and there are expectations/responsibilities
It used to be that we’d just not say anything sad… like for example she might be like “do you wanna travel somewhere?” or like “what do you wanna be when you grow up?”
But the “what do you wanna be when you grow up?” now just makes me cry… because the “when you grow up” part is now “what is your plan for the future?” as in… “what are you gonna do this year”, not “a decade into the future”… I haven’t even fixed my deppression just yet… and its partly caused by her… and she’s already accusing me of being lazy and “faking depression” and told me to stop “using depression as an excuse”, sometimes the “adulthood” talks come up as we’re cuddling…
So I get a mix of happiness and nostalgia and the crushing reality of aduldhood and her disappointment…
So its what I’d call a “bittersweet cuddle” (this should be an official dictionary term lol)
I think you have it worse tho, since you had to go no contact.
Idk what ever the fuck even is our relationship anymore…
I was just hugging her so tightly and she was like: “do you just never wanna grow up” lol
Idk what’s with her, she seems to likes me more when I do cuddling… and she be like “I love you” and then asks “do you love me” every day… idk what to even say…
I think she’s seeking validation for her decision to give birth to me. I think me being “successful” is one of the ways she feels that she didn’t “waste” all this time on me… or you know… the cuddling to feel loved so that she still feels like she made the right call to give birth to me…
“I think you have it worse tho, since you had to go no contact.”
Nah, I don’t think it’s productive to directly compare experiences in a quantitative way like this. That often just ends up with us telling ourselves that we’re not allowed to struggle just because we think other people have it worse. Even if that were true, diminishing our own struggles doesn’t do anything to help the other person to carry their burden.
I prefer to think of people’s struggles as being so qualitatively different that it’s often nonsensical to compare two experiences and say that one person has it better or worse than the other — it’s neither, just different (and sometimes relatively lightweight struggles hit us especially hard if they happen to require skills that we aren’t great at, or if all of our life challenges are draining the same fuel tank at once).
For instance, being no contact with my mum means I have the space that I can love and appreciate all the good she did for me, whilst healing from the hurt she caused. I’m not good with uncertainty, so although it stings that I had to do that, it was a lighter burden than trying to hold up her mental health on my own. At the time, making the choice to cut her off felt like something I had to do because I was too weak to endure the ways she hurt me, but to a friend whose parents are similar to mine, I seem incredibly strong because I did something that she wishes she could do, but she feels too weak to take such decisive action (meanwhile, I am impressed by the strength she shows in trying her best to maintain her boundaries while keeping her parents in her life). It’s all relative, is my point.
I think the only reason why I would ever want to put two experiences side by side to compare is when it’s being done in a manner to relate better to other people. It’s like I said in my original comment: the concrete specifics of your situation are quite different from my own, but despite that, I found your original comment highly relatable. There’s a few vibes in your more recent comment that are relatable too. I found that interesting, and it made me feel a sense of solidarity with you — which often helps me to bear the pain of my own struggles.
Shit’s messy, but at least I’m not the only person in the world who gets what it’s like to have the baggage of a fucked up upbringing
I cuddled with her just now…
Oooh it feels so good, she told me she loves me…
I just wanna hug so tight and never let go… adulthood is so scary 😭
I think with time, trauma can get covered up… it fades…
But the problem now is that I’m not a kid anymore and there are expectations/responsibilities
It used to be that we’d just not say anything sad… like for example she might be like “do you wanna travel somewhere?” or like “what do you wanna be when you grow up?”
But the “what do you wanna be when you grow up?” now just makes me cry… because the “when you grow up” part is now “what is your plan for the future?” as in… “what are you gonna do this year”, not “a decade into the future”… I haven’t even fixed my deppression just yet… and its partly caused by her… and she’s already accusing me of being lazy and “faking depression” and told me to stop “using depression as an excuse”, sometimes the “adulthood” talks come up as we’re cuddling…
So I get a mix of happiness and nostalgia and the crushing reality of aduldhood and her disappointment…
So its what I’d call a “bittersweet cuddle” (this should be an official dictionary term lol)
I think you have it worse tho, since you had to go no contact.
Idk what ever the fuck even is our relationship anymore…
I was just hugging her so tightly and she was like: “do you just never wanna grow up” lol
Idk what’s with her, she seems to likes me more when I do cuddling… and she be like “I love you” and then asks “do you love me” every day… idk what to even say…
I think she’s seeking validation for her decision to give birth to me. I think me being “successful” is one of the ways she feels that she didn’t “waste” all this time on me… or you know… the cuddling to feel loved so that she still feels like she made the right call to give birth to me…
(just rambling…)
Nah, I don’t think it’s productive to directly compare experiences in a quantitative way like this. That often just ends up with us telling ourselves that we’re not allowed to struggle just because we think other people have it worse. Even if that were true, diminishing our own struggles doesn’t do anything to help the other person to carry their burden.
I prefer to think of people’s struggles as being so qualitatively different that it’s often nonsensical to compare two experiences and say that one person has it better or worse than the other — it’s neither, just different (and sometimes relatively lightweight struggles hit us especially hard if they happen to require skills that we aren’t great at, or if all of our life challenges are draining the same fuel tank at once).
For instance, being no contact with my mum means I have the space that I can love and appreciate all the good she did for me, whilst healing from the hurt she caused. I’m not good with uncertainty, so although it stings that I had to do that, it was a lighter burden than trying to hold up her mental health on my own. At the time, making the choice to cut her off felt like something I had to do because I was too weak to endure the ways she hurt me, but to a friend whose parents are similar to mine, I seem incredibly strong because I did something that she wishes she could do, but she feels too weak to take such decisive action (meanwhile, I am impressed by the strength she shows in trying her best to maintain her boundaries while keeping her parents in her life). It’s all relative, is my point.
I think the only reason why I would ever want to put two experiences side by side to compare is when it’s being done in a manner to relate better to other people. It’s like I said in my original comment: the concrete specifics of your situation are quite different from my own, but despite that, I found your original comment highly relatable. There’s a few vibes in your more recent comment that are relatable too. I found that interesting, and it made me feel a sense of solidarity with you — which often helps me to bear the pain of my own struggles.
Shit’s messy, but at least I’m not the only person in the world who gets what it’s like to have the baggage of a fucked up upbringing