This is me, too.
When difficult child daughter began acting out though, I wondered whether I had done things I could not remember. SOMETHING was wrong. I mean, no one is a perfect parent, but I just could not see what husband and I could have done that could account for what was happening to us.
Still, there had to be something.
And I was the mom at home.
And we've all seen the Three Faces of Eve, right? Where the mother was so awful and the daughter had a thousand personalities.
And my mom was pretty awful.
Then, difficult child son brought addiction into the picture, which I refused to believe in either.
I could not let go of that sense of responsibility. Something was wrong, and though I had sworn with my whole heart, with everything I knew or had or would ever have, not to be my mother...I could never be sure, until I had been here on this site long enough to explore it all, that I hadn't slipped up somewhere and caused all this.
It is a strange thing to say, but I was freed from that when one of us ~ maybe you, MWM? ~ began posting about the genetic component to difficult child behavior.
And oh, hello, look at my family of origin.
And then, poor difficult child daughter diagnosis after diagnosis came in.
I cannot figure out today whether I should just be happy I ever put all these pieces together, or whether I should waste yet more time trying to be all self pitying about all these years, and about all the different ways I might have been stronger, and might have turned the tide for all of us that way, had I not been so focused on trying to figure out what I did.
Grrr.
Oh, well.
Cedar
P.S. Oh, excuse me. What I meant to say was: "My sister is like that."
Darn auto correct.
:O)
