"you are your parents' worst traits"
some people grew up with separated or divorced parents. my parents stuck with each other even though they didn't get along, and that made me someone who grew up wishing their parents would separate or divorce.
not to open discourse on nature vs nurture or anything like that, or the impact of having or not having functional parents growing up. but as i grow older, i'm starting to realize the good and bad things i've picked up from watching my parents' behavior as adults when i was a kid, and what i'm doing to not be like them.
things my parents did that i've realized i kind of do as an adult (i'm trying not to...)
- not finish what they start
- shut down in social settings1
- have bad travel habits2
- give my sister a free pass for her bad behavior/attitude
things my parents did that i try my best not to do as an adult and a partner
- yell; raise their voices at each other
- not communicate with each other when something is wrong (until it's a little too late)
- not know how to have small talk with each other during meal times without fighting
- fight about money
- grow credit card debt
- use up their retirement money
- not show affection with each other
i don't know, maybe it's because my birthday is soon, but i've been thinking about these things lately, and what things make me me, i guess. the title of this post was a random viral tweet i saw a year ago that kind of stuck with me, because it sounds really offhand but it also kind of hit the mark for me.
i'm not going to pretend i know what made my parents the way they were and still are, but i lived with and watched them long enough that identifying their worst traits comes pretty easy-peasy to me.
seeing some of these traits in me as an adult whose general theme and approach to life is "just figuring things out!" was a slight blow to my ego, but i'm not going to be delusional and say i'm doing this adulting thing better than they did. i think i'm making smarter financial decisions, like not having a baby, but that's as much my choice as it is me being limited by being queer in a not-so-queer-friendly place.
i don't know if the following will change anything, but i'd also like to list some of the relatively good things my parents did when we were kids that i still do now:
- documenting everything
- never afraid of trying new things
- always taking the time to learn about a skill, even if they ended up sucking at it
okay, i thought that was going to be a much longer list, but i ran out as soon as i typed the three items. i don't know, i guess parents are always a complicated topic. i dislike mine for reasons beyond the scope of this blog post, and yet i'm forced to reckon with the objective fact that the environment they put me in contributed significantly to the person i am now, decades later.
i am their worst traits, but i'm also trying my best not to repeat their mistakes. i guess when it comes down to it, we're all just trying our best. something competitive in me just wants my best to be miles better than theirs, though.
this was always more dad than mom. i'm trying to be more sociable without being nervous. i think i should not overthink these situations and just go with the flow, but sometimes i genuinely don't know if what i say adds anything to a group setting.↩
i don't know if this is entirely their fault. we never had much money to travel frequently, so the few times we did, i guess they didn't know how to handle it. i don't know.↩