(no subject)
Random spewing
I avoid conflict.
I know I avoid conflict. I was always raised to pick my battles. That I couldn't win all of them, so to only fight the big ones.
There were some rough teenage years. Not my own. I-- I know it wasn't easy for either of my siblings. Especially my sister, because my dad didn't bother learning how to communicate. He didn't even start realizing how important it was until my brother came along and they FINALLY wrapped their minds around the fact that it WAS a massive issue, that they realized, maybe there's more to this than we know
There were a lot of fights.
It was really bad when I was in college. A lot of screaming matches that shook the house and ended in violence. Never my parents. The violence didn't come from them. But it really conditioned me. I learned that a lot of the fights I brought up were "my fault" because I brought it up in the first place, and I needed to pick my battles because the ones I was picking made their job harder.
It seemed like ANYthing I brought up as having issues with became my fault and I ended up being a lot of "keep my head down" and "It just isn't worth bringing up" because 9 times out of ten, it would end in a screaming match that put ME in bad places. I remember being told that, if I didn't want my money stolen from my wallet, and there were instances where twenties walked away, that maybe I should keep my purse in my room. Or that, maybe I could get a lock for my bedroom door to keep my stuff from ending up in somebody else's bedroom.
Sure. Whatever. Maybe they were right. Buy you know what? Both of those are REALLY big things to me, and I have a BIG thing about personal property, and it always made me feel incredibly estranged that THIS was the solution to those problems. To horde and hide and that maybe I should be proactive about my property. It made me feel like it was my fault. And then, I had no way of expressing that, because if I did, then I was the problem.
I'm not pointing fingers. Andrew has had to FIGHT to get to where he is now. The same for my sister. I was damn lucky, and they are both incredibly strong people. INCREDIBLY strong. I'm also not arguing, maybe they were the wrong battles to pick. But it happened over and over, over some issues that WERE important to me, to the point where, if I could let it roll off, maybe it was better to.
I'm still not pointing fingers. I'm terrified that it'll come off that I am. Or that I'm "wrong" to feel certain ways. Or that I'm playing the "Whose life is worse" game.
I don't do any of that, though. I'm super lucky.
Blah.
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