I think I could fill up my pool with a dripping faucet faster than I can read this freakin' book. It's is so irritatingly, maddeningly picking on a what seems to be a very raw nerve.
What has me up tonight is the constant theme in this book, and to be fair, in most pop psychology, that the root of all evil, all the quirks and problems with how we are built, stems from our childhood. Go see any therapist and just like the ubiquitous kleenex box in the soothingly lit room, questions about your childhood, and how you perceived your parents and your siblings, will be asked. These questions serve as the tea leaves for them to build the story of why you are the way you are.
Was your mother needy or jealous, neglectful and self-absorbed or a saintly martyr? Were you the middle child? An only child? Last born like me? Answer those questions and you'll find the reasons why you behave the way you do. Do you crave attention, seek out conflict, have an air of superiority or disassociate when times get tough? Well, how could you not, you were reacting to the way you were raised! Pull together the pieces of your childhood, read those tea leaves, and the reasons, dare I say, excuses will be laid out for you.
This approach makes victims of children. And, by default, the parents become the criminals - the villains. I look at my girls and wonder what stories they will have to tell. What faults in my parenting will leach into their souls when they are 30 years old? Will they remember their childhood as a frenetic, chaotic time or with that unrealistic rosy filter we drape on the moments of time that we want to keep precious?
It also takes the faults of the child and plops it squarely on the parent's lap. No matter how old the poor parents are. When my girls are 30, I hope to remember to tell them to suck it up. So what, we didn't do a perfect job. So what, we fought, we had problems. If you have some unresolved or deep seated problem with how you were raised and you are an adult, it's on you now. Most parents do their best, and sometimes it is woefully inadequate.
What is rubbing me raw with this book - with this line of thinking - is that people get sick because of the way they are built. Which may be true. But the second part of this thesis is that your childhood is the factory that builds you, so it is to blame for all your glitches and problems. It's such a cop out, just like the drunk driver who pleads not guilty because they are an alcoholic. Or the abused child who grows up to be an abuser.
People who had great childhoods owe it to their kids to do even better than their parents did, but people who didn't have great childhoods get to see, first hand, the consequences of bad decisions, bad morals. And, those lessons are expensive if you have to learn them yourself.
* * *
Augusten Burroughs, Running With Scissors
"If you have one parent who loves you, even if they can’t buy you clothes, they’re so poor and they make all kinds of mistakes and maybe sometimes they even give you awful advice, but never for one moment do you doubt their love for you–if you have this, you have incredibly good fortune.
If you have two parents who love you? You have won life’s Lotto.
If you do not have parents, or if the parents you have are so broken and so, frankly, terrible that they are no improvement over nothing, this is fine.
It’s not ideal because it’s harder without adults who love you more than they love themselves. But harder is just harder, that’s all."
