Feeling like an orphan even if you’re not

I had to Google this because I wasn’t aware of anyone else who has this experience or who understands. I could only really find one Reddit thread about this and one article.

Imagine having parents who are still alive but who are so indifferent to you that it’s as though they are dead. I wonder if anyone else understands that feeling? It has been like that for my whole life, but I daren’t never say it out loud, for fear of censure, embarrassing them if they ever found out, but more that I feel ashamed of them and trying to explain this to other people.

I’d never experienced what it is like to be in a real family until I met the Polish Bear and met his family. They are there for each other and will drop everything to help each other with whatever they need. It’s real care when the chips are down and if you need help, you know that you can rely on them.

In my own family this simply does not exist. It’s as though my parents (and to some extent my brother and sister) are about extracting value from other people, economic, emotional and practical value, but not about reciprocity, genuine mutual care and concern.

I now recognise that as a form of ‘me-first’ narcissism, but when I was a child and a teen I just assumed that was normal and that everyone’s family was like that. It wasn’t until I got into my teens and started reading widely a whole lot of books that I realised how wrong this way of being was and I became my own person.

I wouldn’t say they don’t care, they do but in a superficial way and mostly just about appearances and how they appear to people outside of the family.

In other words, so long as they can make big statements to friends about how their kids are going – ‘oh [ #1] doing well and is earning XYZ amount and living in [insert impressive suburb], ‘Oh [ #2] is doing well only has benders every couple of weeks now.’

That’s the shaky ground on which they say to people – my family is going well.

Some examples of their indifference:

Being in the company of very questionable people in my late teens and asking for their help to get home (borrowing someone else’s mobile phone to do so because I’d lost mine) and being told they they couldn’t help me and couldn’t come and get me.

Similarly as a young person, going missing for a few days and having a friend notify the police about that and being worried about me because my own parents didn’t think to do it themselves.

Finding it amusing and cool that I developed a fondness for drugs as a teen and just allowing me to get deeper and deeper into that without telling me to stop or getting me help. Instead it was my friends who told me it’s bad and to stop immediately and and showed me where to get help.

Allowing siblings of mine to be abused, physically, emotionally and sexually and not doing anything about it, just turning a blind eye to it occurring and pretending it was not occurring.

My brother (in more recent years) nearly dying several times from the drink and they really waited until he was about to die before stepping in and telling him to get his shit together and helping him to go to rehab.

Most recently: being told that despite having a massive mansion of a house and a lot of liquid assets that they would be selling off all of these assets and using them for retirement and that they would not be passing on any inheritance to any of us. This means that it’s highly likely that none of their three children would be able to afford to buy a home, as they have.

I think a fair amount of my life I’ve made concessions and allowances for this from my parents but I think I’ll just stop with that now.

I will stop seeing them and stop making an effort with them. This goes against my own ethos though because I am a giving person, I will give everything of my time, energy, love and even money to ensure that the ones I love are safe, comfortable and happy. But I realise that it’s basically my partner and my friends who I am talking about with that, because I know they would do the same for me.

By being selfish back with my parents it essentially validates their own selfish way of being, but I am not sure I have much choice but to protect myself from the deep dysfunction.

There’s a giant well of sadness and anger inside of me all of this but writing this here makes me feel so much lighter and surer that this is the right decision.

I will say that I have a wonderful person in my life who is really kind to me and who shows me genuine care – we show each other deep love and care, we have a lot of laughs, adventures and good times.

And he is very close with his family even though they are on the other side of the world. At the beginning, this was like a beautiful novelty to see how his family are, but now I consider this to be the norm and my own family to be the abnormal ones. I am so very lucky to understand love and care and I consider this to be the best thing to ever happen to me in my life.

Anyway I write this not to get sympathy or people to feel sorry for me or whatever but just simply to get it out. Life feels awfully confusing to me a lot of the time and I have a lot of difficulty trusting people who I don’t know and I think this is mostly because of my early life. I write this simply for my future self to say – cut yourself some slack, give yourself a break and just be kind to yourself. You’ve been through an early life that was just really shit and so shaking off that shit has been a long and arduous process, if it comes back sometimes just go easy on yourself girl. That’s it! That’s the post. Thanks for listening.