Relationships in Journal

What are they?
Recently I’ve come to the realization that they are not what I thought they were.

Threats. Obedience. Force. Punishment. Exchange of goods or services. Appeasement.

My entire life has up to the point of leaving my childhood home, been comprised of entirely these types of interactions. None of these things can be remotely considered to be part of a healthy relationship. So ubiquitous was my experience, that the few and far between instances of real conversation and respectful interaction stand out like beacons in my memory. They are like incomprehensible (but beautiful) islands in the sea of my life.

Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t have a “bad childhood”, by most standards. In fact, my childhood was among the best that I know of. And that is very, very sad.

I’ve been thinking about what comprises a relationship between two human beings. First and foremost, it is voluntary.
Yes, voluntary. No party can be forced by threat, violence, coercion, or by life circumstance; otherwise the relation is not truly voluntary. In every instance where a relationship is not voluntary, it falls into the category of Master and Slave, or Powerful and Appeaser, or Haver and Receiver. Because if it were up to either party at one point in the relationship to leave their partner for someone else, they would do so; ie, any person or supplier of resources may serve the same role. And so the other party is simply fulfilling some unmet need. This is not to say that neither party would have nothing to gain from a relationship. It cannot be a relationship without first being mutually voluntary.

So by definition, the parent child “relationship” is not a relationship at all. It is not voluntary on the part of the child.

So you might say, the child would die without her parents! How can an infant possibly volunteer for a relationship with it’s mother? And I reply- it doesn’t. At the prenatal, antenatal and infant stage, the child is incapable of volunteering. The mother must provide life sustaining care- as even the most base animals provide their young.
It is only when the child can express a preference that volunteerism becomes possible.

Now, obviously every preference of a child should not be given. Not only is this bad parenting, it itself does not constitute a real relationship. Appeasement to an authority (even if it is a child) is just that- not a real interaction, but a mere reaction to a stimuli that could come from any replaceable external source. Ie, if the person is replaceable, you aren’t having a relationship with them.

Now. I do not have kids. yet. I speak from my own experience from being a child. This isn’t to condone or to support any way of child rearing. It’s just my own thoughts lain bare.

My mother left me.

There. I said it. She abandoned me. It’s so difficult to write this. It feels like my lungs are on fire. She used to tell me that I was the most precious thing in the world to her. But I could see she was lying. Because she left me. She was never there.
I know now that I was put in childcare at an early age. First with grandparents. Then with complete strangers with other completely strange children. So my experience is validated, I suppose. My mom actually apologized to me recently (unprovoked) for doing this. She admitted she was wrong. She chose to work full time instead caring for me because of the health insurance.

It’s sort of stunning to come face to face with what you’re worth in your mother’s eyes.

Lot of good it did for us(me).

Enough for now.