Day 38: My Parents

I do not wish to be disrespectful towards my parents, but I have to do a post about them. My childhood obviously plays a huge part in who I am today. And I like the person I am, finally, and Andrew loves me. So I have to “thank” my parents for certain things that contributed to my life. I want to try to find silver lining and put a positive spin on things…

My parents fought a lot. Heck, they STILL fight a lot. It’s just what they do. It was tough to watch growing up, and I admit there were nights I’d lay in bed listening and I’d cry and cry. Everything was intense and name-calling was brutal. I eventually learned that while everyone’s parents fought, not everyone’s parents fought the way MY parents did. I was jealous. I was jealous of normal family dinners and family vacations and just a mostly loving environment. The good thing that ended up coming out of that is that, while I didn’t have parents to look up to with regards to how a marriage should be, I did have an example of what NOT to do. I knew I didn’t want to be like that with my husband, and I know Andrew will agree with me when I say we are NOT like that. I have never yelled at him, and he has never yelled at me. We argue, of course: we’re human. But we don’t raise our voices to each other and we don’t lash out with words to hurt each other. When we do have a disagreement, we work really hard to communicate our feelings and thoughts so we can resolve it as quickly as we can. We get better and better, it’s something we will always work at and we are proud of how well we do.

I also hope to learn how to treat my kids from the way I WASN’T treated. When my mother and I fought, we would do the silent treatment thing until we slowly started talking again and moved on acting like nothing happened. This is not the way to handle a disagreement, and I hope to always remember those times when my kids get upset with me. I want to talk things through with them and let them know through it all that I love them so much. That is my goal, and I feel strongly enough about it that I feel I’ll be alright.

I love my parents and want only good things for them, and I hope that they both know that. Good or bad, they are my parents. They played a part in making me who I am today, like I’ve said, and so I thank them for that. They obviously weren’t perfect, but I suppose they did the best that they knew how to do in the circumstances.