Oogie Boogie Ghosts of Bad Times Past

I was reading about Children of Emotional Neglect and of course there was a quiz, and of course if you answered "yes" to three or more questions, you suffered "emotional neglect" as a child. It's kind of a hard quiz to take, emotionally, because I vividly remember being chastised for crying too much, being too happy or goofy and feeling like the attention I craved as a small child was a burden to everyone around me.  Those are pretty painful emotional pinches that leave marks on the psyche of he four year old.

But, at the same time I was wincing at the memories this quiz was bringing to the surface,  I was simultaneously rolling my eyes and thinking "Toughen the fuck up, ding dongs."

I'm in the tail of end of Generation X, being born in the late 1970's. My parents were raised by "the Greatest Generation", a generation that was born during the first Great War, saw Prohibition and the rise of organized crime, suffered through the Great Depression and sacrificed stoically during the rise and fall of Fascism, Genocide and WW2.  The "GG" was the last American Generation to really, truly know group suffering on an intimate level and in the face of that great suffering, they persevered, never to speak of it again.

And you know what? They really, really needed to fucking talk about it. Just because they gave better, more prosperous lives to the Baby Boomers, there was a lot of underlying emotional damage they were silently dealing with and unknowingly passing on to their children. Their children, in return, wanted to break free of the misery shackles, but, at the same time, wanted the same comforts of tradition their parents bestowed on them. So they liberated themselves, while shackling themselves in tandem, leading to my Generation and the Age of Divorce and latchkey kids.

We were taught there were better things to cry about. There were, logically, to an adult. But, shit man.... You can't say that to toddlers. We were told that we were too loud, or that it wasn't the time to be silly, and to sit up straight, and, even though wool felt like shit against your skin and made you want to scream, you were lucky to be warm... oh, and kids were starving in China, so you should eat the gross, gray blob on your plate.

Sure, it's not abusive and it's not neglectful on an malicious level.... BUT, those sayings are also needless and totally contrary to human emotion. Fuck that. Cry if you want to cry, and laugh too loud at inappropriate times. There is going to be enough personal misery to come in a human being's lifetime that an adult who shits on the natural being of child, just needs to stop.

So, I'm stopping it. I didn't do it to my kids and I'm going to stop doing it to myself.


The past is gone forever.
No longer will I be victimized by the past. I am a new person.