The invisible hands of fear, guiding the potential we admire from afar and the guilt that never leaves.
What do you think about your family — Blessing or Damage?
I couldn’t answer.
It wasn’t obvious abuse. It wasn’t chaos.
It was the unpredictable silence, the kind that shapes you without speaking.
The orphanage would be shouting, “ Hey, you have a better life than we do.”
Yeah, I get the sentiment, but you cannot decide whose life is better just by saying “ You have family. You must be happy.”
But was it even about happiness, cause none of them reflected who I was, but who I should be.
And naïve enough to believe that’s what I want.
“ I know what’s best for you.”
“Just do what I say.”
“Look how much we have done for you” — classic manipulation, even when what they called sacrifice felt more like survival training.
No, I am not asking you to rebel, but to look at things as they are, not through your parents’ perspective.
I wanted to call it love, because calling it damage felt like betrayal.
I should side with blessing, most of us are like that, but “When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you.” — Friedrich Nietzsche.
All I can say is “I wish to be wrong.”
The invisible hand I never knew existed guided me to the place Sir Nietzsche calls the abyss.
Shall you enter? . . .
First Mirror: A good family, not an ideal one
People are disrespectful sometimes — understandable. But what about when it happens all the time?”
Why would someone disrespect me?
We invent explanations: I must be weak. I must be flawed. Maybe I deserve it.
I question even that. Why do you even think that?
This belief doesn’t appear from thin air
My answer was a dysfunctional family.
The world becomes whatever mirrors we grow up with.
If a child hears, ‘You’re the reason we divorced,’ she won’t question the logic; she’ll absorb the guilt.
A kid is a kid, and when they are forced to act like adults, they lose themselves. That’s what stories like “Spirited Away” portray to me.
“The first law of social organisms is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. A family is defined by the interaction and inter-relationships of its parts, rather than the sum of its parts.”[1]
Parents always have good intentions for their kids; at times, it’s only from their perspective, sympathy, not empathy.
What’s most terrifying is their unconscious projection.
I think of it like,
Family as a compass, setting direction. If the compass for the parents works, then it should also work for the children.
Whether it’s broken or not doesn’t matter.
Because children don’t evaluate whether the compass is accurate, they simply follow it.
Should you? . . .
