Today I'm Angry

I wish someone had called CPS. I wish CPS could have done something. We were always taught that CPS was the worst thing that could happen to a family. But now in my mid-twenties I wish they would have been called. I wish they would have removed us or at least given us more hope.

Growing up, I always wished I could have grown up in a different home. I didn’t know why I had to be born into our home. At the time I accepted it as my fate. 

Now I cry at the thought that I COULD have had a better childhood. I could have had hope. I could have had friends. I could have felt loved. I wanted to get married at 14 just so that I could have someone to hug me every morning. I might not have even had the feeling of an empty hole of emotion in my soul 

If I grew up in a different home, could I have enjoyed growing up? Could I actually have been happy? Could I have felt normal? Could I have had people who actually cared about me? Would I have feared my new parents as much as I feared (and still fear) my real parents? Could I have known what it was like to actually feel my parents loved me and trusted me? Could I have had the money to actually buy something I wanted? Could I have had a better start to an adult life?

My grandfather may have actually called CPS. I don’t know and he’s passed away now so I’ll never be able to ask him. But we very suddenly moved to another state in the early 90’s, when CPS couldn’t really go from state to state, and even at the time I knew it had something to do with my grandfather. After that, we had very restricted access to our grandparents and we were to NEVER mention anything that happened at home. 

I love my parents, but mainly because I feel like I have to because they were the ones that gave birth to me and paid all the money to raise me. I love my parents, but I wish I could have grown up with others. 

Is it ok to not love your parents? Why am I afraid of saying that I don’t love my parents? Because it sounds like I am awful person? Because I am afraid that maybe one day it won’t be true? Because I feel that my true feelings are not validated? Because I don’t want to cause the hurt to them that they caused to me? Because I don’t want it to be just me trying to get back at them for the way they treated me? Am I obligated to love my parents because they are my parents and because they raised me and because they didn’t kill me? When is it ok to not love your parents? 

Many people tell me I should not hold it against my parents for what they did to me because they were doing the best they could and only hurt me by following a cult that hurt children. But I disagree. At no point did the thought ever cross their mind, hey this stuff is crazy and my kids aren’t happy? Even from a young age, I remember thinking that I existed purely for my parent’s pleasure. A kid does not exist solely for their parents’ pleasure, and there was something wrong with my parents, and not only the system, to think that I existed only for their pleasure. Sure, kudos to my parents for me wanting to have a better life than them, but did they really think that what they were doing would give a better life for me?  

I was doubly hurt. I was hurt by a messed up system of a homeschooling, purity cult. But I was also hurt by selfish, self-centered, and abusive parents who had to prove that they could beat the laws of this universe and after super perfect children (children more perfect than the perfect homeschool family). I was hurt by both. And right now I choose to hold it against both. Yes, I do have a lot of bitterness in me right now. But sometimes I can’t believe that nowhere inside of my parents a small voice didn’t speak up and say they should think a little about ME and my future. They took from me many years of my life. They shattered my sense of self-worth. They did so much to hinder me in my life. So here I am, in my mid-twenties, trying to put piece my life together. I “succeeded” in school and even managed to excel in college but once I got out of college, I fell to pieces. Now I’m trying to pick up those pieces and right now there is no room for a relationship with my parents. And I’m being told I’m wrong because they were only following a hurtful system and they didn’t do anything personally wrong. 

I believe every single parent that buys completely into a system that does not consider for one second the child they are controlling is also personally wrong. It’s not just the system. It’s the parents too.