Last weekend, my husband and I, for the first time in 11 years of our life together, went on a road trip without children. I won’t say that it bothered us to go on vacation with children, but the dream of going somewhere together did not let go. And then the stars came together! My mother came to us, she sits perfectly with Alice and she graciously let us go for a whole day!
We are standing in a traffic jam on the outskirts of the city, full of anticipation of the upcoming romantic trip, enjoying freedom and beautiful views. Only now I understand that a feeling of guilt gnaws at me. Somewhere in the backyard of consciousness, the thought runs through that we are enjoying ourselves here and enjoying ourselves, and the children stayed at home. Intellectually I understand that everything is fine with them, they are well-fed, satisfied, but the fact remains, the feeling of guilt is present. We had a great rest, gained impressions. Just a visit to the Adzhimushkai quarries in Kerch is worth something, I cried from the second minute of the excursion, the emotions are very strong. If it is interesting, I will tell you more about them. The feeling of guilt subsided, but sometimes it reminded of itself, especially on the way home.
Analyzing this moment, I realized that this unpleasant feeling is very densely present in my life. I feel guilty that Alice has developmental problems (I wrote about this here ), that she does not play with the children on the playground, that she does not go to the kindergarten, which is in the garden, and at this time I am at home, in general, there are plenty of reasons. Where it comes from, I don’t know, most likely from childhood.
When my brother was born I was two years old and at that moment I became an adult. More precisely, they told me that I was an adult. Of course, my parents continued to love me, but my mother was now feeding her brother, and my father was feeding me, but I remember exactly that I wanted it to be the other way around. I remember very vividly a case when my brother had a stomach ache, he was then two, and I was four. His parents called a doctor for him. I really wanted to visit the neighboring children and I started asking my parents to let me go. “Your brother has a stomach ache, but you were impatient to have fun, aren’t you ashamed?”, With such parting words, they let me go. I no longer wanted to have fun, fifteen minutes later I was at home and felt the deepest sense of guilt. I felt bad and was afraid that such a mom and dad would love me less. Naturally, no one began to love me less, and most likely they did not want me to experience such emotions, but it was probably after that that I began to regularly feel guilt. My brother and I were playing the game of “sniffs”, they put pine nuts in his nose, one got stuck, his mother had to take him to the hospital to gently release his nostril. I am older, I am in charge of it and again hello guilt. In our environment, I was the oldest child, albeit not by much, but whenever the parents left us alone, I was appointed the eldest. I was torn between the desire to play and indulge in and a sense of responsibility for others. And, even despite the fact that they scolded us extremely rarely, if we screwed up, I always felt guilty. My brother and I were playing the game of “sniffs”, they put pine nuts in his nose, one got stuck, his mother had to take him to the hospital to gently release his nostril. I am older, I am in charge of it and again hello guilt. In our environment, I was the oldest child, albeit not by much, but whenever the parents left us alone, I was appointed the eldest. I was torn between the desire to play and indulge and a sense of responsibility for others. And, even despite the fact that they scolded us extremely rarely, if we screwed up, I always felt guilty. My brother and I were playing the game of “sniffs”, they put pine nuts in his nose, one got stuck, his mother had to take him to the hospital to gently release his nostril. I am older, I am in charge of it and again hello guilt. In our environment, I was the oldest child, albeit not by much, but whenever the parents left us alone, I was appointed the eldest. I was torn between the desire to play and indulge and a sense of responsibility for others. And, even despite the fact that they scolded us extremely rarely, if we screwed up, I always felt guilty. but whenever our parents left us alone, I was appointed the eldest. I was torn between the desire to play and indulge in and a sense of responsibility for others. And, even despite the fact that they scolded us extremely rarely, if we screwed up, I always felt guilty. but whenever our parents left us alone, I was appointed the eldest. I was torn between the desire to play and indulge and a sense of responsibility for others. And, even despite the fact that they scolded us extremely rarely, if we screwed up, I always felt guilty.
Probably, this led to the formation of a feeling that if you relax and let go of control, and even rest, you will be bad and they will love you less.
When I quit my job to be with Alice, I felt guilty for a long time before my husband, for “sitting on his neck”. Only thanks to his love and support, I understood and accepted that you can enjoy life and not suffer remorse for it. Life has become easier.
Now this feeling all the same periodically rolls over, but I already know how to track it and try (not always 100% successfully) to work it out. It turns out that just to enjoy and live in high is not easy, you need a lot of work on yourself. My mother, who turned 67 this year, just embarked on this path, it is extremely difficult for her to learn to love herself and live for herself, and not for someone, and there are a lot of such people. I really hope that she will be able to learn to love herself and allow herself to enjoy life without looking back at someone.