They fuck you up, your mum and dad, the poem goes. There are those for whom that feels immediately, distinctly true; for the rest of us, Larkin wrote the next line: “They may not mean to, but they do.” (For those who aren’t familiar with the poem, it’s called This Be The Verse, and you can read it here.)
I’ve been thinking about my upbringing lately, about my childhood and the things I learned then without realizing it. Consciously, I’ve always thought that I had a good, healthy childhood, a happy one that left me free from any immediate trauma or mental scarring. That’s likely true, but the older I get, the more I realize that it’s the not-so-immediate trauma and mental scarring that’s the problem; the stuff that got inside your head and shaped your view of the world and yourself without anyone — including you — even noticing.
Take, for example, my family’s general inability to openly express affection. I knew I was loved, it was never in doubt, but it was never really directly stated, and as a result, I had (and still have, to an extent) problems saying it clearly myself. I can’t remember for sure, but I think the first time I told my parents I loved them outside of being a little kid was when I was leaving to move to the US; I was in my mid-twenties. That feels too late, to me, now.
Or, for that matter, there’s the idea that you deal with any problem yourself, hiding it away as you solve it so that it’s not a burden. Objectively, I know that’s ridiculous and would argue against it for anyone else, but for me it feels, still, like the best option. Asking for help? Why, that might make others think less of me, and that would be a disaster…!
The irony being, of course, that both of these things cause trouble when they’re inside your head, insidiously pretending to be true, even as both whisper that believing them means you’re being less trouble, keeping your head down. I think of these now as lessons taught to me by my parents, unwittingly and unknowingly on all our parts, and am reminded of the next part of the Larkin poem: “They fill you with the faults they had/And add some extra, just for you.”