A peculiar trend of recent years is to work with your childhood traumas. And, of course, the accusation of their parents — «not brought up like that», «did not pay attention», «too patronized.» Why doesn’t this approach work? And how does taking responsibility help us grow up? Arguments stand-up comedian Zoya Yarovitsyna.
My main childhood memory is despair. The constant feeling that everything is very bad and there is nothing I can do about it. I can’t tell my story here in full, so just believe me: my parents failed in their duties. At some point, the brother became the most adult and responsible in the family. He was then thirteen.
I have every right to blame my parents for being insecure, anxious, and prone to depression. But I dont want. I accepted that this is my starter kit. These are the cards life gave me. What I do with this set is up to me. This is one of the stages of growing up — to take responsibility for your life.
Of course, it’s easier to blame parents (“injured”), geography (“Muscovites have an easier life”), the wrong time (“would I have been born later, I would have blown up TikTok”). But I decided to take life into my own hands, so as not to be on the bench with other lovers of judgment.
When I became an adult, I realized that my parents are just people.
This realization shocked me. They are not gods, omnipotent and infallible, they are people like me, made of flesh, blood and procrastination. It helped me understand why they acted the way they did. Why did they make such stupid, in my opinion, mistakes that traumatized me, my brother, and themselves.
Taking responsibility is not fun. It’s like with broccoli: I know that it’s healthy, that it should be eaten, but the taste does not become less disgusting from this. Well, responsibility tastes like broccoli. Difficult, unpleasant, sometimes through force, but in the end I always feel great.
By the way, this also works in reverse. I’m not to blame for my parents’ problems. They are also responsible for their own lives. I help with money, find the right doctor, fix the computer when my mother “pressed something and everything broke.” But if they are unhappy at the same time, it is not my fault.
It seems to me that this is not only about growing up, but also about kindness. I try to be kinder to others in general. We are all just trying to live the way we think is right, we want the best for ourselves and loved ones. We are trying to figure out how to be happy. It turned out that the instructions that we were given — to unlearn to be an economist, to find a stable job, to marry a man in a gray suit (they are reliable) — do not work. You have to invent your own. And while we are trying to do this, we can and should be kinder to each other.