I read about this girl on the internet. I was shocked by her story. She herself grew up in an orphanage for special needs children. They wanted to adopt her, but she wouldn’t do it. She ended up in the Disabled Orphanage completely by accident – the doctors had misdiagnosed her.
When I read about her, I immediately remembered my childhood. Although my parents were well-to-do, it was hard to call my childhood happy. My mother and father often beat me and humiliated me. Especially my father. I lived in such an atmosphere: partying, drinking, ignoring children’s desires. I hated my father, as I hated noisy companies. He threatened to send me to an orphanage. I heard it all the time: when I got a “B”, when I forgot to take out the trash, when I tore my pantyhose.
When I turned 13, I packed my things and went looking for the very same shelter to stay there. My parents found me and punished me. It wasn’t until I was 18 that I was able to say goodbye to them and breathe. Now I have a completely different life. I have children whose upbringing I will never make the mistakes of my parents. I love them with every fiber of my being and literally blow dust off of them.
It seems like it’s time to let go of childhood resentments, but I can’t. I understand that children come into this world to teach their parents something, but my mom and dad must have been a failure. There seems to be an upside to a strict upbringing, as I grew up to be a responsible and decent person. Only I was not loved. If as a child I often asked myself “why?”, now I realize that they were just such people. But now I don’t love them.
I still can’t stand my father. If I can have a word or two with my mother, I can’t with him. My girlfriends often ask me if I have had any kind of epiphany in my old age, if my parents repent, if they admit their mistakes… Each of them understands that this is no way to behave with your family.
However, the successful finale was not worth waiting for – my father is looking for a new wife, my mother is living her life, and I all considered “ungrateful. They raised me, educated me in a private school at their own expense, paid for my college education, and I turned my back on them. It’s the little things – they didn’t do anything for me, because they didn’t give me love and care.
When my first husband left me with a sick child, I found myself on the street. My mother agreed to take me in, but only on one condition: that I give the child to an orphanage. I wandered around train stations, spent nights with friends and acquaintances, and then I met Andrei. He called me over the same evening, though he didn’t count on anything.
How could I forgive and let go? Caring parents don’t do that. They don’t walk away from their children, they don’t turn away from them, they don’t avoid them. For my mother, though, I still have some spark of love, but even orphanage mothers protect their mothers and keep looking for them after they are discharged from the orphanage.
Maybe I ended up in just such a family to toughen up. I don’t know… But I never learned to go over my head and disregard human feelings. The only thing I feel sorry for is my brother, who died for the sins of his parents. They never really loved him and changed their lives for the better, so God took him away. And I survived, remained a “wolf cub” for the rest of my life, but I survived. I don’t want to blame the parents, I’m not their judge, but you can’t be so uncaring of your children.
