When I was Young
As far back as I can remember I always felt different then most kids my age; I was often told that I had an old soul. I never really understood, until recently, what that really meant; I just assumed that people were referring to the fact that I was calmer than most kids more aware of my impact on the world around me. I didn't notice it much back then but it was almost as if I made the adults around me feel uncomfortable or unsettled for some reason.
In a resent session with my therapist I discussed a vivid dream I had; in which I had a daughter named Persephone. The father was gone, she accepted that and didn't seem to get upset at all that it was just the two of us. In my dream I was aware that she was my daughter but I didn't necessarily feel love for her.. all I felt for her was pity and a responsibility to walk along side her, to keep her safe. She had this heavy look of sad acceptance, like she under stood why people around her were unsettled by her and talked about her, but never did anything to reach out to her. There was nothing I could do for her but walk alongside her as she walked the painful path I knew she would have to take.
There was quite a bit for my therapist to help me unpack; at first I thought that the dream had meant that even if my son had lived I would never have been able to feel love for him like a mother should. I have had many doubts of my ability to be a good mother since before I got pregnant, and as my pregnancy progressed I never felt the things all the other moms clamed to feel about their kids. I figured that this dream was my subconscious confirming that I was truly incapable of that kind of love... it was devastating.
My therapist had a different take on my dream, she suggested that I myself was Persephone; that I was walking a journey I knew would be painful because I had already experienced it. I told her that growing up I had to mother my siblings, and as any older sibling of a single parent home knows, this means you're not a kid, you are the co-parent. It was my job to be the enforcer, help them with their homework, pick them up at school, wake my mother up for work, ensure she is actually getting ready and didn't go back to sleep, make her coffee, and get my siblings ready for bed. These and many more responsibilities fall on the older sibling, I told her; to which she responded... no, they do not.
I can't tell you how differently you see the world when someone tells you that something you thought was a normal way of living was not at all the how things were supposed to work and that you were robed of something you'll never get back.
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