Hi anita,

thank you so much for taking the time to respond.

Everything you wrote is true and I am amazed how accurate it is, even though you don’t know me. I think that all in all, I had a rather difficult upcoming and relationship with my parents. My mum was very young when she became pregnant with me, my dad left us shortly after my birth- never spoke to him since then. My step-dad came into my life when I was 4, so he was my father figure. I was mostly raised by my grandparents as my mum still had to study and go to uni. We moved a lot, I lived in 3 countries so far so that also shaped me. My relationship with my parents wasn’t totally bad, but they were very demanding, very strict with me. They never had much time for me and even when they did, they weren’t really interested in talking with me or just spending time with me and they criticised me a lot. But it is important to mention that I have two younger siblings that take up all their time and attention- my little brother has ADHD so he is very time-demanding. We were also fighting a lot in a very bad manner (but those kind of things are considered rather normal in our culture). The first time when I realised that familys can be different (beforehand I thought that every family is this way, that things are just this way for everyone) was when I moved in with my neighbours the last year of school (my parents had to move yet again, and I had to stay there to finish school, my neighbours were kind enough to ask me if I wanted to move in as they had an extra room and were financially stable) and saw how good their relationship with their children was.

I haven’t spoken to my parents for a while now because I realised that at least for now, it is maybe better for me to have time to figure things out without their presence in my life. I do think that they weren’t the “best parents” because they transferred a lot of their own trauma and unhappiness on me. But still, I don’t want to sound like I complain- I know that I had it much better growing up than other people.

But the need to satisfy them, to show them that I am time-worthy is definetly existing.