On moving out

The relationship I might have with my parents one day...

I think it’ll only exist, healthily, once I move out.

I can’t imagine ever becoming the peaceful, grounded, light-filled version of myself while I’m still here. Still stuck. Still absorbing the chaos.

It’s not that I think my parents are evil. That’s not what this is.

They’re just deeply broken people who were thrown into parenthood without the emotional tools or support systems they so clearly needed.

They were not regulated.

They didn’t have the language for softness.

They didn’t know how to meet a child’s needs because no one had ever met theirs.

And I know, in some buried, far-off part of my heart, that if they’d had the space, the rest, the right community, the right healing, maybe they would’ve parented differently.

Maybe they wouldn’t have hurt me the way they did.

Because when I think about the version of myself who was mentally unwell, who was drowning and barely holding on, I remember snapping at people I loved.

I remember acting out of pure survival.

I said things I regret. Picked fights I didn’t need to. Was unkind, even cruel at times.

Not because I’m bad but because I was in pain.

And none of that excused my behaviour.

Which is exactly why I’ve worked so hard to never be that version of myself again.

But it makes me think. 

What if that’s what my parents were stuck in, every single day? That dysregulation. That pain. That desperation.

Still. What they did? What they said? How they made me feel?

I didn’t deserve it. Not one bit and that’s just a fact.

I never deserved the emotional wreckage they left me to grow up in.

But I’ve learned something: when people are in that much pain, they start to leak it.

They ooze it into the spaces around them.

And I just happened to be close enough to absorb it all.

They weren’t capable of giving me the love I needed.

They didn’t have the capacity.

They didn’t know how.

And it’s so hard to stay angry at the people who need the exact same kind of love I do.

But it’s also hard to forgive them when I’m still stuck in it.

That’s the part that aches.

I haven’t gotten out. Not yet. I still live in the thick of it.

The snide comments. The invalidation. The control. The dismissiveness.

Every day, I have to remind myself: this isn’t forever.

This isn’t the life I was meant to live.

There is something better waiting for me, on the other side of that door.

And soon, I’m walking through it.

Soon, I’ll have space.

Soon, I’ll have stillness.

Soon, I’ll learn who I really am, not the version of me shaped by survival.

Maybe they’ll change too, once I’m gone.

Maybe space will help them breathe too.

Maybe, years from now, they’ll say “have fun” when I tell them I’m going shopping.

And I’ll smile, not because it fixes anything, but because I’ll finally be free to receive it.

They’ll soften.

I’ll heal.

And this chapter? It’ll be over.

Almost there. Almost.