It's just all so.... "messed," as my pop-jargon-savvy 10-year-old would say. I grew up far more emotionally conscious of myself and others I think than a lot of others around me were. Who knows why that was so, but it is the wheel behind the prolonged torture I put myself through. What I mean is, being that aware of my own emotions and the emotions of others really put me at a disadvantage well over the majority than the advantages it brought. While the rest of the world was taking off, not giving a shit, or just plain growing up like normal kids, I observed how selfish they were being, or other various observations. Not that I was any less selfish. It's just that I processed the same kinds of things they did in a different way; and I took stock of my observations. And then I had to try to do this in the adult world, where most functional human beings were working on various stages of putting childish things away, and I was only getting started. In this same observational mindset, I also took stock of my observations and noticed that fundamental truths were created and developed, etching their creations right on the inside of the person I was, fortunately most right and true, but like any erred human, not always right and not always true.
I see this in my daughter already. Both of them, actually. But the older one most of all, right now at this point anyway. It makes me proverbially raise my eyebrow and take note. I do not want her (or her sister) becoming the over-analytical freak I became. It has caused me so much unneeded duress in my life. Well, I guess not knowing how to handle it is what caused the duress, but in the dealing of it (coping, learning, processing, rejecting, whatever), I came to know rather suddenly that parenting from an emotional state is not always reasonable (simply for the fact that it can screw up in the way their worlds are supposed to work; and because I learned this the hard way), and not the most responsible core to start from. I try to maintain a balance, and learned to try for the balance when I became aware, so I'm not going to jump to my mommy pulpit just yet, but as any parent knows, there's no job manual for being a mom. It is definitely marked on the back of my brain.
The most important part of the journey is how my previously-mentioned spirituality filled (and continues to fill) the gaps. Besides learning how to be practical (over emotional), rational over theoretical, I've also learned how sacrificial love is.
