Don't forget that you are only describing this by looking back in time from now. It did not feel entirely like that then, it just feels like it felt like that. . .from looking back on it.

Turn around. Look around. It's cheap to say we "should have done. . ." by looking back. We did what we did, we learned what we did, we gave and received what we did, related as we did -- operative word, "did". We could not do anything other than what we did do (or we would have done it some places). Lamenting what we did not know in the past doesn't "help" us in anyway now? It is easier though, than trying to "fix" things now. I have 55-60 years of doing/not doing things in a certain way and I learned, in my 40's, how very difficult that is to "fix".

At the age of 40, I was taking an accounting final exam and came upon a problem with something just beyond my remembering or knowledge/ability to figure out. I had the sudden thought/genuine feeling, "I wish I had studied more". I cannot tell you what that genuine feeling did to me, the knowledge that my step mother didn't matter/care if I studied, that my teacher did not care if I studied, that my fellow students, bosses, no one else in the world cared if I studied; I wanted to solve this problem and that was all that mattered; no one else could make me want that.

I had been through over 16 years of schooling and never gotten an "A" other than one high school quarter in "typing" and another in "badminton"/gym, because I did not care. It wasn't a "fault", I wasn't "bad" for getting C's, a few B's and a few D's, one F (international economics; Bernanke I'm not :-) So, what happened?

I got a B in that course, missed an A by 9 points out of something like 362 and instantly knew in my heart that it could have been different if I had not skipped two classes and thus not gotten credit for my homework. The next year my girlfriend and I took the next semester of accounting and my work began. The struggle to make myself complete homework! I remember one of those sessions vividly where the struggle almost made me cry it was so intense. It all came down to me making myself aware of what I wanted for myself. No one else could do it for me, no one else could "care" if I did my homework. The jig was up thinking I was doing it because my stepmother or teacher demanded that I do it. Who did I want to become at the age of 41, a woman who finished what she started, the best she could, or a quitter with excuses why I could not finish, could not attempt to do what I wanted to do?

The battle got worse; when I took courses by myself as an adult, I was big on not taking the final exam. I had an A in one difficult course and skipped the final, got an "incomplete". I started going to finals but still did not study for them, just "faked" it (you can lead a horse to water but can't make her drink ;-) It took me 4-5 courses before I could get myself to work consistently from the beginning to the end of the course. But, that hard work carried over to the rest of my life too, just like therapy can.

Two years ago I wrote a 50,000 word novel as part of the National Novel Writing Month (takes place every November) project; you have to write a novel (or at least 50,000 words of it) starting November 1 and finish November 30. http://mysharingspaceonline.com/story.pdf The novel is about "me", who I was at 26 and who I would have liked to have been; I "rewrote" my literal history so it took advantage of the 30+ years I'd lived beyond that. At 26 I did not know what I wanted, was wholly lost/clueless and thought it was all my fault or my stepmother's, or dead mother's, somebody's "fault". My present life was ruined by my past.

I know now that none of that holds water for me; I was carrying around leaky buckets and complaining that my buckets were leaky. That was very true but didn't "do" anything for me. Wanting buckets that didn't leak and not doing anything to procure them didn't do anything for me either. Wailing that I didn't know what to do to get or fix leaky buckets didn't do anything; berating those that gave me the leaky buckets didn't do anything; refusing to carry the leaky buckets didn't do anything; anything that did not address the problem, did not try to make the buckets better for my uses, did not do anything.

I was in therapy for about 25 years all together, half my life at the time. I'm still debating my own nature/nurture thing; did the therapy help or would I have changed as well with just age/experience? I chose the therapy. This is my life. The therapy liners for my buckets worked just fine until I could make new ones for myself.