Quote:
Originally Posted by Breezy~Day
Well, I think I'm a boring person. Please hear me out. I've lived such a "sheltered life." In reality, I've lived a life in which I never got to do much. My family was really poor and I didn't get much of a chance to get out. Many of the parts of towns we lived in were too dangerous for kids to walk around. I wanted to do everything growing up. I liked going to parks, but my family couldn't afford to go out very often and spend that much time at one. Sometimes, they did. I wanted to try almost every sport, but we couldn't afford to buy equipment, and every family member of mine had depression and often didn't want to play anything. I usually didn't have friends outside of school, either. I wanted to build things like crafts, woodcrafts, and even goofily thought of learning about electronics. However, the adults I spoke with didn't share my enthusiasm. I wanted to play music... but my family couldn't afford music lessons or instruments. I tried playing music with cheaper toy instruments with music books I had bought at garage sales, but I gave up after seeing kids with real instruments playing. We couldn't afford to go to movies or buy many. My family didn't like board games or books. Jeez, I had spent much of my life growing up reading the same few books many, many times over. I was mostly bored, and spent way too much time thinking up interesting things to keep me occupied, something that's carried into adulthood.
Now, I just feel as though everyone has had an interesting life and interesting things to talk about, except me. I don't know much about, well, anything, except what I've learned in school. I've never been to many places, and I often forget what I do learn because I don't have the discipline to remember things or something.  I understand how my family was. It wasn't their fault, and they had been suffering. It's just that I wonder how to become a more normal person. I don't know where to begin. |
First can I say that you ARE a normal person. Believe it or not, your upbringing is quite common unlike the white picket fence 1950's life people broadcast. A lot of families to this day cannot afford to have a lot of the middle class luxuries you saw other children have.
I can relate to all the bolded from your post. When I was growing up, the park I went to often had shady people and my parents weren't comfortable with leaving us there to play all the time. The park didn't even have real dirt, or dirt for kids to play in! There were broken glass bottles everywhere. There were also lots of drunks.
My parents were also very abusive and harsh people. They complained whenever they had to pay for a field trip and would say how things were so expensive. After we moved we lived in a slightly better area which was even tougher because a lot of the kids had nice clothes and gadgets...things my parents couldn't afford. I couldn't be in band because my parents couldn't afford the instrument fees. I wasn't in sports because I wasn't athletic. My parents also didn't cultivate my interests and insisted on taking up interests they thought were appropriate, but I chose not to.
Because I didn't have many friends, no relatives around to play with, and my siblings were a bit younger I learned to develop my own interests. Unfortunately, other kids weren't interested in those things and I was labeled a "nerd" from a young age. But I didn't mind because I liked to read a lot, learn about science, and I would play with the scraps in the garage and experiment with making things even though my mom didn't like it. I spent a good portion of my childhood being bored and lonely, and this carried over into my teens because my parents were really strict and I couldn't go out with my friends much. I continued to be bored but less lonely in adulthood and now not so much. I still don't have any friends, except a relative and my husband.
Like you, I haven't been to interesting places or did anything "cool." When I was in college I worked many hours to support myself while my classmates were studying abroad, traveling, etc. I couldn't afford to do that. But I achieved milestones my classmates weren't-- I got married, was able to live on my own relatively well and learned a lot about the workplace and careers. I know how to manage a household and do my own laundry and believe it or not a lot of people my age don't know how to do that.
Now that I am older I decided if people want to label my childhood as "sheltered" they can. Then I give them a reality check and ask them if they think any child should have to live with what I did and they shut up. I can forgive my parents for being foreigners and not really getting the gist of the American culture off the bat and I tell people this. I ask them "tell me, how sheltered do you think I am now? would you have done better?" That gets people to take a step back and think about what they said.
There is nothing wrong with you. Adulthood is hard and there is a lot of hardship and suffering in it, too. But the nice thing is, you get to decide the type of person you want to be. You have the ability to take up whatever interests you desire, meet others with the same interests and go to the places you want to go. I really do believe it is a middle class luxury for most people to expect the typical childhood is having nice clothes, brand new instruments for band, going on cool vacations every summer and spring break, living in a fancy house or able to toy with interests and build cool things. You weren't sheltered by any means. Neither was I. We both had to learn from a very young age about the harsh realities of life, and I think that is something we are to be grateful for. A lot of people around our ages get a big reality check and crumble when any sign of hardship goes their way, but you and I have seen tougher.