I thought there was nothing wrong with my childhood. Grew up as an only child. I knew I fought with my parents constantly, but thought that was sort of normal. I was ready to move out at the age of 13 but really didn't know why except that I was tired of fighting with them. Obviously that wasn't going to happen. Shoot, they provided me cloths & a place to live....what more were parents supposed to do. I as the one in the family that was critical of my parents from the time I can remember.

I was always embarrassed to be in public with them. I remember one time when I was really young they wanted to hold my hand while walking in this park place. I snatched my hand away & walked as far away from them as I could get so no one would know I was a part of them.

My dad would always say stupid things like he knew what he was talking about but he never read anything. He made up in his own mind what he thought & it had nothing to do with reality. He worked for the aircraft company as a mechanic & did his watch repair in the garage when at home. He had no friends.

My mom was afraid to drive because of her eye sight. Also she had no friends & stayed home cleaning her little 1000 sq ft house & cooking. She wasn't involved in anything outside the house.

When I got into school I got glimpses of what others parents were like & I started getting on her case....& her life gave me a very bad taste of what being a housewife was. She finally got involved in the PTA after I kept pushing her. Her not driving forced me to live a very sheltered life which I resented. I remember one time I asked if I could stay after school to help the teacher. She said it was ok....but didn't tell me she didn't make arrangements for it to be ok. I was just going to walk the miles it took to get home..she hadn't told the neighbor she depended on all the timr to drive me home that I was staying after....so I was the one that got in trouble....I blamed my mom because of her inability to be like other capable parents.

My mom said I was grinding my teeth & talking in my sleep most of my life. She didn't realize that stress causes people to grind their teeth but even if she had, I had nothing to be stressed about unless of course it was my determination to excell in school which I had to work harder at doing than many of the others. There were no educational materials in the house & couldn't get to the library as there was no one to drive me & walking there alone wasn't an option in that bad area of town.

I remember not having even a news paper to do current events with & sometimes no way to get one than going to a neighbors at the last minute because me dad hadn't bothered to pick one up on his way to work. That would have been out of his normal driving path to work.

So often in class I would listen to several of the kids talking with the teacher logically about current events & almost being jealous of their ability & wondering what their home life was like.

It wasn't until after I researched Aspergers it terms of my H & my failed marriage & my comments throughout my marriage that I didn't want to marry someone like my dad, that the lightbulb really came on. I had felt emotional abuse in my marriage....but In reading about emotional neglect, I can see that my childhood was filled with the emotional neglect. Obviously not intentional but because of both parents dysfunctional behaviors of their own, together it created an environment where emotional neglect just happened.

I remember I came home one day when in college & stood up for myself on my first job. My moms comment was "where did you get that from, you are nothing like us (your parents)" & her favorite saying was they must have switched babies in the hospital when we brought you home because you are nothing like us". I didn't say it but inside I was jumping for joy....she had no idea how hard I worked at being NOTHING like them.

I got into my bad marriage because I thought their problems were because of their lack of education. I convinced myself that the red flags I saw around the guy I was going to marry couldn't possibly be real because he had a high IQ & a college degree. Unfortunately I was wrong. The attitude I had issues with had nothing to do with lack of maturity or education. They were too similar to my parents & the fighting continued in my marriage.....so obviously it was me that was the problem.

None of my therapy ever brought out anything different until a few years ago after I left the marriage & my parents have now been gone for years, & I was finally healed enough to start integrating my past with my present. What an eye opener this has been. This is when I started to see & understand what was really going on with my parents & how that slipped into my marriage as being normal & thinking I was the one with the serious problems. I realized after leaving it all & not bringing my reactions with me, that they weren't internal but my reactions to the dysfunctional environment I had been surrounded by all my life & that I was more normal than I ever believed I was.