When I think about my struggles and my struggles to understand my struggles I find illumination in a strange place. Eating disorders. I have never been able to support myself or properly manage my finances. It's been a source of invisible shame for my entire adult life. I blamed myself for this shortcoming because my dad blamed me. But as I've progressed in my journey of self awareness and healing a funny thing happened. I realized the obvious truth. I wasn't responsible for parenting myself and the relationship I had to money and to my father were designed by him to keep me dependent on him. To create the very situation he would spend my life blaming me for. Here's what actually happened:
My parents marriage imploded when I was 6 years old. Apparently life had been fine but my father was living a double life. I repeat, our domestic life was not bad. Even my mother says so. However, my father's infidelities led to one of my uncles forcing him out of his own home. It was unquestionably the right decision for someone concerned strictly with my mother. It was earth shattering and life ruining for anyone who may taken a moment and thought about the children. My life was never the same. If you ask me now, as an adult, the minute my uncle made that decision he and my extended family on that side at large should have assumed all responsibility for my existence. What we know now about my dad is he suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder. The trait that binds all the truly horrible people in history together. People without a conscience. Incapable of empathy, compassion or self awareness. When he was kicked out of his own house it activated narcissistic rage and he has spent 4 decades getting revenge. But no one did that. They left my mother to the mercy of a monster. She was financially dependent on a man who wouldn't even speak to her. Imagine if my grandparents had cared and offered us a life that wasn't dependent on him. I'm not sure I'll ever understand their callous and cruel inaction. When she tried to talk to him about co-parenting his response was "we have nothing to talk about. You will do it your way and I will do it mine." And that's what he did. No parent/teacher conferences, no coordinated parenting. Just my dad hating me for becoming more like my mom because he couldn't be bothered to parent his own children.
So life became hell. The only thing my parents talked about was money. They were loud arguments about who would pay for their children's needs. The only thing a six year old could understand was that it was clear NEITHER parent wanted to. We were simply expenses to be argued over. Like paying for your children is somehow a punishment. Its sick shit and I absorbed all of it. My house burned down. I went with my father and his girlfriend and we went shopping....for them. My dad said we would get insurance money. Imagine what it was like asking for something on a random Tuesday. So these were the lessons I was learning about money. Its not something I deserve and no one wants to spend any money on me. You combine this with the fact that the little money my dad did give me was literally the only sign of affection I've ever gotten from him. So to need money from my dad and to receive it was the only way for a child to get the love they so desperately need.
It shouldn't have surprised anyone when I struggled with adulthood. I had no training. But everyone around me pretended the problem was I was smoking pot or that I had quit basketball. And that I was just spoiled and lazy and didn't want to work. I believed them. At some point however, you'd think maybe in my 30's someone might have actually thought about it. Thought about who I was. What kind of person I was and whether there was something else at work or if I was just so committed to not working that I'd literally rather be dead than have a job (which for the most part I've always had by the way, making it even more nonsensical).
What was really occurring was that I was subjected to the financials stresses and realities of adulthood at the age of 6. That 6 year old's fight or flight mechanism was permanently altered and traumatized creating in me programmed response to access "flight" at the first sign of financial stress. This is why the phrase "handling with kids gloves" exists. They are fragile. They need space to grow proper response systems to life's challenges. They shouldn't have to deal with adult issues because once these types of subconscious response systems are set in place it takes years and lots of work to change them. That is what I am doing now. My family has been so dysfunctional and my father so incapable of accountability that they have never accepted the reality of what happened and instead have been content to be so spoiled and lazy that they can sit in their mansions judging me and my life while being completely oblivious to the reality with which I have lived.
So back to eating disorders. When we see someone who is suffering, we know that all they have to do is eat normally. It should be simple. For them it is anything but. Likewise for me and finances. It has been anything but simple and the fact is I have tried my best and instead of even a single person reaching out and helping me figure out this crucial area of adult existence in the modern world, everyone just pretended I was spoiled and lazy.