As a child…
Being a child was the territory of the adults in my life.
My territory was being the only adult,
who,
happened to be trapped inside the body of a child.
This created many problems,
for me,
not for them,
those eternally youthful souls whose bodies betrayed them by getting old while their inner selves never aged.
.
Puer aeternus,
puella aeterna.
.
The eternal child.
.
.
.
.
That’s what being an adult meant to me when I was a child.
.
It was about being childish,
irresponsible,
unaccountable,
and so many other things which was never their fault…
and often my fault,
my responsibility,
I was the only one who was accountable.
.
Hmmm…
.
Is it any wonder that I thought that,
adults were immature…
but their size and the power they had,
which they used and abused unwisely,
meant that they thought…
how deceiving thoughts can be…
that they were mature.
Whereas my size and my power,
was small and seemingly meaningless.
.
Hmmm…
.
Is it any wonder that I looked forward to growing up,
becoming an adult,
then I could finally be immature,
irresponsible,
unaccountable…
and blame everyone else for everything,
nothing would be my fault.
.
Which would be a change from the usual.
.
As long as I was a child… what a burdensome burden.
.
Once I was an adult… someone else could carry my burden.
.
That someone else could be my child.
That’s why adults have children, right?
.
But…
.
I guess I never grew up… never became an adult.
.
.
An Upturned Soul 
Oh, how my heart goes out to you reading this, Ursula; it is so sad and so damn honest. xxx
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Thank you 🙂
These days I’m doing that Capricorn thing of aging backwards and I’m very much a Father William, as in:
“You are old, Father William,” the young man said,
“And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head –
Do you think, at your age, it is right?”
“In my youth,” Father William replied to his son,
“I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I’m perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again.” – Lewis Carroll
So I’m happy, and that includes embracing sadness 😉
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Oh how I relate to this. How grateful I am to read it and realize how blessed I am that I have grown up even if my relatives haven’t.
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Thank you 🙂
Sometimes we have to grow ourselves up in our own way… in some ways that’s better than letting someone else tell us how to be a grown up.
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In spite of it all, your parents didn’t succeed at destroying your inner child, who is alive and kicking!!!BTW, I am sure, just in case we had had children, we wouldn’t have given them our burden!! Wonderful quote above, i love it.
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When I was a child I remember thinking quite often – When is it going to be my turn? – I often wondered what I meant by that, my turn for what exactly? I think I was waiting for my turn on the swing which my parents were always hogging, my turn to be a child. I eventually stopped being so damn polite and stopped waiting for them to grow up and get off the swing to give me a turn on it. I went and found my own swing… I wonder why I thought there was only one swing in the playground 😉
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I didn’t realize how “immature” adults were until I realized how deceitful and selfish they can be. And ironically sometimes the more mature the can seem, the more deceitful they are. And I think what’s even me interesting is it’s likely due to them losing their innocence as an “immature” child.
But you can play in my sandbox anytime love
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Ha! Thank you 😀
Where narcs are concerned, I always tend to see them as children (permanently 6 yrs old) who are playing a game of ‘let’s pretend to be an adult’. Only they have no idea what it’s like to be an adult so they’re making it all up and insisting that their version of being an adult is the reality of adulthood. They stamp their feet, do a frowny face and throw a tantrum at you if you question their ‘adult’ status.
It’s one of the ways I spot a narc. Their version of an adult is very different from a real adult.
There’s a film, I wrote about it here – https://anupturnedsoul.wordpress.com/2013/11/30/a-film-which-captures-what-it-is-like-to-be-in-a-relationship-with-a-narcissist/ – which captures how I see narcs.
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Wow…the emotionally dead souls of forever in stasis wondering the dark forest (streets) in search of the heart and soul they “must” never possess as a result their own ironic abusive schism during childhood–the Grimm mythical continuum is real. My all time favorite overt narcissistic monster is Pale Man; a kind of opposite embodiment of the Wizard of Oz.
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Another case of aging backwards “The curious case of Benjamin Button” a short story by F Scott Fitzgerald and then a major movie starring Brad Pitt. I am familiar with “Father William” but didn’t realize Lewis Carroll wrote him. That bit of information has made me smile all day. Thank you. XX
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I love Father William, it reminds me a bit of Zen stories.
Like this one:
It Will Pass
A student went to his meditation teacher and said, “My meditation is horrible! I feel so distracted, or my legs ache, or I’m constantly falling asleep. It’s just horrible!”
“It will pass,” the teacher said matter-of-factly.
A week later, the student came back to his teacher. “My meditation is wonderful! I feel so aware, so peaceful, so alive! It’s just wonderful!’
“It will pass,” the teacher replied matter-of-factly.
And this one:
Not Dead Yet
The Emperor asked Master Gudo,
“What happens to a man of enlightenment after death?”
“How should I know?” replied Gudo.
“Because you are a master,” answered the Emperor.
“Yes sir,” said Gudo, “but not a dead one.”
Sourced from here – http://goto.bilkent.edu.tr/gunes/ZEN/zenstories1.htm
I love quirky views of life, back to front, upside down, every which way 😀
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I remember reading Chopra’s The Way of the Wizard way back when, it was a powerful first for me in conceptualizing the present moment as a vehicle for letting go of the past…an important lesson that has come to home to roost again…thank you all very much. Maybe the past should be thought of only as the “then future” and then somehow disembodied from the present. Because I also believe in dependent arising. You are that, I am that, all this is that, and that’s all there is…after all.
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If you think about how much past we have versus how much of it we actually remember in the present… why do we recall certain parts of the past and forget the other parts. There must be a system to how our memory works, a system designed by us for us.
I tend to view the past now as a resource for the present. When a memory pops up it tends to do so because it is relevant to the present in some way. By approaching ti that way I’ve found that the present and past work in sync and help each other. Sometimes solving a puzzle in the present, ripples back in time and solves a puzzle in the past, and sometimes it’s the other way around.
I think a lot of how we view the past depends on how we view the past. It also depends on how we view the present. Our concept of time influences how we perceive time in all its forms. I tend to see it the Doctor Who way 😉
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Yes for sure the ‘design’ is there for us like a puzzle, indeed I think connecting the dots through our conscience is the path to enlightenment…realizing how thankful nature has given us a conscience to forgive and move past those who caused the us hurt (negative ripples) in our lives; we begin to see that negativity does not really make us who we are now, we were here all along– we are not the ripples themselves, we are the source of the ripple. Something like that, more life drama please. :-))
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Everything is neutral until we give it a label, imbue it with power, decide which side it is on. The power of our minds to create our reality… children of narcissists learn that from the get go, it just takes us a while to decipher the code and message.
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Where narcs are concerned, I always tend to see them as children (permanently 6 yrs old) who are playing a game of ‘let’s pretend to be an adult’. Only they have no idea what it’s like to be an adult so they’re making it all up and insisting that their version of being an adult is the reality of adulthood. They stamp their feet, do a frowny face and throw a tantrum at you if you question their ‘adult’ status.
It’s one of the ways I spot a narc. Their version of an adult is very different from a real adult.
Brilliant & so true!
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Also since our N parents were not authentic adults , they did not give us healthy adult role modeling.. No matter how good we become at constructing successful lives for ourselves , we lacked healthy autonomous adult role models. There most likely will be ramifications to this . One strong possibility is that we, as adults will be drawn to others who have the same issues. This could be narcissistic people who also have issues with feeling like authentic adults with full autonomy. It could also be others with similar issues to us in some way . Water rises to its own level.
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What is a ‘healthy’ adult, does anyone really know? There are lots of opinions about what a healthy adult is, should be, etc, but those opinions change, and change fairly rapidly and often radically, swinging from one thing to another, and we can see those changes clearly, especially in the past few decades where opinion has been documented in detail. Not so long ago we had very different views of what a healthy adult was compared to the views we have now.
The times (and the popular opinion of the times) they are (always) a changin’…
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