It's time to confess: we love you very much. Almost always. We love as we can, because no one taught us to love. But we're really, really trying. When we have the strength for it.
We're terrified. We are afraid of everything: your new friends, diseases, neighbours’ disapproval, school, the future, the past. We are chained by this fear and therefore make many mistakes. You should know that in most cases, when we look so aggressive and unfair, we are simply in a state of shock and cannot, do not know how to get out of it. That's why so often we seem out of control, irritated, angry. Scared of ourselves and our behaviour, we repeat the same thing over and over again, hoping that will be what you remember, hoping for your forgiveness in the future, "We do all this with love, and you will thank us in the future." Thank us... As if that's gonna happen. Frankly speaking, we ourselves don't believe in it, but it is necessary to tell something, to keep afloat somehow. That is why we ourselves dejectedly repeat that we are grateful for our past. Every time we promise ourselves to change, but again and again we fall into this abyss of terrible fear, and the only way out we know is aggression, again. Others so often behaved towards us in exactly the same way, so even before we have time to think, the habitual prompt jumps out, "Scold them, deprive them of will, take away from them the right to reply". And we do that, leaving you unprotected and confused, misnaming our own nightmare as parenting, hiding behind the most sophisticated wording. What do we do? We ourselves do not know how to break out of this vicious circle...
We're stopping you from going your own way. Believe us, we're not doing this on purpose: we're just very confused. Everyone tells us what to do and HOW to do it, and nobody - NOBODY - asks what we want. In a way, we've forgotten what it's like to want. Therefore, we also deprive you of the right to want: this is how we seek to justify ourselves. That's how we make you our carbon copies, because then we can say, "All people are like that." And get the illusion of peace for a while at least. Only to doubt again and to fly off the handle again.
We interrupt you at the very moment when it should never be done. When you stop to look at a bright flower, we immediately remember that it is time to go home; when you ask us an uncomfortable question, instead of finding an answer together, we begin to lie about some urgent matters. We do not let you take a single step, because we are afraid that it will turn out to be wrong. We are simply used to looking for danger and a catch in any action. Deep down, we know it's just our parental hallucination, but we were taught so often that the world is dangerous that we believe it ourselves.
We desperately convince you that we know the right answers to any questions, and we ourselves freeze at the first deviations from the course once set. Therefore, we do not allow you to deviate even an iota from the rules that have long since lost their meaning to us.
We want to be successful parents. It seems to us that society demands it from us. But society is huge and amorphous and, of course, cannot demand anything from us. And it is so scary to seriously think about the conclusion that follows from this. Therefore, time and again, we present our own bad habit as a norm of accepted morality.
Please help us, give us a second chance! Teach us to taste the world by touch, teach us not to be afraid, to be surprised, to want. Unfortunately, the power is on our side, so teach us how to use it correctly, and, better still, not to use it at all. Be patient with us - we so often don’t know what we’re doing.
We only have one extenuating circumstance. We love you. Almost always.
Accept it if you can, and forgive us.
And forgiving, do your own thing.