Are Childhood Experiences Linked to Current Life Struggles?

I think I was a rather "fluffy" or aimless child. I wasn't exactly shy, but I was laid-back and somehow couldn't quite fit in with the intensity of those around me.

I have a symbolic memory of this. It happened when a friend of my mother's child (a high-energy kid whose dad was a foreigner) came over to play. That child was very active, and it was normal for them to use other people's things without asking and to gobble up apples as soon as they were peeled. My younger sister was trying to keep up by stuffing her cheeks with apples, but I just couldn't join in. Even when my parents urged me, saying, "Go on, compete and eat too!", I could only cry. I would rather spend time peacefully with everyone than compete with someone. That was the kind of child I was.

However, the atmosphere at home was far from the "peace" I desired. My mother had a volatile temperament and was a very emotional person. Before I knew it, I was walking on eggshells around her every day. I was terrified of seeing my mother get angry, throw things, and scream. I kept imagining someone who would protect me, thinking, "I wish I had an older brother..."

Even though we were in the same environment, my sister didn't seem as troubled as I was. When my mother broke dishes and my father and I were cleaning them up, my sister apparently had the mindset that "the person who broke them should be the one to clean them up." At the time, that strength seemed dazzling to me, and it was something I didn't possess.

My mother was the type who couldn't maintain her composure without venting her emotions, and I grew up as her "listener." Days were spent listening to my mother's monologues for hours, from the time I woke up until nearly noon. Yet, in the end, she would push me away, saying, "You wouldn't understand even if I told you." I kept listening, thinking, "If it makes her feel even a little better," out of a desperate desire to keep the peace at home, but looking back now, that was not a role a child should have had to bear.

My father also believed that "listening to her is what a family does." Perhaps he felt guilty because the cause of my mother's stress lay with his own relatives.

When I became a high school student, I desperately tried to release my pent-up stress by repeatedly "running away from home" on weekends. I wanted someone, somewhere, to help me. I just wanted to escape. I couldn't feel any value in my own life, and I became reckless, thinking, "I don't care what happens anymore." I trembled with the fear that if things continued this way, I would be forced to live "the life my parents wanted" instead of my own.

What saved me was my homeroom teacher at the time. Because the teacher reasoned with my mother, a "third party" breeze blew in, and my mother's stubborn attitude gradually began to change.

Time passed, and now my mother has mellowed out, and we can even laugh while talking about those days. However, the scars from that time still remain within me in a distorted form.

Because I didn't have the luxury of looking at myself during the appropriate time, my axis of "what I want to do" still remains unfocused and drifting.

To be honest, the reason I desperately wanted to "get married and have a family" wasn't because I understood the essence of marriage. For me, it was an "escape," a "refuge" to lean on, a sanctuary where there would be someone on my side no matter what... I think I had packed too many excessive expectations into it.

That is precisely why, with my husband as my family, I end up doing too much for him even when it's not requested, or conversely, leaning on him too much mentally, or getting tired of being together, or being unable to have healthy arguments, and I just cannot grasp the appropriate, comfortable distance to keep from my partner.

But perhaps this confusion about the distance between people is proof that I have finally "started to stand on my own two feet and walk my own life."

It doesn't have to be a perfect balance. Even if I stumble, I will slowly find a comfortable distance. That is what I am telling myself now.

And

To you, who have desperately protected someone's mood in the inescapable place called family. The reason you are tired of socializing because you don't know the appropriate distance is because you have lived so kindly and desperately. To the me of those days who couldn't feel my own worth, I want to tell you this now.

"It's okay for you to just be yourself."

While saying those words to myself, I am moving forward one step at a time in my own life today as well.