As we grow up, we view the people around us as role models. Whether they like it or not. Everything they do in our presence, we observe and learn. When you are little, you don't know any better than what is around you. What is your normal, may be world altering for someone to get to know later in life.
This realization is one I started to struggle with in my early teens. What I thought was normal, turn out to be pretty fucked up to my friends. When I started to get to know other families and how they lived their lives, I started to realize that the things the people in my family did, weren't the same.
These weren't minuscule things like my family goes out to dinner every Christmas Eve and someone else's family goes to their grandmothers house. I am talking more like your drunk aunt calls your dad a fat ass at the poker table and a huge family brawl breaks out and you end up in the hospital on Christmas Eve night with a different aunt who broke her arm going down the icy stairs as she angrily tried to leave the family fight.
I'm talking alcohol everywhere, aunts popping pills in the bedroom and your cousin shooting up somewhere...God only only knows. But when this is the normal you grow up with, you don't realize that other families are actually doing some of that cheesy stuff you see in the movies. In my early twenties, I smoked pot with my aunts and uncles in the basement with my siblings and cousins one holiday night. I thought it was cool and funny even though at that point, I knew it wasn't the norm. But I didn't care. I wanted to have fun with my family.
The thing about my family, they are funny as hell and they know how to have a good time. The problem is, they don't always know when to stop. When I talk about my family, I am including myself. The most important thing I have learned about my family is that they are people who make mistakes. Sometimes they learn the first time, and sometimes it takes years. Sometimes they will have your back and sometimes they will shut the door in your face. But the biggest realization I could divulge to you is that what I have really learned is that they are people. Humans. They are not perfect. They do not have all the answers. They are learning as they go. Just like the rest of us.
Even though my parents are my parents, I found myself putting them very high up on this pedestal with expectations of them being people they are not. To no fault of their own. They are just people. They made a family, they raised their kids. They brought us around their families who were doing the same thing.
So yeah, I may have seen and experienced more than the average person. For a while, I really let it take me down some dark paths. I have made extremely poor choices thinking that it was okay. I have lived and learned and most importantly, I have recognized that everyone around me, including my parents, are all just trying to live our lives and figure it out as we go. No one should be placed higher up than someone else. No one is perfect. All we can do is learn from each other. Then we get to make the choices we see fit.
You cannot and should not play the blame game. It won't get you to where you want to be. Instead, learn to reflect on who you are as a person and who you want to be.
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