Longing to be "normal" or have a "normal" home... as a kid, or maybe even now

In My Humble Opinion
1

Continuing the discussion from LGBT people: When did you know you fit into the "queer" spectrum?:

Reading the thread referenced above got me thinking… I wonder how many of us “struggled to fit in” and grappled with “another way I was going to be different” as kids and especially as teens, for reasons other than sexual orientation? How many of us felt like “outsiders” and wanted just to feel “normal”? I’m guessing a lot of us.

I never felt that I was normal or that my home life was normal. It’s interesting (and maybe others can relate) that I developed a kind of radar for other troubled kids from troubled homes. I’m not talking about homes with blatant, obvious, overt abuse, but homes where there was tension in the air and a recognizable (to me) coldness. Homes that seemed to be on thin ice rather than solidly on thick ice. Homes where people tippy-toed around on eggshells and couldn’t be themselves, for whatever reason. Homes that didn’t have an atmosphere of warmth, welcome, caring, and safety.

As an only child who was not spoiled (or even noticed much) by my parents, I loved going to friends’ homes where there was a casual ease and affection between parents and children and among the children. Where there could be a dinner table discussion that didn’t end with someone storming off and slamming doors. Other homes were like mine – and I felt it instantly. I’m still friends with two women from high school (50+ years ago) whose homes were like mine – underlying tension and lack of emotional safety, even though no overt abuse (that I know of).

I lived with a guy 40+ years ago, and his mother’s home was the first home I felt welcome in. You could tell her stuff and have heated discussions at the table and everyone listened to you. Conversations did not lead to yelling and tantrums. It was a normal home, and I’m so grateful for that experience, even though I didn’t get there until I was 25 years old. He and I broke up after only a couple of years, but I stayed close to her and I still am! She’s 91 now, and when she departs this life, I’ll miss her more than I do my own mother who died three years ago.

Were you an Outsider? Are you still? Or have you made peace with this issue?

My first attempt at spinning off a new topic from a post in an ongoing topic. VERY cool feature!

2

I had a similar envy while growing up too. My mother was like a volcano just waiting to erupt and she would do odd things like charge us money for meals she cooked (at times - I kid you not,) get angry over weird or trivial things (such as whether I chose a piece of red candy over blue candy, or whether I waited too long to slap a mosquito and hence got blood on my arm and it was now “dirty” as a result). On one occasion, she walked out for days on us (packed a suitcase and lived in a hotel) because of some quarrel (I forget what.) I longed for a (somewhat) more spoiled upbringing. I didn’t want to be spoiled rotten, but I did want a less chaotic, more peaceful, stable surrounding. At the same time, though, I was aware that some of my friends had even tougher parents. But it wasn’t tough that was the issue, it was the sheer unpredictability and “I won’t ever let you do anything that I perceive as you winning against me” attitude of my mother that made it all that bad.

3

This thread made me think of my friends’ homes. When I think of 4 of my best childhood friends, all of their home lives were very different than mine and each other.

  • One of the families was made up of all adopted kids with older parents. There was lots of yelling in that house. My friend had 4 older brothers that had the house in complete chaos at all times.
  • One of the families really struggled financially. Sometimes some of the kids wouldn’t have shoes that fit them. I remember being in the bedrooms and none of the beds had sheets.
  • One friend had divorced parents (which was an oddity at that time) and a step-father. Her mom and step-dad owned a business and were away from home all the time. She basically raised herself. She could cook for herself at a pretty young age.
  • One friend had a much older sister that became a nun. Her parents were much older than mine and seemed like fuddy-duddies to me. Her mom was very strict. We weren’t allowed to giggle when we hung out in her room. I had David Cassidy posters all over my walls. She had two pictures of flowers above her bed. That was it. It looked like a hotel room.

As a kid, I think I wanted our house to be different in some ways. I was sometimes in awe of the neatness of my friend’s house. My house always looked very well lived in. I wished I didn’t have to share just about everything with my sisters, bedroom included. I wished my dad wasn’t so crabby! Other friends’ dads would joke around with us and were kind of fun. My dad was a good dad and loved to have fun with his own kids, but not the neighbor kids. He wanted to be left alone when he came home from work. Other dads would gladly drive us here and there. I was afraid to ask my dad. But as an adult, I remember my childhood fondly. I’ve told my mom that we (my sisters and I) all think we had a great childhood. She was surprised to hear that. She must have always wished some things had been different. She was happy and grateful that I told her that.

Two of the friends mentioned above have told me lately that they loved being at my house - that they needed to get away from the craziness of their homes.

So I guess there are different “normals”. Physical, mental, and/or emotional abuse should never be thought of as normal. That’s a whole different thing and my heart goes out to anyone that has had to live with any of that in their childhood.

4

Thanks for your comments. :slightly_smiling_face: I can relate to much of what you posted.

I’d also like to ask people about the things that made them feel like an outsider, maybe even an outsider in their own families? Things that made you feel like you didn’t belong with these people.

There are stories these days about people who have done the spit-in-a-tube DNA tests and found out about half-siblings, or other family secrets. I did the DNA test hoping to find out I had another family somewhere, as these parents didn’t seem like my people. No such luck. Found several first cousins that I already knew… oh well.

5

When I was a kid were 7 people living in our 3/2 ranch style house on a slab. No where to hide but ntl I felt entirely alone and overlooked the entire time I lived there. So yeah spent a fuck ton of time hanging out at friends homes where I’d fervently pray to wake up as their child. Seriously.

Mother has/had childhood issues of her own that dominated her behavior. She’s 8 fucking8 and has never recalled a cherished moment from my youth, but she’s all fond memories of my brothers. I could share a proud moment of my kids accomplishments and their response is not acknowledgement but oh remember when your brother did such and such 50 years ago?

It’s all well and good but I did try to parent my kids much differently. I never gave my folks shit about my disappointments, but when they witnessed my extra care with my kids they took it as an affront to their parenting like I was showing them up or something. I never subscribed to winning at all costs. They divided and conquered. Thus they live at least 800 miles from their kids.

6

I’ve always been comfortable with my abnormalities. When I’ve gotten frustrated, it’s much more often been with the normality of other people.

7

I’m another only child: the OP is pretty much my life. My parents were both raised in different but horrific situations, and did their best not to pass it onto me: what I got was a sort of benign neglect. My parents were workaholics, and generally used the “American boy” template, even though that mostly didn’t work for me: they always assumed I’d be getting into sports and girls any minute now.

I grew up feeling not unwelcome, which is different from feeling loved. (I think I was loved, but by people who didn’t really know how to communicate that to a child. Believing that as an adult hasn’t quite made up for not feeling it as a kid, though.)

I am a lot better now, but I still manage to engineer personal and professional life so that I’m dealing with people who are happy enough with me but not quite willing to really see me and value me. Sigh.

8

Longing to be “normal” or have a “normal” home

Not only has that train long ago left the station, the station itself was converted into a mini-mall which failed and then was razed for a parking lot.

Some things have normalized though. When I was growing up, we weren’t supposed to have beverages with our meals, only afterwards. I rebelled when I was around 11 (a very James Dean-type moment).

9

For me there were two broad issues. One was that I grew up in an immigrant family. We came to Canada from Jugoslavia when my parents were 33 and I was a little over a year old. This means that, while they already had their personalities formed by the old country, I had no memory of it. This was not much of an issue, if at all while I was very small and my life mainly centered around my family, but the more I got acquainted with the world around me, the more I found various habits and attitudes that my parents had inferior. It wasn’t simply that I wanted to conform to mainstream society - I found a lot of things were simply better in other people’s homes and families. A good example is food. The more I got acquainted with “Canadian” food, the pickier an eater I became and the less I wanted to eat what was prepared at home. Even today, though as an adult I am not that picky on the whole, I will not eat the typical dishes that were made in my family. Another example was that various modes of expression that my parents used in everyday speech. Serbs tend to be very feisty, and they would often express themselves in ways that were rather sharp, cocky or vulgar in order to make a rather ordinary point. This contributed to my impression that my parents were kind of weird.

More seriously, though, my parents were quite strict and my mother was outright authoritarian. I have written about this multiple times here, but over time, she developed into a control freak and a narcissist. You essentially couldn’t disagree with her on anything (and a lot of her opinions are paranoid, fanatical and self-centered) without her taking it personally and freaking out. At times I was chastised not for disobeying her, but for indicating (even implying) that I didn’t agree with her rules and requirements. And my father, as a general rule, avoided standing up to her in order to keep the peace. Normal families that I knew around me were probably not like that.

10

I know I’ve said it a lot on these boards, but here goes.

My sisters and most of my cousins on my mom’s side were born in the 1950s and early 1960s. Their kids were mostly born in the late '70s and the '80s. I had the shitass luck to be born in 1970, in the valley between these two spikes. Then on my dad’s side, they were a lot less prolific. I had one cousin who was about five years older, and a quasi-cousin (honorary, not blood), and for a brief time, my uncle’s stepdaughters. And that, besides my sister’s kids, who naturally were six and eight years younger than me, was literally it for anyone under 21 on that side.

I can give a few examples of how much fun this was:

  • Age 4, give or take. At maternal grandma’s apartment. Gma, Mom and Aunt C are at the table in her kitchenette. I’m in the attached living room, and suddenly wonder, why am I over here all by myself? Try to pull the kiddie chair up to the table.

Aunt C lunges up from the table, bends down and bellows in my face, “You are not gonna sit here, SISTER!” I don’t quite remember what happened after that. But I’m fairly certain it did not involve my mom defending me. She told me years later that she tried to “stay out of” that kind of thing, even if she didn’t agree with the other adult, or thought they were unreasonable. It was more important that she avoid giving the impression that she was spoiling me.

  • New Year’s Eve at cousins’ house; I’m twelve, the next youngest is fifteen, and the others are all over eighteen, at least one a lot over. My house has not been a fun place to be lately; both my parents are overworked, and their marriage is falling apart. I didn’t expect a ton of gifts from them, or even more than one, but they could have done something besides that. Dinner, watching the TV specials, or just leaving aside the brooding and grumbling for a few hours.

So being at my cousins’ house is like a transfusion. For a few hours, we hang out, eat junk food, watch Times Square and tell jokes. I notice that their tree is still up and there are packages under it, but they could be empty boxes for decoration. If I even thought about it that much. I was basking in family togetherness; I’d forgotten what it was like even in a three-person household, and a large family is what I’ve always longed for. Then my mom, Aunt J and Uncle P come home from their dinner out. Uncle P goes to the tree and starts handing out presents.

Immediately, it was like a force field came down between me and them. And the first thing I tell myself is that I don’t have to be told that there’s nothing under there for me, although I was thinking of it in terms of, I didn’t bring anything for them, so why would they have something for me? And I was so virtuous back then, I thought it was up to me to prove that I didn’t mind, by oohing and aahing over each reveal.

Except no one’s acknowledging my comments. No one answers when I ask, politely, “Why are you opening presents on NYE?*” No one seems to know that I’m here at all. Not even my mom, slouching on a dining room chair sipping her vodka.

So I get up and stumble to the basement and sit on the steps crying. And crying. And crying. No, not because I’m not getting a present. Because I’m not getting a family. My nuclear family is a lost cause. And although since childhood I’ve thought of Aunt J’s family as kind of a second family of mine, I can see now that that’s how I wanted it to be, not how it actually was. I don’t fit in anywhere. And my mom is probably out there apologizing for my being such a spoiled brat who can’t handle not getting a present. Which is probably how it would look to anyone; how could anyone understand that people, not things, are what I want? It’s easier to say “Ignore her; she’s spoiled,” than “Give her a chance; she’s lonely.” (Okay, I didn’t think all that in so many words at that time. But IIRC, that was the gist of what I felt.)

Then, just as I’m winding down, the door opens halfway, and the 15 y/o holds out, thrusts at me actually, a wrapped package. “Oh, thank y—” Door closes. Uh…really? I open the thing. Generic stationery, very much the kind of thing one might find while rummaging through drawers and closets in search of something that could conceivably be a gift. Which still wouldn’t have been a problem, if someone had said “C’mon up; we have something for you.” Or even, “We’re sorry; we didn’t know you were coming. But we’re glad you’re here.” And I just realized something worse: accepting it played right into their hands. “See – wave a shiny object at her, and watch how fast she shuts up and grabs for it.”

  • And I was going to talk about the Akron visit when I was 11 and the wedding of one of the cousins from the Christmas anecdote when I was 18, but I think that’s enough for now.

*Duh: except for the youngest boy, they were all in college or living on their own, so NYE was more practical than Christmas Day.

11

Your story breaks my heart. And I can relate to the spirit of it, if not to each detail. Especially this:

Having to act like you don’t mind and everything’s okay or risk a lecture on how good you have it.

I wanted to be in a family that felt like a family.

:hugs:

12

This is a great topic. Writing things down seems to make everything feel better.
I never knew what normal was until I was old enough(?) to have friends. I would say Junior High School (now called Middle School) age. It was then I realized:

  1. 10 yr olds are not responsible for the younger kids, cooking and cleaning and laundry.
  2. People in other families ARE allowed to talk at the dinner table.
  3. The parent(s) in other families do not sit at the table with a long stick to reach an hit you if you make a mistake and say something.
  4. Other families allow their kids to bring friends home. And offer snacks to those who are there.

I can go on and on. Someone above mentioned that they wished the mother of a friend was there mother…I know that feeling well.
My closest friend starting from about age 12, lived 2 houses away. I was amazed at the interactions between Mrs. Z and her kids. There was laughter, praise, affection, and Mrs. Z even sat down and played board games with us. Imagine!!

As far as extended family, I never fit in. Both my mother’s and father’s family was crude and I was embarrassed to overhear some of the things they said. My mother was especially cruel to me, to one of my 2 sisters and to my brother. My father’s sisters noticed and commented on it many times. My mother also had a strange odor, which in later years I realized was alcohol. She apparently was a closet alcoholic.

I did very well in school and it was not uncommon to bring home grades of 90+ in some subjects. I would then be berated and beaten because I was to stupid, lazy or both to get 100. My mother called me horrible names and most times I did not even know what they meant. Once when I asked Mrs. Z, she got a horrified look on her face and asked where I heard that. I started to cry.

I left home at 17, 3 months after graduating HS at 16.

.

13

Thank you, ThelmaLou. And I forgot to mention something: We were at their house the following Christmas, I think sometime between 12/25 and 12/31. Point is, the minute I stepped inside I was doubled over with stomach cramps. Could barely move, just went to the good old basement and lay on the weight bench until my mom found me and told me it was time to go.

14

I was that fat kid who got picked on at school, never got chosen (or chosen last) for any team game, etc. So yes, I longed to be normal. And dating was a nightmare for me. But I eventually got lucky and found my mate of 57 years now.

And I was lucky in other ways, not least in having a loving family life.

15

Bravo! As they say, living well is the best revenge.

16

For me, my issue was never with my own family – in retrospect, I realize just how fortunate I was to be in a family where everyone loved and respected one another, there was no violence or fighting, and where, even when economic times were tight, my parents helped us to not feel deprived.

That said, on my 10th birthday, as I was finishing up 4th grade, we moved to a new city, where I knew no one. What I quickly discovered was that I was an “outsider” in my new school:

  • We were not nearly as wealthy as most of my classmates were, and those few of us in the class who were from less weathly families were looked down on.
  • I was small, skinny, unathletic, and uninterested in sports, in an area where excelling in sports was a big part of one’s social standing.
  • I had interests and mannerisms which weren’t particularly “masculine,” in an era (the 1970s) where homosexuality was still highly stigmatized, and at an age where kids start to develop awareness of sex and gender roles. So, I got called “queer” and “fag” a lot.

As a result of all of that, I was picked on continuously at my new school. I had few friends in grade school, and in high school (which was largely the same social structure). I loved school – at least the learning part of school – but the teasing and harassment got so bad that I dreaded going to school, and started to develop psychosomatic tics from the stress.

Thankfully, when I got to college, I found my own “tribe,” and blossomed socially, but that stretch of eight years (fifth grade through high school) was pretty horrible, and I found myself wishing that I could just fit in better, have friends, and not be the constant butt of jokes.

17

Did you tell your parents about the abuse you suffered at school?

18

@ThelmaLou: Yes, I did.

It didn’t really help a lot – they talked to the school’s principal (who was a sweet but ineffectual person) about it; she then convened a meeting with my class (except for me), in which she scolded my classmates for picking on me. That had pretty much the opposite of the intended effect, as my classmates further ostracized me for “going to the principal.”

Then, when I was in eighth grade (the school that I attended was a K-8 school), we got a new principal, who had a lot stronger of a personality. He soon found out about the fact that I was an outcast from my class, and he, too, met with all of my classmates, where he read them the riot act about how they treated me. I think that put a bit of fear-of-god into some of them, but it didn’t really change things much.

When I was in fifth grade, my dad signed me up for taekwondo classes, to help with my self-confidence and lack of athleticism, and to learn how to defend myself if it ever came to that. That did help some, and I generally enjoyed the lessons, so I wound taking them for two years.

19

Thanks for that info. I can see where your parents going to the principal could backfire. At least your parents believed you and backed you. I’m guessing not all parents would.

20

Very true.

As an adult, I’ve had conversations with my parents about those days. They’ve told me that they were anguished over what I was going through, and were at a loss to find other ways that they could help me.

And, as lousy as those years were, I managed to emerge from them with my psyche mostly intact. As an adult, I have a lot of close friends, I’m successful in my career, and I have a mostly-happy marriage. My parents have also remarked, more than once, that they are very happy for me now, and that I’ve had a happy adulthood, given what my school years had been like.

Also, in the past decades, I’ve had a few conversations with some of my antagonists from those years (mostly at high school reunions). I’ve had a few who took me aside, and apologized to me for what they had put me through. What I’ve learned is that a lot of them (at least, the ones who apologized) had lousy childhoods of their own, with abusive and/or alcoholic parents, and were “punching down,” taking out their own unhappiness on someone who was even more helpless than they were.

(OTOH, there are some whom I’ve met again as adults, for whom I’ve decided, “yeah, you were a jerk as a kid, and you’re a jerk as an adult.”)