Trust issues
My parents let me watch too much grown-up TV when I was a kid.
Some of it was relatively-innocent sitcom fun that I didn't fully understand, but still thought was entertaining. Growing Pains. Who's the Boss? Family Ties. Night Court. Cheers. My Two Dads. Married with Children. Murphy Brown. (Ok, I snuck into my older brother's room to watch that last one.) If I could stay up late enough, which I rarely could, they'd even let me watch Saturday Night Live.
But some of it was also more serious primetime stuff. Family dramas. Crime stories. Things with adult storylines that a 9 or 10 year old kid probably shouldn't be seeing. Dallas. Law & Order (the original). Magnum PI. Moonlighting. Hunter. LA Law. China Beach. Spencer: For Hire. Father Dowling Mysteries. (High five if you know that one.) Oh, and I'd also been watching daytime soap operas with my mom since I was 4 or 5—Guiding Light and As The World Turns, if you’re really curious. I'm sure that wasn't super appropriate, either.
I remember one specific instance, when I was 8 or 9, that I knew I shouldn’t be watching this stuff…but of course, I was doing it anyway. I can pinpoint the timeframe only because I remember it being in the first house I lived in—a small, two story townhouse, where my brother's room was right next to mine, and I could go in there pretty easily without anyone noticing. It was a Sunday afternoon, I think, and I was in there watching some criminal investigation show by myself on his TV while he was somewhere else (maybe that was the summer he spent in Israel?). There were no DVRs back then, and he didn't have a VCR, so I must have just found the show on one of the 30 stations cable stations that we could afford. (At least 8 of them were some version of the home shopping network or QVC, and another 4 were in Spanish.)
Anyway. I very clearly remember watching this show, with a notebook and a pencil, trying to play along with the police investigators who were tirelessly working the case. As I followed along with the TV show’s storyline, writing down clues and pretending to be working the case along with the actor-slash-investigators, I'd sometimes also imagine the roles being switched: that I was the victim. That I was the one telling the police my story, over and over again, in a cold, sterile room. In pretending to recount all the details of some terrible crime my brain was too immature to process, I felt a strange physical energy. And since it was usually some kind of story that was so traumatizing that no one would want to make it up, in my pretend-TV-world, I also felt worthy of being believed.
There was something about being the victim that I think I connected with, even at such a young age. Victims received attention. They were asked what they needed, or how they felt. They were taken care of. They were listened to. I don’t know if I was ever asked how I felt, or what I needed when I was a kid. I was just…there.
My parents were always incredibly overprotective of me, or over-restrictive in what I could do, partly because of my dad’s Orthodox Jewish observances, and partly because of my mom’s…well, I really don’t know why. Either way, I felt like I missed out on a lot of normal kid things. Even when I was in high school, my mom didn't let me go to parties with my friends because she didn't trust the other drivers on the road, or the other parents, or the other kids. “I trust you,” she’d say. “It's everyone else I worry about."
Except...that’s not how it felt. What that really told me, in retrospect, is that she didn't trust me, either. That she didn’t trust that I’d make good decisions on my own—like not drinking, or getting into trouble, or riding in a car with someone I thought was unsafe. It made me feel like she thought I wasn’t smart/strong/aware enough to look out for myself. To know what I needed. To make my own decisions.
Which I think, in turn, made me feel the same way about myself.
I didn't fully comprehend this at age 9, or even age 15, and I'm just starting to unravel it now. But when I look back and put the pieces together, more of it starts to make sense.
My early role-playing and identification with being a victim was the way I interpreted (or expressed?) not having control over my own sense of self. Of not being enough. My parents didn't trust me enough to make good decisions, even though I never did anything to warrant that. I was a good kid. They didn't trust the rest of the world, either. Maybe they didn't trust themselves, but I don't really know.
I do know that my parents loved me, though I didn't always feel it. Instead, they kept me "safe" by keeping me from becoming my own person.
I keep trying to hold this particular part of my childhood with compassion, and hold my younger self with compassion, too. I’m trying to allow all of the pain and complexity to be there without pushing it away. Acknowledging it doesn’t erase anything, but it does help me make some sense of how they’ve effected who I am today.
Validating what I experienced takes away some of the feelings of not-enoughness. But I’m still wrestling with some pretty intense self-doubt. I often question whether I’m making all of this out to be worse, or more traumatic, than it was. I tell myself that I shouldn’t still be carrying it with me, because it wasn’t that big of a deal. In writing this down, I'm hoping to let some of those beliefs go a little bit.
The hardest part of all this isn't just healing old wounds. It’s recognizing that my parents were probably doing the best they could. It’s forgiving them for not knowing how I was feeling, or being affected, by their lack of trust in me. And it’s trying to be self-aware enough, and connected enough, not to repeat the same patterns with my own kids.
I want them to know that the world, for the most part, is a safe place. I want to give them the tools and the confidence to make their own decisions, and know that I'll support them no matter what. I want them to know they can trust me, because I'll always listen to and acknowledge them, even if we disagree. And I want them to know they can trust themselves, too.
Maybe I'm not as bad of a self-therapist as I thought. Or maybe I'm just really, really good at reading books that force me to question, and think, and show myself some grace.
❤️