When I was about 8/9 years old I was told by a friend of mine I couldn’t play with them any more. Their mother didn’t approve of it for some reason.
One year later I asked my mom if she ever knew why this was the case. She said that other mother thought I wasn’t good enough for her child. But that after a while that mother said she may be okay with it now.
But my mother said she didn’t like that idea. That this friendship would be all reliant on that mother’s “generosity”. And I didn’t feel the need to object to that. My mom’s reasoning made perfect sense to me, even on age 10. This was not the way you treat friendships fairly from a parents perspective, I realised. (There is a little more to this story though, but this is all I care to share.)
I still feel like that was a mature thing I did. Because I was not a child that took ‘no’ very well at that age. So what are your childhood experiences where, now upon looking back, you feel you handled it maturely?
I’ll do a counter one: an event that I thought I handled maturely for most of my adult life, but came to realize recently that I really handled it immaturely. Warning: venting of implied child abuse.
Tap for spoiler
I was orphaned at ~3 years old. I hadn’t met my biological father yet because he was stuck in Cuba due to tensions between the Soviet bloc and USA. On my actual 9th birthday, I finally met him because he was granted permission to leave Cuba shortly after the dissolution of the USSR. That day, my family threw a huge party. During the party, my biological father mostly engaged with other adults. There weren’t many other kids present, so I mostly just hung out along or bounced around adults. Towards the middle of the party, he pulled me aside and said, “I know that today is your birthday, but all these people are here for me, so I have to attend to them. We can talk tomorrow since I won’t be busy.”
As a child, I didn’t really think that was a complete asshole thing to do and say. Rather, I just went along with it. As I aged, I started thinking more about it, and thought that he was a bit self-centered, but possibly overwhelmed with everything going on. He just left Cuba for the USA and reconnected with family he hadn’t seen in a decade, including his parents and brother. I prided myself in not taking it personal and allowing him to slowly take in his major transition. More recently, I think I handled it poorly by not speaking up to him for myself.
The guy turned out be a raging narcissist that found pleasure in manipulating and belittling others. Other people have told me they thought he was actually a psychopath, which I can’t rule out. It caused him joy to see others beneath him and take advantage of their goodwill. He purposely went out of his way to stunt my personal growth because he did not want me to be “better” than him in his delusional schema.
I think that to have handled it maturely would have been for me to publicly share what he told me in private to everyone and stated how fucked up it was that not only was he neglecting his one son, but playing mind games to devalue him. This would have demonstrated solid boundaries on my behalf and informed other adults of his character. The upcoming years were inline with this pattern of placing himself on a pedestal while devaluing me in private so others wouldn’t notice.
I’m happy he is dead now because I feel free be me and relieved that he isn’t able to hurt others anymore. Last year, I wrote him a letter he couldn’t receive because he was dead, but it was an acknowledgement of his abuse, a dismissal of him from my life, a declaration that his legacy will be of his abusive behaviors towards everyone in his life and that I will never say his name again so that it is forgotten. Any memory of him will die with me like he deserves.
Anyway, if you got to here, thanks for reading and I hope it didn’t cause you any distress. If you find yourself in a relationship with a parent like my biological father, then know that not only in my experience, but also among scientific and professional reports, they never get better. That is who they are, so it is up to you to protect yourself and live your life to the fullest because otherwise, these parasites will not allow you to grow.