I’m Sorry but What?

My niece is in her early twenties and God bless she is one angry girl. I would love to say she doesn’t have anything to be angry about but her childhood was less ideal. Two parents who were selfish and addicted to drugs. Both are clean now but the damage was already done. 

She’s had a string of jobs and never really works for very long. It is never her fault when she gets fired. For example she got fired for calling in too many times but she said she was depressed and just didn’t feel like going to work. There is no reason to fire her. 

As someone who has diagnosed depression I can sympathize. I am not one to say just get up and carry on. However, I also felt she should have maybe shared her diagnosis with her employer so they could have worked together to have a solution that would benefit everyone.

She once told me it was her parents’ jobs to ensure and provide her with a house and the means to pay her bills. I asked why. She responded because she didn’t ask to be born. Excuse me? No one asks to be born. Heck, no one asks to go through half the things they go through life. She went on to explain that she is the way she is because of her childhood. Again, I was flabbergasted. 

My mother’s mother ran off and left them with some random people when Ma was eight years old. Her father was in prison for child support. Her mother’s brother finally got them out of foster care but couldn’t keep them because he was gay (it was the sixties) but arranged for her father’s mother to come and get them. When my mother was ten her father committed suicide. He was supposed to come and get them but she ended up being raised by her grandmother on social security. 

They were poor as Grandma only brought home $50 a month along with a little for each of the kids after their father’s death. They struggled. Grandma never drove which meant there wasn’t anyone to teach them. None of them finished high school. My mother went on to marry her first husband and then divorce after three years. She met and married my father not long after that.

She raised four kids, worked civil service, and later at a hospital all without a high school education. She got her GED. My father taught her to drive and showed her the world. We didn’t always have money. We struggled at times. However, my mother was never ashamed of what she came from. It made her the woman she is. A survivor.  

So, when my niece says things like that I want to smack upside the head. Then maybe smack her parents because the truth is they taught her to be like that. Neither ever held jobs for long and they depended on our family for a while and then his family to pay their bills. Heck, my sister still does whatever she wants with the money she gets and then worries about the bills later.

I am not trying to belittle what she went through nor say it didn’t shape her. However, for some reason I can’t seem to get her to understand that her childhood doesn’t have to define her adulthood. That this is her chance to be more than her parents, to show that they didn’t break her. Her older sister has done just that. She struggled for a while but went back to school and is doing something she enjoys. She is living her life the way she wants.

I don’t think that it helps that she only blames my sister for her bad childhood. I am not saying my sister isn’t part of the reason it was bad. She certainly did and still does her part. However, her dad is a part of it as well. It’s hard now when she is ranting about my sister and all of the things that she did to not say anything about her father. It’s like his years of abuse towards them just didn’t happen. He introduced my sister to drugs and drinking. In fact, he got my sister to run away from home to live with him when she was seventeen. He didn’t like that my parents had rules and my dumb sister walked right into that hot mess.

Yet, there are thousands of people who overcome their childhood trauma. It just seems like my niece doesn’t try very hard. It also doesn’t help that she surrounds herself with people who think the same way she does. I don’t know if that is a generational thing or a her thing.

Do you have issues with younger people today and the way they think? I don’t mean to upset anyone. I am genuinely curious as to if this is just me expecting too much of her or if it’s an issue any of you experience as well.