Horrendous Parenting

[rational_thinker]

Hi there,

This is really important for me to say and vent but I am 28 and my parents have been an absolute and total disaster. They were loving but so ignorant it is beyond belief. They were uneducated and illiterate people from a poor country and had no idea what the hell they were doing.

Because they didn't have skills they ran a tobacco shop. When I was little I had birthmarks on my face and this led to me being picked on and abused by kids, as a disfigured migrant child I was then sent to one of those all boys Catholic schools- this was really difficult and traumatic for me. Did my parents realise that these kinds of issues would severely impact their only child's development and psychological make up? No! They were totally clueless!

They used our home as a storehouse for tobacco and cigarettes. I grew up all alone, without siblings, without even cousins, in a house full of cigarettes. Not once did they ever warn me about the dangers of smoking or drugs- they fundamentally didn't understand or were incapable of this basic parental duty to protect and educate the child.

What is the biggest farce is that they expected me to be high achieving and successful. But I had to grow up learning every bit of important information for myself- it was like walking across a minefield without a map. Nobody really taught me about STIs either, not my university and my sexually experienced parents didn't think it was important to tell their young son that there is a killer virus you can catch and you should be very careful.

I am not saying that is all their fault on that one, but I've taken some risks and am scared stiff from the prospect of getting HIV. But sometimes I wonder maybe I should just be gone, or have never been born. When you are that incompetent/ignorant- you simply shouldn't have children.

[blondguy]

Hey RT

Like TonyWK mentioned what an great post!

Even just saying that your glass is half empty is a huge step forward towards improving our thought processes

My Best

Paul

[rational_thinker]

Hello all and thank you for the comments and advice.

It is hard to separate the effects of environment and heredity. I would say that I was born a little anxious but it really ramped up because my parents were never there to protect or educate me. Having said that they were loving parents although they were from a developing country without much knowledge.

As for the HIV terror, I got tested at the time of the last post and the 6 week test was negative. The place I got tested (a wonderful and excellent organisation) consider that to be conclusive but I had trouble believing them because the official advice remains to test at 3 month for conclusive results. Well I worked up the courage to do that (sometimes experiencing tremendous distress thinking about the results) and my 13 week test came back negative.

Like CJ's mum said, HIV is actually quite difficult to catch, the vast majority of people who catch it engaged in repeated risk taking- that might be one of the reasons why the disease is still quite stigmatised. My exposure was such, that many experts were telling me that I didn't have it and there was no need for testing. But I was terrified that I caught it, maybe it is because my self-esteem is so fragile that I think I am bound to or deserve to have something terrible like that happen. I was irrationally afraid and compulsively searched the net for information- getting better at controlling that behaviour now. But all that reassuring information and negative results generally only bring temporary relief- I am still afraid, thinking 'what if?'.

It is interesting how a manageable condition can still bring so much concern isn't it. Medically, it is a serious chronic condition like diabetes but most people are not afraid of the latter. The current treatments are generally highly effective and actual sufferers who receive successful care pretty much have 0 risk of passing it on. I have tried to reframe my hypochondria and anxiety into a more constructive one about general health. I think all of us should have annual blood tests measuring blood sugar, inflammation, immune system strength. That allows us to nip a lot of serious problems in the bud, and it will allow me to deal with the tiny risk that I could still have the virus. How strange I still worry about it? I don't worry about being killed by terrorism.