Being raised in an unstable household makes you understand that the world doesn’t exist to accommodate you, which is something a lot of people struggle to understand well into their adulthood. It makes you realize how quickly a situation can shift, how danger really is everywhere. But crises when they occur, do not catch you off guard; you have never believed you lived under a shelter of some essential benevolence. And an unstable childhood makes you appreciate calmness and not crave excitement.
-Curtis Sittenfeld
The decision to be positive is not one that disregards or belittles sadness that exists. It is rather a conscious choice to focus on the good and to cultivate happiness - genuine happiness. Happiness is not a limited resource. When we devote our energy and time to trivial matters and choose to stress over things that ultimately are insignificant, from that point, we perpetuate our own sadness and lose sight of the things that really make us happy and rationalize our way out of doing amazing things.
-Christopher Aiff
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Phew, that first one hit me right in the feels. Even though, by most standards, my childhood household was relatively stable, I watched my parents struggle to get by financially as far back as I can remember. My parents had fights every time they balanced the checkbook. I saw the worry and stress on their faces when they realized they were "in the red," and I knew not to ask for anything in the weeks after that, because it would push mom to the verge of tears. Especially when she was the one who forgot to write the missing check in the ledger.
ReplyDeleteI think that explains a lot about how Ant turned out -- my parents were a lot more financially stable when she was growing up, so she never got to see that look in their eyes on a regular basis. She'd ask for something and it was more a decision of whether or not to give it to her, rather than a decision they had no control over. I've always had a hunch that her crippling anxiety could be traced back to that root...she can't handle it when she enters the world that mom and dad don't have control over. Such as having a pile of college assignments due the next day, signing a lease in an iffy neighborhood, or even driving on the interstate. Jen and I don't even flinch at those things. Makes a lot of sense.