Growing up in a Dysfunctional Home - Realizations

Hi everyone! This post is the second part in my series, and I’m going to be discussing how I realized that my family dynamic was not ‘normal.’

For the longest time, I was convinced that my family acted like every other family. I thought that every other teenager went through the same things I went through. It took me a really long time to realize that this is not the case. I think the reason that it took so long, was that family dynamics are never really talked about among children and teenagers. We grow up thinking that our family life is private, thus we don’t talk about what's happening.

Senior year of high school was when I figured out that what I was dealing with at home was not normal. I became friends with this boy named Trevor and we became really close. So close that I got to know his family really well. I got to see how his family functioned and it seemed so peaceful. There were no arguments, his parents were supportive, and his family actually enjoyed spending time together, it was like a fantasy. I was shocked that his family was so different compared to mine. I tried to tell Trevor about what my family was like, but I ended up feeling like he felt bad for me, which was not a reaction I wanted to see, I just wanted someone to listen. His reaction caused me to shove a lot of the trauma down and I didn’t want to discuss my family dynamic to anyone because I didn’t want to get pitied.

Sophomore year of college was when I really realized that shoving all those emotions down because I was afraid to get ‘pitied” was ridiculous. I realized this during my sorority recruitment. There was a girl who did a speech in my sorority breaking down her experience growing up in a dysfunctional home, and how she handled everything, and her speech broke me. I probably heard it a total of 5 times that day and each time ended with me in tears. Listening to her talk openly about her experiences to a large group of people gave me the courage I needed to open up about what I had been through. I ended up opening up to my best friend that night and she opened up to me about her family and we spent the night crying and hugging, it was perfect. I wasn’t pitied, I was listened to, and that is all that I wanted.