lovelovelovelovelove

29 October 2018

Long time no see. University is fucking hectic.


In my spare moments, I've been reading 'Beautiful Boy' a memoir by David Sheff about his sons addiction to meth and I think next I'll read 'Tweak' the sons, Nic Sheff, memoir. It's a really interesting read, it's devastating at the same time though. Every time I read it, it makes me feel a heavy sorrow. I've never experienced any form of addiction in my life, from myself or anyone else in it, but bloody hell. Addiction seems awful, and it's so complicated, and reading the memoir is terrifying for the future. I'm worried someone I love will become an addict to something, I'm worried for families who go through this yet I feel a selfish glee at the fact it's not happening to me.

It's got me thinking though about this intense love of a parent for their child. I love my nephew more than anything, and I can't imagine a love stronger than this. But there is. I feel like the love for a child must be so fulfilling, but so difficult. I wonder if a parent ever wishes they could love their child less, when their child is putting themselves through a self created hell and the parent has no control; if they just wish they could love a little less. I see the fierce protection of my sister of my nephew and this need to protect never fades away I don't think, but parents have to let it go slowly. It must be horrible for a parent to experience adolescence. Watching that little, innocent person experience a world of smoking, drinking, relationships, promiscuity, sadness. All these pains and intoxications, that they've been through themselves, they just want to shield their children from. But they can't. I feel like it's a returned thing though. Sometimes you wish your parents could love you a little less, wish that they could take a step back. The more I imagine parenthood the more I think I begin to understand how difficult this must be.

I once read that a parent doesn't see you as the person you are now, but an amalgamtion of everyone you've ever been. I'm not a 19 year old to my parents, I'm my baby self, the toddler self who wouldn't take off her raincoat, the one who she bathed and hugged and has devoted her life to protecting. One day I'll have to do the same (hopefully- I am incredibly scared of childbirth though).

I don't know the point of this. It just baffles me how intense a love a parent has and how as you get older the love for a parent changes. It becomes manipulated by annoyance and an urge to rebel but after this manipulation it adapts into a maturer love. The need to protect and care becomes part of a childs duty as well. Sometimes I think about what my parents have been through in her life, as well as how bithcy a teenager I can be, and I am just in such a state of awe. I wonder if I'll ever be strong enough for motherhood, because fuck me imagine raising a teenager. Seems like a bloody nightmare.

So kudos to all the parents out there, kudos to all the kids, kudos to everyone. Love can be so painful and so difficult and so many of us do it and that's pretty fucking sick.
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