So weird!

I was telling my therapist about my writing (in very vague terms) and how I really enjoy 'rage against the heavens' as a trope (see also bellikos rising against their creators in that EQ expansion) and they started connecting it to my parental issues.

And it made sense and yet I had never made that connection. It's so weird to observe my own habits and thought processes like that.

When I was 7, my parents divorced. My father assumed my mother would take both children, and he had plans to move 500 kilometers away (a long distance for non-Americans) to his new girlfriend. I suppose it was an understandable assumption for the time. He had been employed full-time while our mother worked from home and was our primary caregiver.

My mother revealed that her new boyfriend only had room for one child, and that she would only take my sister. I was sent to my father's new partner while the divorce was finalized.

So right out of the gate I got the saddled with the notion that I wasn't good enough for my mom. At the same time, my father didn't deal with the issue super well either, and I got the impression that I couldn't burden him with my own shit. After all, having me along wasn't his first choice either. Couldn't risk leaning on him and somehow scaring him off. A child's fears. Children overestimate the weight of their problems. Years later I started opening up to my stepmother, at least a little.

Later still I learned that my biological mother fairly routinely put the whims of her string of boyfriends over the interests of my sister, so I don't really feel like I drew the short straw, but still. My dad still beats himself up over not saying "You know what, I'll just take both kids, then."

I grew up with massive self-esteem issues and a near total inability to open up to my blood relatives, eventually culminating into severe depression and social anxieties. I isolated myself and couldn't maintain even the most cursory friendship. My difficulties in standing up for myself also persistently sabotaged my professional life, I didn't start suspecting that something was wrong with me other than being a lazy slob until I was 30, and longer yet to find good help.

Most days are pretty good now, and I have decent contact with people, but I still need to confront a lot of baggage. That's why some of my written characters have, or have had, their own struggles with their mental health.

And maybe that's why I like stories where the gods are largely useless or malignant. Maybe that's why my Bon Bon is so resentful over how her monster hunter career ended. Because I never really trusted my parents with my own problems, which, to a child and teenager, of course seem like insurmountable burdens and the most serious business in the world. And they weren't. But I just sat on them and let them fester for years until they became serious.

Still, I'll probably never write an evil Celestia story. I might read them, but I don't have one in me.