12/23/24

For years, debates have existed about the correct ways to raise a child. Some parents argue that a constant watchful eye is best. Make sure your kids don't mess up, make the right friends, join the right clubs, grow up to be the person they want them to be. Others argue that a lenient, nonchalant parenting style is a better option. You can have piercings but none on your face before 18, you can go out but you have to be home by a specific time or at least keep me updated; learn from your own life and establish trust in your own decisions as well as my ability to parent them. Of course the amount of strictness exists in varying degrees, from a parent who couldn't care less, to a parent that lets their veteran status play too big a role in the way they raise a child. And for just as long as these debates have been occurring, the consequential impact on who the child grows up to be has equally been a topic of discussion. If you let your children learn and grow for themselves, making mistakes and understanding how not to make them again, how will they handle it when they're 25 and suddenly want someone to tell them what the right thing to do is? If you dictated your child's every move, and made mistakes have consequences rather than comfort, how will they handle it when they're 23 and throw temper tantrums when what they want isn't already readily available to them?

While I sit at a cafe on a street I grew up walking down, experiencing my childhood and adulthood simultaneously, I can't help but wonder about the way that I was raised, and how, if at all, that has had an impact on my view of life as a whole. One of the biggest indicators of such an impact is how one acts in romantic situations, both pertaining to their view of their partner, the relationship itself, and their role within it. This aspect of how we're raised is particularly on my mind right now, as many people around me go through romantic turmoil. Most importantly, my sister who was raised almost exactly the same as I was, has just gotten out of a situation I personally am rather happy is over, ending a relationship I knew she was too good for. However, my mother and I were discussing the ways in which she, my sister, and myself, have handled similar situations. Having the brain I do, I'm particularly troubled when it comes to starting, much less maintaining, a healthy mindset in relationship for a multitude of self analyzed reasons that I won't get into today. However, knowing that as the case, yet seeing the way in which my lovely sister is handling her breakup, I find myself more than puzzled trying to understand her way of thinking, and why it differs so much from my own. She, like myself, has high hopes, and what's more, we're very good at identifying what it is that we want. The scary part is that is a rare problem to have, both for people our age, and for the people we end up dating. Yet when faced with not getting it, much less discovering the place we thought we had found it was not what it seemed to be, we diverge in separate directions. 

The parents I had raised me to be rather self sufficient, disregarding transportation to and from work on the weekends. I made few friends unless they approached me first, and saw them outside of school quite rarely. I bought my own toys and clothes and gadgets except for my phone, worked from ages 16 to present, and was not romantically involved with a single person that anyone other than my mother and a few select friends heard or knew about - and even then I usually waited until it was in the past before I spoke about it at all. On the same page, my sister was raised rather similarly. Aside from getting her license her senior year of high school, in terms of independence, she and I were pretty similar. However, my sister was a lot cooler than me. She had more than enough friends, party invites regularly, played sports and had concerts in her music classes. Whereas I had one performance and one business opening, one of which my parents attended, she had soccer games, party's, sleepovers and dances. Even worse than just being cool, my sister is a pretty, straight, popular girl. Consequently, she had actual drama in her life, her friendships didn't just stop responding like mine did, hers sent paragraphs explaining why they weren't friends anymore. She didn't just have one friend group who all knew and saw each other every day like I did, but friend groups that expanded throughout different schools. She didn't just have her prom to go to, but homecomings and proms for her, her friends, and her dates. Which brings me into the next section; she actually dated people. She had those experiences when they were meant to happen, in the way they usually do at that age. 

We grew up raised the same, but ended up so differently, because regardless of whether or not our parents raised us the same way, we still ended up having different parents. I had parents who didn't interact with me outside of dinner and car rides to and from school or the gym, whether that was because I didn't ask them or, or they simply couldn't be bothered is up for debate. Anyway, my sister had parents who knew who she was friends with and who she wasn't, for the most part. They met her boyfriends, went to her games, took her on trips with her friends - meanwhile I third wheeled with my Dad and Stepmom or Mom and Stepdad. 

Relationships for me were always something to be kept to myself - whether that is platonic or otherwise - largely because they always had been. Beyond many of my pre-18 relationships not being ones I could really talk about anyway, I could see the discomfort on their faces whenever I would even hinted at it, if nothing else but because they never knew how to respond. I spent most of my college dating years experiencing relationships in the most streamlined manor, slowly getting more and more picky and figuring out with every date what I would agree to the next time around, and what I definitely would not. Because of the way in which I was raised, relying largely on myself for external comforts on the issues that seem somewhat pivotal in sharing with the kind of parents I had, my adult life has followed suit. A majority of my relationships are relatively privet, saving the few friends I have that hear most of the excruciating details, and that only makes up about 1 in every 10 people I find interesting. My friendships don't cross over into my family life, and vice versa. Financial, academic, and further career opportunities are almost always kept to myself, as well as decided upon, preformed, and concluding of my own accord. So upon coming home and finding some of the people who grew up in the same houses as me seeming to have issues that I feel I would've dismissed weeks prior, was cause for some reflection. 

On the other side of the same family, are my two step brothers. From the day I met them, I knew they had a very different experience in life from me. My little brother was athletic, social, and took account of himself in a similar way to how I find myself doing the same. My older brother relied so heavily on the existence of those around him, he still has yet to grow past the age of 15. Similar to my sister and I, they too had the same upbringing. They both played sports, they both liked similar forms of media, i.e., media I would not catch myself dead ever enjoying. They both went to the same schools, had similar friends, and until my little brother reached high school, seemed to be on similar wave lengths. However, my little brother had very different parents then the older one. Where he could veg on the couch for as long as he wanted, engorging on food he ate but didn't taste, only moving for a soft ball game or to switch between his phone or the living room TV to watch anime or YouTube videos of others watching anime, my little brother would volunteer to run errands with my mom and I from time to time. What's more, and the defining difference, is that he socialized. He texted friends and hung out with them after his baseball games. He had sleepovers and parties and girlfriends. Now at the ages of 18 and 23, one brother has a future in professional baseball, most of which he aligned for himself, friends, a social life, and a family who speaks highly of him. The other monopolizes his families sympathy to complain about his first relationship with a concerning affinity for baby talk for hours on end, and can't wrap his head around the adult decisions to make. My little brother and I matured at the same rate as our older siblings. Our young affinity for hanging out with the cooler older kids allowed us to understand things at a younger age, or much less, the things we didn't know were taught to us in hard lessons. Granted, their side of the family vs my sister and I's ended up even more differently than my sister and I did, however, the older and younger duos seem to have more of an overlap. 

I had an upbringing in which the feeling of shame was deeply engrained. I saw the way my sister grew up, effortlessly cool and loved by more people than she knew the names of, and I was there too. I inverted in on myself, like my little brother, and found a more true person to grow into later down the line because, not only did I experience my own life, but a lot of the lives of those around me as well. Where I kept to myself most of the time, thinking more and more about what I needed to do to feel better about everything, my sister didn't realize she had to. Now we find ourselves in situations where my confidence feels earned, worked for, a true reflection of things I'm proud of, and the things I am more than willing to admit are my shortcomings, and she seems more like she just started that long process within the previous few years. We both were raised in almost identical manners, but the true testiment to nature vs nurture, is how differently being raised that way worked for both of us.