Fundamental problem in a nutshell

I was always so lovelessly, fundamentally alienated from my parents – linked to mother only by anxiety and child’s dependency and to father not at all – that to this day it aggravates me to see adults who are still regressively grafted to bad parents. I know it’s the rarest person who can be helped to grow up and have real separation. I’m not asking for real growth. Just the desperation, cussedness, strength to break the cord and walk away, at least to a safe distance. That kind of strength will prove to be profound: It’s not just saying superficially “no” or “goodbye” or “these are my rules.” It echoes deep into one’s history to show the complete loss that has always been there.

I’m guessing that most therapy condones this weakening, disease-producing bond. After all, they are your parents and you love them. To me this only means that “love” can have warped meanings that keep all the different pathological people afloat. Does every baby or infant have, by nature, love for the mother and father before abuse and other realities submerge it? There’s no reason to believe it. But even if it does exist as a substrate, is it right or best to revert to that bedrock, to undo all your hard-won growing up in order to keep that childlike feeling of oneness?

I, personally, would like to have had parents I could care about, love, look up to. But I am proof that one can have other values, other people, and live forward while still being living grief.