Post by g on Jul 6, 2010 1:27:07 GMT -5
As some of you may remember, I was born and brought up in the UK. The second youngest of 5 siblings. Very humble, hardworking Italian parents.
Like many immigrant families, my parents' dream was to make enough money to be able to move back to their own country one day and saved what they could to build themselves a house back home. Every year, in July, my parents would lock up their shop and our house and off we'd all go in the car on a three day drive across Europe.
My parents both had many siblings, 6 or 7 each and I remember trying to count my cousins once but never being able to get a definitive number.
Summer holidays meant huge get togethers, family excursions and a long round of hellos followed by a long round of goodbyes before we left.
For me and my siblings Italy was a holiday destination that had the added benefit of reuniting with loved ones.
The unspoken promise was that my parents would never move back for good because my siblings and I were so integrated in the Uk. So when my brother was killed in a car crash when I was 16 the tragedy meant that huge changes would take place.
My mother and father had bought my brother the car he had died in and blamed themselves for not protecting him and being able to keep him safe. Where we lived became hell on earth because that's where my bro had died. So the solution was to bury my brother in Italy, put the house and business up for sale and run back to the relative safety of their own country.
My two elder sisters had already left school, my youngest sister was too small to know any better. So I was the only one to rebel.
I started planning my escape almost immediately. Was probably thinking wedding bells when I started going out with X a matter of weeks later ( my current POA ), rather than grieving properly I was concentrating on getting away from a seriously depressed and delusional mother and a father who seemed to have turned into a deaf mute.
I remember being furious when I was told on the day of my brother's funeral that there would be no university for me and that I'd be moving away with the rest of the family.
I knew already that there was no way that that was going to happen. It made me even more determined to have a life of my own and to make my own decisions.
I can see now that I had a massive fear of abandonment and that I was going to abandon my family before they would abandon me. And so it was. It took my parents three years to sell up but I had already moved away the year before.
I went thru terrible homesickness and almost had a nervous breakdown when I first moved away but I did it.
30 yrs on, my sisters still all live in flats in the block my parents built. I'm the only one that eventually managed to leave the nest even tho I moved back in with them for another ten years after university.
Codependency and how it crippled me is what made me move away once and for all.
I tend to look for an escape route when I feel threatened by abandonment and I can see how that has been a recurring pattern in my life.
Like many immigrant families, my parents' dream was to make enough money to be able to move back to their own country one day and saved what they could to build themselves a house back home. Every year, in July, my parents would lock up their shop and our house and off we'd all go in the car on a three day drive across Europe.
My parents both had many siblings, 6 or 7 each and I remember trying to count my cousins once but never being able to get a definitive number.
Summer holidays meant huge get togethers, family excursions and a long round of hellos followed by a long round of goodbyes before we left.
For me and my siblings Italy was a holiday destination that had the added benefit of reuniting with loved ones.
The unspoken promise was that my parents would never move back for good because my siblings and I were so integrated in the Uk. So when my brother was killed in a car crash when I was 16 the tragedy meant that huge changes would take place.
My mother and father had bought my brother the car he had died in and blamed themselves for not protecting him and being able to keep him safe. Where we lived became hell on earth because that's where my bro had died. So the solution was to bury my brother in Italy, put the house and business up for sale and run back to the relative safety of their own country.
My two elder sisters had already left school, my youngest sister was too small to know any better. So I was the only one to rebel.
I started planning my escape almost immediately. Was probably thinking wedding bells when I started going out with X a matter of weeks later ( my current POA ), rather than grieving properly I was concentrating on getting away from a seriously depressed and delusional mother and a father who seemed to have turned into a deaf mute.
I remember being furious when I was told on the day of my brother's funeral that there would be no university for me and that I'd be moving away with the rest of the family.
I knew already that there was no way that that was going to happen. It made me even more determined to have a life of my own and to make my own decisions.
I can see now that I had a massive fear of abandonment and that I was going to abandon my family before they would abandon me. And so it was. It took my parents three years to sell up but I had already moved away the year before.
I went thru terrible homesickness and almost had a nervous breakdown when I first moved away but I did it.
30 yrs on, my sisters still all live in flats in the block my parents built. I'm the only one that eventually managed to leave the nest even tho I moved back in with them for another ten years after university.
Codependency and how it crippled me is what made me move away once and for all.
I tend to look for an escape route when I feel threatened by abandonment and I can see how that has been a recurring pattern in my life.