My formative years weren't fun. I'm not saying they were more tragic than the average person's, there was tragedy like in anyone's life, but fun and socialization wasn't a factor in it.
The long and the short of it is, I grew up in a tiny family with a violent paranoid schizophrenic, and the other grown ups were too weak-willed to control her. This led to a lot of isolation (including from my dad and his side of the family), never staying anywhere for long, no lasting friendships, no family gatherings, no parties, no holiday trips, and always waiting for the next violent outburst and drama to break out. Then looking after her for years when her health deteriorated.
So growing up I became used to not forming lasting connections with anyone (why bother, if come year's end I'm moving away? Mind you no Internet at that time, no cellphones, just the landline or letters if you wanted to keep in touch), to being alone and feeling uncomfortable in large groups, to avoiding attention as much as I could, and to get my fun from reading, watching things, playing games, etc, all inward things.
I always accepted this as just the way I am. I did manage to make a couple long term (if intermittent) friendships, had a few relationships, including a 15 year marriage, and had a kid. When that ended, I took my time to heal, then started seeing women again and managed to have some brief relationships (with less difficulty than I expected!)
I didn't realize my personality limitations were connected to the way I grew up until a psychologist pointed it out. "Don't you think growing up with a violent schizo, which you mention in passing like it was nothing, had something to do with your issues?".
I genuinely Pikachu-faced when he said it.
Still, I accepted I was the way I was, and never felt "robbed of my youth" as you mention.
But recently I've been seen this one woman* who is very different from me. Different personality, different tastes, very lively, tons of stories about her childhood, family, friends, exes, college friends, colleagues, etc.
So I look inward and... I have no fun stories.
It's not that nothing fun has happened to me, there's a few things I could mention, but the thing I mentioned about "why bother forming connections" seems to have extended to the way I remember things. I can tell you the broad strokes of things that happened, but I don't remember details clearly. I could tell you I used to go see local bands with the friend who introduced me to rock music, or that I went to a couple parties during college. But I don't remember much about those nights, I couldn't tell you what bands I saw or on what venues, I can tell you whose house the parties were at but not who was in them or what happened during the parties. It feels like I read it rather than lived it.
In contrast, this girl is telling me all these stories with everyone's names and descriptions and details.
So it's made me think, I didn't have all these formative experiences, and the few that I did have, I remember in an impersonal, distant way. I feel like I've gone through the motions of life rather than lived it.
All because of the environment I grew up in.
Of course, at this point I have to become accountable for my way of being and my behavior, can't keep blaming the past for everything. And obviously I'm much clearer about the experiences I had during my marriage and raising the kid and all that.
I don't like to have "gurus" of any kind but I've been listening to lectures and interviews with this psychologist guy called Alain de Botton, and he talks a lot about the way childhood affects the way we deal with things later in life; how a lot of our issues come from having adapted admirably to survive those early environments... but those adaptations sticking around and causing issues once out of that environment. Also about how we need to come to terms with those things, address them, accept them, and forgive ourselves, if we want to change the patterns.
*Nice woman BTW, she's fun to be around, seems to genuinely care about me, and is challenging in terms of drawing me out of my comfort zone. I don't know if it'll work long term (or even medium term), we may be too different, and that may cause issues down the road, but I'm giving it a sincere try.
