My mother used to tell me that I saved em when I was born. For some reason, that used to stress me out as a child. Well, the reason is that I took it as an expectation, that I would have to continue to save em, as it was my birth obligation.
That experience built on itself, until I got to the point where I didn’t want people to think that I had expectations of them. Of course I do. Probably not more than other folks (besides advocacy), and expectations are good to have, since they are also called boundaries, which are expectations on how people should treat you. And so, I sometimes have a complicated time in laying down a boundary. When I do, it is normally on a wave of righteous anger, since I feel I’ve been stepped on, and it is totally the other person, and why would they treat me like that, are they always an asshole(?!) and that isn’t a great way to deal with people. I know of better ways, they just aren’t as natural to me.
That is all fine and good, I am always becoming a nicer person. However, the childhood thing haunts me in a different way. While I generally have to put a lot of effort into setting boundaries, I specifically don’t want my child to feel that I expect much from em. I mean, there are easy things, like I expect Clover to not hurt other people, and hug me when I am sad, those kinds of things that I will explicitly lay out, hopefully in an assertive manner. But I don’t want Clover to think that my life was dependent on em being born, or that e has to continually serve me in that capacity.
Because Clover has really turned my life upside-down, by eir mere existence, and once I get done dealing with this wave of anxiety, pain and depression, I am sure I will attribute most of the strength I drew upon to em. I didn’t plan on Clover to come and save me from this creeping dread, it just kinda turned out that way. And my mother’s situation (18 year-old, high school drop-out, teenage runaway) was very different from mine (30 year-old, high school drop-out, teenage runaway).
So a reminder, maiki: don’t ham it up when impressing upon Clover how important eir joining the party was. Just be sincere, you are probably going to be crying all the time anyways.
This is one key, to a complex lock.