Disclaimer

I feel like I need to put this here. If you don't know me personally, don't assume you know me by what you read. Being a "writer", I take certain liberties. I distort, manipulate, tweak. Basically, I lie a bit to make things more amusing. I do not write conversations word for word unless I specifically say so. I do not whip out a recorder if I think something might be funny so I can blog about it later. I remember the gist and fill in details.

If you don't like something you read here-- or at any blog-- move on. My blog is my house. You don't come into my house to tell me I'm a mean, bad person. Just go away. As your mother taught you-- or should have-- if you've got nothing nice to say, say nothing at all.

I could choose to show myself as a wonderfully perfect Mary Poppins version of a mother. I choose not to. Why? Because I'm not. I'm not perfect. I'm human. And guess what? Humans are fallible. It's true. I swear it. I even make it a point to show my kids that, yes, even moms make mistakes. I also practice what I preach when I tell them to always try their best because that's all they can do. And they know that I love them.

No one is perfect. No one is the perfect parent. Your style of parenting might be different from mine, but that doesn't make either better. They are just different. It doesn't matter how hard you try, eventually you will do something that will fuck up your child. You just hope that the damage is minimal. It could be something as simple as giving them a bunny for Easter. The bunny scratches them and there it is: The child has developed a life-long fear of rabbits. Did you mean to hurt the child when you bought the bunny? Of course not. Did you mean to make them scared? No! But it happened anyway. Is anyone to blame?

As you can see, I don't buy into Freudian psychology. I don't think everything is our parents' faults. Some do indeed do awful things and are bad people, but not most. Most just try to get along as best as they can. They love their children and want a better life for them. And yet some people will spend their entire lives blaming a parent for something that "ruined (their) entire life". Unless it was something truly devastating-- and believe me, I've heard horror stories-- I think people need to deal with it, get over it, and move on already. I didn't have the best childhood in the world, but damn, I'm not going to spend my life whining about it. Or blaming anyone else for my shortcomings. Any limits I place on myself? I take responsibility for them.

So, in summary, you don't know me. Unless you actually do, then "Hi!" We're all trying our best. Let's not beat up on everyone we don't agree with. My house, you don't like it, go. Someone said something mean when you were little? You're not little anymore, grow up and take responsibility for your actions.

I'm quite sure I'll get flamed for this, but I'm so over it already.