There are people who are lucky enough to receive a tremendous amount of love as children, there are people who have little and then there are people who have none at all and I've been thinking about how this affects how people respond to amorous love, friendships and life in general .
I was rewatching vampire diaries recently and comparing the love lives of Elena Gilbert and some of the other characters, thier family backgrounds and how thier different experiences shaped the perceptions of love for thier adult selves. Elena Gilbert for example, beautiful, smart, sexy and unusually lucky (or unlucky), with her own share of trauma but then, no one scales life without trauma right?
She was lucky enough to have a family that loved her, something that cannot be said for some of the other characters in the series, and that reflected in the way she went about her love life, in the people she accepted as friends and lovers and in the kind of love and life she believed she deserved. In contrast though can be seen a bunch of other characters with daddy and mommy issues, and the reflection of all that trauma and broken trusts in the romantic relationships they had as adults.
Coincidentally that same week, i was on a friends tiktok live and we happened to be discussing parent- child relationships and how children handle the absence of parents in thier early years and there was this particular guy on this live who spoke like someone already planning to traumatize some poor kid. He was somehow convinced that children would rather have expensive gifts and luxurious lifestyles than thier parents, and no matter how hard i tried to explain to this dude how wrong he was and how unfair on the child that was, he refused to be convinced.
But then it got me thinking about the brain chemistry of children and how impressionable they can be, how much information or misinformation a child is exposed to and how much of it they digest, i realised how malleable the human character is, how much the experiences of today can shape our view of the future and how much the future of the human race depends on the kinds of human beings we raise today, and that put me on the path of some self reflection for a while.
I saw both in myself and the people around me, behaviours and beliefs that told a lot about what the world has been for them, and i know maybe this is me over reaching but oftentimes when a person speaks or acts around me, it gives me a glimpse of what sort of person they are which in turn speaks volumes on what type of life they've had.
Like how just back i was having a conversation with this guy who was seriously lacking in empathy and emotional intelligence, we talked about a myriad of things, but delving deeper he talked about his mom, how much she practiced hate and hypocrisy, how she gaslighed him and abused him physically and emotionally and how he didnt like it even as a child, yet in that same breath he claimed he had healed and moved on from all the bad experiences in the past and that he didnt internalize any of his moms faults or insecurities.
“I'm not like that” *while actively exhibiting symptoms of like that*
And i found and still find it really ironic how much whenever i try to have conversations about childhood trauma and how it translates to adult behavioral patterns, people quickly get defensive and deny that they have in any way or form been affected by a childhood they literally grew through. You see, the human mind is like a computer program, it learns what it is taught, either by people or experiences, sometimes unconsciously, which is why sometimes we catch ourselves saying or doing things we came across maybe just a few times on Instagram, we didnt consciously learn these things, but our subconscious, our childlike minds picks it up. Same can be said for children, infact more can be said, as children are the most gullible and inquisitive set of people, you could literally say something just once and you'll have a kid chanting it the entire week, talk much more of actual traumatic experiences.
This world will already chew your kid, you dont have to chew them first.
When i was a child, i used to get bullied a lot for being skinny and boyish, i wanted dangerously, desperately to get fat, and as always, in alignment to the chaotic world of misinformation, when i didn't need to know this, i happened to stumble upon the knowledge that groundnut oil made people fat, so i quickly equated more oil to more body fat (more boobs, more ass yay!). Every night before bed, i would sneak to the kitchen and drink a sizable amount of groundnut oil, the slimy thing would go down my throat and start threatening to come right out but i would hold it down.
After weeks of self torture, i gave up, there was no fat, just an everyday increasing self disgust. I was just a child trying to understand why my body was not acceptable, trying to fit into the world's definition of what a girl should look like or talk like or be like, and till today sometimes i catch myself in the middle of trying to fit into someone else's box, and i increasingly have to remind myself to let go of all the past labels i have placed on myself from my childhood , i increasingly have to train my mind to rebuke the past definitions i have had of myself, to unlearn the wrong things and learn the right ones.
It is a constant work in progress, one everyone should indulge themselves in. The world will try to tell you who you are, your past trauma will too, because no matter how much we try to act like the past have had no impact on us, no matter how long we try to believe we are strong people without the luxury of emotions, we are not, sometimes we wanna break down and ugly cry away all the bad feelings, abd that's fine.
If you currently talk down on yourself, chances are that sometime in the past, usually especially from childhood when you were an open book, you were told that you were worthless, and you internalized it unknowingly and today as an adult, you dont understand why you just cannot see yourself as the bomb. Or if you struggle with body dysmorphia or low self esteem or self sabotage, look back into the fogs of your distant past and see how and where you picked these insecurities.
I wish above all things that the world was a great place to live in and that children can learn and grow without picking up the insecurities of the adults around them, but alas. Adults don’t get a break long enough from thier problems to be perfectly great and available for thier children, and this is a big human struggle.
However, i find it crazy that in such a self aware generation, where more and more people are speaking up and seeking therapy, where we can clearly see the consequences of planting wrong values in young fertile minds, we still make these mistakes. Kids are a product of thier environment, they know what they are taught, they become what they believe, if children grow in loveless environments, they have it hard processing thier emotions because they dont trust the adults in thier lives to talk them through it, they grow up to be emotionally immature people, they end up unable to handle relationships with other human beings because they have not sorted themselves out, and not many people put in the work to sort themselves out. Everywhere you look, you find emotionally immature people, hurt people hurting other people, traumatized people making mistakes they wouldnt have made if they knew better and as a society in the face of this, we are confronted with the question: How can we be better for these kids?
I'm not a pro at children but i believe as adults we owe it to the world to be cautios of what we say or do around the younger generation, given that we've experienced first hand the consequences of not doing so. Children learn easily so please be your best selves around them, we cannot afford to raise terrible people, i promise you the world is bad enough as it is.
I hope for the love of God that you do not say hurtful things to children, you never know how much impact your words have on thier self esteem, especially since as an adult you wield power over thier feelings. We may be young today, but a time will come when we'll all lose this youth, when we won't wield as much power as we do now, these children will become the youth, the future, and the quality of young people in any society largely defines how well that society turns out. Be kind, especially to children, if not for kindness sake then for the sake of this world's tommorow, for the sake of the human race.
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Thank you for reading my substack thus far, I really have nothing much to say. Life has been slow and I've been writing a lot. I started a sextoy business recently, my main focus is to help people drop the shame associated with talking about sex and sextoys, and then get them to patronize my brand, so far it has been good and I'm really grateful for the group of beautiful women pushing and helping me along the way.
I recently got hit by a wave of anime recommendations and since I've never understood the hype, I decided to randomly watch one, I'm probably watching the legend of Korra (Is that even anime? Wo!) by the time you read this, I hope I enjoy it.
I miss being on here and I wish I could have more hours in a day to read all my favourite substacks, yet I am grateful for all the newsletters in my inbox, I see y'all. I'm about to have a slow Saturday which i am grateful for, I would love to hear from you. What's up with you? Where's your head been at? Catch me up to speed. I miss you and I can't wait to hear from you.
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Yours sincerely, Omo igbo.
Bye.❤️