When I talk to survivors and victims of Nacissistic parents / family about abuse from others of various types "I wish" comes up very frequently in conversation. I don't think people notice it happening, but once you see it, especially if it irritates you, its hard to unsee it.
It usually goes like one of these:
I mourn for the parent(s) I wish I'd had.
I wish things had been different.
I wish they understood.
I wish it would stop hurting.
I wish I could find peace, love happiness, or certainty that I have done the right thing.
I wish I didnt have to remember, care, think about this stuff.
I wish it hadn't been me.
I hate the phrase "I wish" and don't use it.
I won't criticise others for using it, because we all find our own paths and I have no right to say one way is better than another - but I won't use it myself and am happy to say why I have an issue with it.
I think its a roadblock, a great big signposted lump of romantic fiction that sits in your way
like...?
like waiting to be rescued by some knight in shining armour.
It smacks too much of fairytales even for me who is mired in them as I try to tell my own story.
Because wishing doesn't work. But you knew that right?
We don't live in a world where magic makes things better. Where screwing up your face - tightening your butt muscles and imagining the twinkle of sparkly musical stars will make the world different, or even more unlikly, your past different.
Its a romantic vampire - Sucking away time, draining your power to help yourself. It stops people actually taking action and doing something real to make their life better. Finding solutions for themselves. Real if tiny steps. The hard road, but one that you can guarantee will get you somewhere.
Sure, in this whole process I've wanted to have someone else come along and - twinkle twinkle, wave that wand and its "all fixed."
I would also like to lose 20lbs that way, and get a new job and a few other things besides,
but much as I hate to say it, because I dont really think its fair that I have so much hard work to do to fix someone elses mistakes, I have to take the path of a thousand small hard steps. The alternative is...well there isn't one.
One of the reasons for this is that I want to be able to say what "Fixed" looks like. I have had enough people try to fix me, in deeply controlling and unpleasant ways, that I wont give that power over to someone elses whims.
If there was a Genie - who could wave a magic wand, or grant a bunch of wishes and thus give me the option to erase "All This," tempting as it would be, where would I start?
I don't know how to define where are the edges of it all are and just as worryingly if not more so, who would I be if it hadnt happened?
I like who I am. Other people like who I am. I am not going to wish that away. To give away the work of the thousands upon thousands of small hard steps I have already taken to be some person who had never experienced hardship.
Some time ago (some years now) I drew a line in the sand and everything beyond that line is mine. I can say "I did that, it was all me." But I'm not going to deny it was built on the foundations of what came before that line because I was doing a lot of hard work back then too, hard work I'm proud of.
After all its not that easy to be your own knight in shining armour, or to grant your own wishes. I think I have a right to be proud of that. Even If I would rather not have had too do do it.