My whole life I’ve had this weird anger problem. On the playground little Tommy doesn’t know how to tie his shoes and begins to cry. The twinge of anger sits in my stomach and I am frustrated. “How does he not know how to tie his own shoes?” I ask myself.

I am in high school now, sitting in study hall. Kate sits to my right, talking loudly about how unfair it is that she must start planning her graduation party. Her mother is inviting her closest family and friends, which meant the whole town. “But I’m just a teenager, this is so stressful.” she moans. There it is again, that feeling settling in my gut and making my hands prickle.

I stand in the kitchen at 22 years old watching my partner attempt to clean up the mess we made the night prior. Spaghetti, chocolate chip cookies, long gone now, and what does remain clings to our dirty dishes. He struggles with where to begin, and often I watch, making little notes and comments. “Put this here, that there, no the water needs to be very hot and soapy.” I am upset now, not because I must help but because he doesn’t know how to do the dishes. Just like Katie didn’t know how privileged she was to get a graduation party, or to have family that wanted to do that for her. That I would kill to have a party be my main stressor at 18 years old. Just like Tommy not knowing how to tie his shoes.

Independence is a strange concept to me. Living in foster care for the first 13 years of my life has muddled the idea of being ‘independent’. What does it truly mean? Not having anyone to really care if you do this or that, no one to teach you right from wrong, no one to teach you love, hate, anger, anything. The world is your teacher. You learn by walking through it alone. The world showed me from a young age that it isn’t a safe place for me, it isn’t a place where your dreams come true and your story ends ‘happily ever after’. You either learn to read the book that was set in front of you, play your part, or rewrite the narrative.

My life wasn’t mine for so long that my expectations for myself had withered away into nothing. It wasn’t until I found a dream and latched onto it, that my story started to get interesting.

Through therapy I’ve learned that the feeling of anger I get when I see Tommy unable to tie his shoes, or someone not knowing how to really clean a kitchen is due to my hyper-independence as a juvenile. I knew how to change a diaper before I learned how to add or subtract. I knew how to clean a bathroom with just a bucket of soap and a sponge, I could be left alone at 10 years old with 6 younger siblings beneath my care for weeks because I was ‘that responsible’. Some psychologists refer to this phenomenon as ‘Parentification.’

This privilege to not know how to wash the dishes, etc anger me because I was forced to do all these things I didn’t want to do my whole life. Even after finding my forever home the trauma continued for six more years before my life was my own. The idea that people my own age had it easier than me to the point where they don’t know about taxes or laundry is beyond me.

This is where Pride comes in to play. I also feel that through shadow work and therapy I have found a sense of superiority within my trauma. Because it didn’t kill me, even though it should have, I feel stronger than my peers, more responsible, more in depth. This is a tricky dichotomy because while I feel one way, I also feel so far behind my peers, so inferior, so unworthy. This is where my pride steps up and where I begin to push others away. I want to put them down somehow or make it known to them that I know more than they do. Like I have to prove myself somehow.

My I.D is selfish. It wants validation. I’m choosing to not allow more trauma, or to allow the trauma to continue to manifest in areas of my life where it is unproductive. By exerting power or a sense of power over someone, it doesn’t give me more power, it just takes some of theirs away.

Stepping into my own power is something I’ve enjoyed working on lately. With this blog, and therapy I’m learning everyday that the power to live a meaningful life was alway within me. Being able to tap into it and reject the trauma that took my power has been so healing.