The Damage an Absent Parent Can Do

I used to be (and sometimes still am, sadly) that girl that always falls hopelessly in love with the bad guy. I've since found and created enough self-love and discipline to ~not~ put myself through the constant cycle of trying to save someone, realizing I can't help someone who a) doesn't want my help or b) wants me only for my help (aka DRAINING), allowing these realities to rip my heart out, and then looking for someone else to save in order to feel some sense of purpose and meaning in the world...but one of the many things I learned through those relationships is this:

Parents don't just love their children by default; that type of love is a choice, too.

It has to do with evolution, maybe. Mama bears fiercely protecting their cubs. Mama eagles spreading their wings to protect their chicks from the cold, the rain, the sun. We would be shocked if she left her egg-filled nest and never returned, or turned and ran the other direction when her cub was in danger. We're becoming less shocked, though, when we do this. When human parents choose themselves over their children.

Is it because we have a choice? Do animals really have a choice in protecting their offspring, or are they just programmed that way? Mother birds abandoning their nests for their own safety when they see a human get too close to it is nature's way of telling us that animals do have a choice, so why do they leave less often than we do?

Is it because the threats are different for us? We don't need to protect each other from predators anymore (as I typed that, I realized how untrue it is, but you get the point). We've moved past survival mode and onto different challenges: poverty, breakups, mental illnesses, bullying. Do these require less protection, less parental involvement?

Maybe, we can't compare a creature who lives and breeds and dies to one who has found a way to fill life with more successes than that. Maybe we shouldn't. Or, maybe we need to. I used to think there was something primal, natural, about caring for your child. Now, I think we may have lost that somewhere along the way. Science tells us that our brains have changed over the last hundreds and thousands of years, but only our actions can tell us what exactly those changes have been.

I don't think unconditional love and protection is something that comes with parenthood anymore. I think that the bond between a mother and her child has the potential to be stronger than any other connection in the known universe, but I don't think that ever happens without a choice. We choose to love our children, or we don't. We choose them based on our beliefs about the world, based on our beliefs about ourselves. We choose to love them when they're born, when they take their first steps, when they go to grade school, when they start taking dance lessons. When they learn to form their own thoughts and opinions and beliefs about the world, we're still choosing. I know this, because this is around the time when some parents change their choice.

I have friends who have been punished, kicked out of their homes, or physically harmed for telling their parents who they love. In a single second, their parents changed their mind. The little kid they held in the hospital, picked up at the bus stop, hugged on graduation...didn't matter anymore. Didn't even exist, in their eyes. Years of choosing "love" broken by a few simple words.

We're supposed to be supreme. The most advanced of them all. But, I'm afraid there are things the animal kingdom is much better at after all.

(P.S. Reading Branum's story about coming out to his parents shattered my heart--that's what this is inspired by. It's kind of all over the place because that's how my brain feels right now. I keep trying to come up with a valid reason of why any parent would treat their child that way, why any person would treat another person that way, and I can't come up with one. I'm sad and angry and confused, but it just makes me want to love people more--friends, and strangers, and everyone in between.)