Tag: daily-prompt

The difference the loss of a parent can make

Taylor Burian2 Comments

What did you wish was different about your childhood? How has that impacted who you are today?

I snagged this prompt from a site called Sage and Bloom on a post about personal growth and self-improvement, and this one in particular grabbed my attention not because it was near the top of the list (though that did help) but because it’s regarding something I don’t often talk about in general.

My biological mother died when I was about twelve years old. She fought a hard battle against cancer, but the medical research and financial costs of cancer care in the late 90’s just wasn’t like it is today.

So, the thing I wish was different about my childhood would be never having lost my mom as a kid. My two older siblings had more time with her, got to know her better, and saw their dreams supported better. I didn’t really get much of that, and my younger brother got even less.

I can for sure say that what I did get from her was my love of video games, particularly FPS and puzzle/room escape types of games. Her favorites, as best I recall, were Doom, Doom 2, Quake, Quake 2, Quake 3 Arena, Myst, Riven, Phantasmagoria, 7th Guest, and The 11th Hour.

The games aside, losing her caused me to become a little jaded and spiral through waves of childhood depression. Low effort in school and only wanting to be left alone with games because all I saw was some kind of futility to life.

I look back on the events leading up to her death and I see pieces of how her loss shaped who I’ve become today, but I also see how others were impacted.

My lack of a serious religious upbringing is mostly because my parents never kept a Bible in the house (that I ever knew of) and the fact that we relied on other families/friends to bring us along to church or church-affiliated activities, but nothing was ever really forced on us. Watching my mom struggle through to the end, and the things other people did around her, was what eventually reinforced where I am today in terms of religion and faith. Her best friend (the mom of my best friend at the time) had brought a pastor to pray with her for my mom. I don’t know what was said in her hospital room, I just know that they were in there because I could see them through the glass. Although I didn’t recognize it at the time, I would acknowledge it years later as a defining moment in why I am not religious. No matter how much they prayed, it wouldn’t change anything. My full belief as an adult is much more nuanced, shaped by a myriad of other things that I’ve seen or experienced thus far in my life, but I’ll leave that for other posts (should I get around to them.)

Another impact of her loss was how my relationship with my family changed.

Dad was always busy, working harder and harder to make sure he could provide for us, but after losing my mom he was also looking for a partner to help support him and vice versa.

My sister was always on the go and doing things but because of my childhood depression in middle school she was at one point roped into trying to help me in a therapy-like way despite the fact that she herself was still only in high school.

A lot of responsibilities fell to my older brother to support my younger brother and I. He had dropped out of college (although that was most likely for different reasons than just simply taking care of us) and was driving my younger brother and I to and from school, taking us grocery shopping, and ultimately spiraling into alcoholism fueled by his own depression. The events that would eventually lead up to all of our family living in South Dakota include some things that involve my older brother and his alcoholism, which shaped how I view alcohol (and a big reason I don’t drink.) Had our mom still been alive I’m sure things would have gone very differently for him as well.

As far as my younger brother goes, I can’t for sure say what affects came from losing our mom. Like I mentioned earlier, he knew her the least. I’m sure that our dad remarrying had a strong impact, but I can’t tell how it relates to the rest.

I’m sure I’m probably missing other things, things I just didn’t see or maybe things I repressed, but I’ll leave it there for today. Life would be majorly different if Mom were still here with us.

My biggest regret so far

Taylor BurianLeave a comment

So, the daily writing prompt I received today was one I had previously answered. I didn’t want to use it again, and since this seems to be happening more frequently, I instead went searching for a list of prompts that I could pull from when this happens.

I found a list that will provide a new prompt each day for a year, and they’re listed by date so I can follow them in relatively close order as needed. Todays is below.

Explain your biggest regret – as though to a child.

Before I dive into the “explaining to a child” part, I want to provide a little context.

Socially, I can be a fair bit awkward. Less so as I’ve gotten older, but still awkward. I attribute this to the way society has developed over the course of the last hundred years or so, and the way that people are conditioned to exhibit and understand social cues. This is particularly important when it comes to romantic attraction, as that’s what I want to explain today.

As much as this may be therapeutic for me, I don’t want to mistake writing this out as a perfect alternative to actually speaking to a therapist (which I don’t have one but maybe should get one).

Explaining this might be hard but I’m going to give it a shot anyways, so enough stalling. On to the explanation.

You know when you meet someone, and become friends? Sometimes you eventually end up liking them a whole lot, but you’re afraid to tell them?

Why would you be afraid to tell them?

Well, you might be afraid that they’re not going to feel the same way back, and that maybe they’ll stop talking to you.

Why would they stop talking to you?

Maybe because they start thinking you aren’t who they thought you were? That what you really wanted all along is something different than they thought you wanted? And they don’t want things to change. They like exactly what you have right now, but they think that’s gone.

Why does that matter?

Because my biggest regret is never taking the chance to be honest about how I feel, about how much I really did like them and they stopped talking to me eventually anyway.

But why did they stop talking to you anyway?

That part is a bit harder to explain. Maybe I didn’t give them a reason to still talk to me as much and they started talking to other people more. They might have gone somewhere else that I chose not to go to, or that I couldn’t go.

Well, if they stopped talking to you anyway, then do you think it would have mattered anyway if you had told them you liked them?

It would definitely matter. Why? Because never taking that chance to open up meant never learning how to properly express how I feel about those people that I really like.

What do you mean?

Everybody is going to live different lives, see and do different things, and that means they’re going to experience different things. Including how they want to talk to other people, or how they want other people to talk to them.

I don’t think I get it.

That’s alright, it’s something you’ll learn if you keep talking to people and listening to them. And I really do mean it, listen to them and try to understand what matters to them. Don’t be afraid to tell people how you feel so that you can learn how they feel in return. Don’t be afraid of that chance that they might stop talking to you just because you don’t want them to.

Not sure if I explained that well enough for a child to understand, but I think I did my best.

I don’t resent myself or the other people in the few times I have opened up and been shot down, but in retrospect I do see things I could have either done better or acknowledged that I might have been seeing things through rose tinted glasses, which all added up to me opening up less often/take fewer chances to meet people I might have been romantically attracted to.

Fate and a Universal Destiny

Taylor BurianLeave a comment
Daily writing prompt
Do you believe in fate/destiny?
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I’m not a religious individual, so this post won’t be laced with theological philosophy or anything of the sort.

But when it comes to fate and/or destiny, I do have a perspective on it that I feel is worth sharing because I don’t know that many people at all think in this way.

Under the preconceived ideas of Fate and Destiny (with the capital letters) being some grand predetermined order of events that are guaranteed to happen regardless of anyone else’s desires, I don’t believe in that. I’m not fond of the idea of a “higher being” having that kind of absolute control (for reasons I won’t go into just yet.) I DO believe that you could consider there to be some aspect of fate/destiny that is outside of our control on an individual level.

Everything we do every day of our lives has impact or meaning, whether we think so or not. I’m not talking about the scale of something like “the butterfly effect” but it is similar. Every decision you make, conscious or not, changes the world around you, and therefore, the world around everyone else. The same is true in reverse, and so it goes on back and forth like that forever. It’s impossible to know every little detail of what kind of chain reaction you can cause by slamming on your brakes or slicing that golf shot really bad despite knowing you are off your game today. Every choice. Cause and effect.

If you understand the idea behind all of that, then you have some idea of where I’m going with this. There IS some kind of destiny or fate to this world based purely on the fact that SOMETHING happens SOMEWHERE because of something else that happened. It doesn’t matter if you can think one step ahead or twenty on what possible things can happen, but if you can imagine it happening then it likely will happen that way if you follow through on that initial choice.

So, with that in mind, take a moment to think about the things you do. The things that other people around you do every day. Which direction the influence goes. Throw that out the window, because in the grand scheme of the Universe none of it mattered because things “happen for a reason” and you can’t fully control everything in your life.

Don’t think too hard about it, just live your life and be kind in the process. Even if you aren’t thinking about it, whatever small kindness you provide can go a long way and it very likely cost you nothing. You can put that kindness into the world and help change its destiny (or not because something someone else did might cancel it out, but you can live with the knowledge that you did good and put that into the world.)

Just be kind, and fate/destiny will unfold as it will regardless.