ie
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Whenever I see a homeless person I give them a lot of money
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I don’t say no, I say yes and put my discomfort for anything aside, other people’s wants are more important than my feelings
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I’m very agreeable
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I do odd jobs for people, even those who don’t like me, and even if I’m exhausted
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I feel really guilty if I mess up even slightly on something and I’ll apologise and let them know I am sorry for messing up
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Constantly battling my instincts and my entire personality feels like it’s being filtered
I still feel bad and like it’s all not enough. It’s as if something’s missing, but I don’t know what that something is. Is this normal? Sometimes I think “fuck it, I’m bad, probably was born bad, why don’t I do other bad things as well since that’s what everyone expects of me now” but I push those intrusive thoughts aside.
It’s good to reflect on things, but you are beating yourself down for it. That’s never appropriate, especially because people like you, who are self aware and want the best for others, are very much needed in this world.
Let’s say whatever you did that ended the marriage was bad, and they’d both be together if you didn’t do it.
You were 6. Even if you intended this, how the hell is a 6 year old gonna be able to grasp the consequences of their actions. People can do really bad things at any age, but at such a young age, most of the things that happen because of your actions are out of you hands.
Do other people blame you for it? Because that is fucked up. They should know better. You are already reflecting, but blaming literally never helps anyone. And that goes for yourself as well, don’t blame yourself, no matter what you did. You can take responsibility and try to repair the damage to the degree you can, but never blame yourself for not doing things that you are unable to do. Do your best, and that’s all you can do. Mistakes are par for the course.
Marriages are made of 2 people. You are not part of that marriage, even if you are part of the family. If your sole actions managed to split the marriage, that suggests so much else was going wrong. Did they trust each other enough? Why were they not able to handle whatever their child did? How come they didn’t make up again after whatever you did, or they didn’t at least try? See how many avenues those two have to fix it? But they didn’t. That’s not on anyone else, but them. A working marriage extends a truckload of trust, grace, and love to each other, and I suspect, even if your actions rocked the boat, that boat was a nut shell with fish sized holes in it. There’s no other way your actions could lead to this. Your actions might have been the match, but look at the barrels of gasoline that fueled the fire. At that point, there’s so many things that can destroy the marriage, because the marriage was very shakey in the first place.
Trying to think of the worst things you could have done to lead your parents to part, there’s nothing a 6 year can do that makes them responsible for it. Please don’t beat yourself down - the amount of self reflection you do leads me to think you are an awesome human being and people around you should be grateful for how much you care for them.
TL;DR There’s no way in hell you were or are responsible for what happened to your parents marriage, no matter what you did.