I struggled a bit to come up with a suitable title for this post, which is all about digging around in a piece of my youthful past that might have appeared amazing from the outside, but actually was something completely different when you were living inside it.
As I was.
Earlier today, a strong memory came back to me because I came across a YouTube clip that actually had some original recordings of late 1970's Radio Luxembourg programming... really unusal thing to find. Anyway...
As I have probably mentioned before, when I was 12 — almost 13 — my mom packed up all our belongings in Denmark and we headed off to set up a new life in the south of Spain. Well... the choice was hers, I was merely along for the ride.
From the outside, it seemed like I should be feeling incredibly blessed and fortunate to have this amazing experience of living in another country, at such an early age.
However, there were a few things that weren't exactly right with the picture...
My parents had fairly recently finalized a protracted divorce, so the move was prompted by my mom's desire to settle down with the man whom I'd eventually come to think of as my "stepdad;" a newly retired expat Englishman.
Retired.
I was just about to become a teenager, and we had just moved to a retirement area. Think of it as being 12, and having to live in a retirement village in Florida. Or Arizona. You're punk rock and soccer; your surroundings are big band and shuffleboard.
To say that there was a "disconnect" would be a massive understatement!
The psychology field has a term "benign neglect" which can — among other things — be used to describe a situation in which someone has everything they could possibly need (food, clothing, education, shelter) in the functional sense, but is otherwise left to their own devices... generally on the assumption (in the case of children) that they can manage themselves as "miniature adults."
It's quite a mouthful, and actually far more nuanced than I can hope to describe in a short blog post. The long and the short is that I had this "marvelous opportunity" that I was also totally disconnected from because I essentially had almost no peers my own age to engage with, and I also had essentially no "hands-on" parenting.
Welcome to Spain! Welcome to adulthood! Oh, you're 12? No worries, you'll get the hang of it!
In retrospect, I won't claim that it wasn't a very interesting and unusual experience... and possibly even an opportunity.
However, at the time, it felt like my chance to "be a teenager" had been stolen from me, in some sense. The thing that made it somewhat tricky is that we really weren't living "in Spain," but in a secluded enclave of expats, so I didn't even have access to local people my own age.
The situation was somewhat manageable simply because I was deeply introverted by nature, so I was pretty accustomed to seeking solitude, and being OK with it... and "OK" I was, until I left for University in the US when I was 20.
I can definitely say that I had an experience of growing up that was extraordinary and "different" in so many ways. On the other hand, whereas it might appear like I had a "charmed life," it really wasn't what I had wanted my teenage years to look like.
Not that most teenagers have that much of a sense of what they want...
So what's the big deal? WAS there a big deal?
Disconnect.
I went forth into the world extremely well socialized to dealing with and interacting with people 30+ years my senior, and singularly ill prepared to engage with anyone my own age. Which was strangely... awkward, in many ways. 50-something mothers fawned over me, while their 20-year old daughters thought I was a freak. In some ways, I really didn't "grow into myself" till I reached my 40's.
I look back on those years now, from my vantage point of being 62... and there's still a slightly surreal quality to it all. I will probably never shake that. And that's OK...
I have managed to make peace with some "missing years" in my life, but I am unlikely to ever forget those years. It just is what it is!
Thanks for reading, and have a great Sunday!
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Created at 20221023 01:45 PDT
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