How does your family of origin affect you? Many adult fixations stem from gaps in childhood. As a kid, Utsudo always wore relatives’ hand-me-downs; as an adult, when she discovered Lolita fashion, she spent quite a bit to make up for it. For others, their family of origin affects relationships or emotions even more deeply. Every family has problems to some degree, and many people fight whenever they see family and end up keeping their distance. But after leaving home, each visit is one fewer we’ll have—perhaps that realization can help us resolve conflicts more gently.

Translated from Utsudo’s original Chinese column.

Growing up means paying off childhood’s debts

I wonder if you’ve heard the saying, “Growing up means paying off the debts of your childhood.”

For example, someone may be unusually fixated on money—already wealthy, yet haggling over a few dollars. Looking at that alone, many people might not understand. But if you learn that this person grew up poor and often didn’t know where the next meal would come from, you can understand why they care so much about money. You can see they may have excessive anxiety about it, deeply afraid of falling back into the deprivation of their childhood.

Take me, for example. There are just two sisters in my family, and I was the youngest child in the whole extended family. Kids grow fast, which means many new clothes get outgrown after a few wears. As they got passed down, I was at the end of the line—I could only wear clothes handed down from my sister or my relatives’ kids.

It’s not that those clothes were bad, but I envied kids who got to wear new clothes, or cute, pretty outfits. Unfortunately, my family is quite practical. They almost never bought those airy, frilly dresses—everything was durable in material and style, so naturally “not very cute.”

As a kid, I did make a fuss about wanting new clothes, but the cute ones I wanted were always expensive and not durable, so naturally my family never agreed to buy them.

After I grew up, I happened to discover Lolita fashion, and that was it—airy, romantic, cute and gorgeous clothes, right in my sweet spot. So I spent quite a lot of time and money on Lolita. Later I wondered what on earth I was doing. Maybe because I couldn’t dress up as a princess as a kid, I want to become one now (x

The influence of your family of origin

Childhood influences can be superficial, or they can be gaps that live in your heart. For example, if you keep dating jerks, have particularly extreme emotions about certain things or find certain things especially intolerable—all kinds of psychological patterns may trace back to your family of origin.

So if you go to counseling, you’ll find out how much your family of origin has affected you without your realizing it. A counselor will look at your family of origin to understand where your current “issues” come from, then guide you to face and sort through them, find the crux, and work through it with you.

Although the influence of your family of origin may be resolved later in life, your relationship with your family itself may not be so easy to untangle. Blood is thicker than water—for better or worse, how you get along with family can easily affect your emotions.

Every family has its troubles

If you have a harmonious relationship with your family, congratulations—you have a strong, steady support. No matter what happens, home welcomes you back with open arms and gives you the greatest support.

But I believe that a 100% perfect situation is hard to achieve in reality. Friction between people is inevitable, and everyone thinks differently. You’re so close to your family that things can easily cause unpleasantness. And not everyone has the wisdom and common ground to work things out—so the war begins.

In more severe cases, people stop seeing their families altogether; in milder ones, they fight every time they meet.

Everyone’s family of origin has some “problems” to a greater or lesser degree: supporting aging parents, dividing inheritance, favoring sons over daughters, parental favoritism, attitudes toward handling things, emotional blackmail and so on. Over time these problems pile up like an ever-tangling ball of yarn—even if you want to untangle it, it’s too complicated to find a way.

Every visit brings a fight or a cold war, which leaves both sides feeling awful. So in the end people choose to keep their distance—out of sight, out of mind.

But deep down there’s still some attachment to home. After a while, once emotions have settled, you come back hoping things might be different, but the fights keep replaying. Seeing each other is unpleasant, yet not seeing each other makes you miss them—and so the tug-of-war goes on.

I think what we can’t let go of is that bond of blood. It’s vital to everyone, but because of that bond and the knots that can’t be undone, many people carry regrets in their hearts.

Each visit is one fewer

After leaving home, each time we see our family is one fewer time we’ll have. If we realized that, might we resolve family conflicts more gently? For me, home is a burden, but it’s also where I feel safe. I love my family. Even though I sometimes feel weighed down and tired, I still can’t let go. I guess that’s life.

Now that we’re grown, it’s our turn to care for our aging family. The responsibility has shifted onto my shoulders. That’s the price of growing up, but I accept it gladly, because I was raised by them too—their love made me who I am today.

Is going home a burden or a salvation for you?

FAQ

Further reading

• Previous: Hey! I Heard You’re a Writer on Ghost Island #242: Thank You for Walking This Stretch of the Road With Me
• Start from the beginning: Hey! I Heard You’re a Writer on Ghost Island #01: Utsudo’s Debut — A Road to the Dream Covered in Frost
• Utsudo’s books

About the author

Utsudo is a Taiwanese light novelist and novelist VTuber with more than ten years in the industry and 40 commercially published print books. Her novel 《遺失的情書》 received a 2022 Ministry of Culture youth creative award. The 《嘿！聽說妳在鬼島當作家》 series records her experiences as a novelist in Taiwan.