Separation (non)Anxiety

So, we've moved out of our house, for reasons that are never made clear and into the home of my Dads parents.

Only one problem, they didn't have room for all of us. One of the kids had to live elsewhere, with the other set of Grandparents. As the eldest I was chosen, presumably on the basis that because I was the eldest I would handle separation from my parents better. Either that or it was just a cunning ploy to get rid of me.

To be fair, the two houses were in the same street, 8 houses apart, which meant I wasn't exactly on the other side of the world. Fact was though, other than walking to school and back I never saw my Mother, and I could go days without seeing my Dad at all. Weekends, unless I made the effort to walk up the street I never saw them either because they never came to me. And do you know what, I wasn't the least bit bothered. Does that sound odd? I don't claim to be an expert on child psychology or anything, but shouldn't a child who still counts his age in single figures be at least a little upset at being separated from his parents?

Not me. To be honest, I loved it. It felt like freedom. I had my own room (which had a huge bookshelf full of my Grandas old paperbacks and served as my first real introduction to proper novels), I didn't have to play with my frankly annoying younger siblings and best of all, so long as I didn't burn the house down or anything similarly drastic, my Grandparents and Uncle pretty much left me to my own devices. The arrangement also had the added benefit that I wasn't under the same roof as the other Granda, although I won't lie, I don't remember that ever being a part of my thinking. I suppose even then I was a little conditioned to not see violence in the home as being particularly noteworthy.

I doubt I gave my parents a second thought the whole time I was there.The way my life is now, with me being estranged from almost my entire family and frankly, being better off because of it, it's easy to think that maybe the young me knew something that adult me should have remembered. When you don't care, abandonment and betrayal lose their sting.