I think one of the strangest parts of getting older is realising your parents were never as fixed, certain, or all-knowing as they seemed when you were a kid.

At some point, without really noticing when it happened, I came to a conclusion that unsettled me in a way I’m still sitting with:

It really is their first time living too.

Intellectually, that feels obvious. Of course it is.

But emotionally, it lands differently.

Because when you’re a child, your parents don’t feel like people. They feel like the structure. The rules. The atmosphere. The thing you grow around. They feel like the adults, the ones who know, the ones making the calls.

You don’t really see them as people with their own fears, limitations, worries, histories, and emotional blind spots.

Not until much later.

Not until you’re old enough to look back and realise they were never operating from some perfect place of certainty. They were just… living. Doing their best in some areas. Falling short in others. Trying to build a life while raising children inside it.

And that doesn’t erase anything.

It doesn’t make every hurt feel smaller.

But it does make the whole picture more complicated.

Because I know my parents loved me. I don’t question that.

I don’t think they were cruel. I don’t think they were withholding for the sake of it. I think they genuinely wanted to give my sister and me the best life they could.

But love and being able to feel loved are not always the same thing.

That’s the part I understand more clearly now.

Sometimes the way people give love isn’t the way you receive it.

Sometimes they show love through provision, routine, responsibility, making sure the bills are paid, the lights stay on, the necessities are covered. Through practicality. Through doing. Through sacrifice you don’t fully understand until you’re older.

But when you’re a child, that’s not always what you’re reaching for.

Sometimes you want presence.

Enthusiasm.

A yes.

Someone at the school event.

Someone who shows up in a way you can actually feel in your body.

And I think that’s where some of the ache lives for me.

Not in the absence of love.

But in the mismatch.

In wanting something and often feeling like the answer was no.

In wanting them there and noticing when they weren’t.

In growing up with a version of care that may have been sincere, but didn’t always land as warmth, affirmation, or emotional closeness.

That kind of emotional distance does something to you when you’re young.

In my case, I think it became part of my wiring.

And in a strange way, it fortified me.

By the time I was discovering my sexuality (and eventually preparing myself to come out) that distance was already there. It had been built slowly, over years, into something protective. I didn’t know what the outcome would be. I didn’t know how it would land. So I think some part of me relied on that distance. It gave me somewhere to stand emotionally if things went badly.

It wasn’t healthy exactly.

But it was useful.

It taught me how to brace.

How to hold things in.

How to prepare for disappointment before it arrived.

And the trouble with protective distance is that even when you no longer need it in quite the same way, it doesn’t just disappear.

A gap built over 30-something years doesn’t close neatly.

It doesn’t vanish because everyone is older now.

Because intentions were good.

Because time has passed.

It stays. Maybe less sharp in places, but still there.

That’s the uncomfortable truth of family sometimes: both things can exist at once.

They loved me.

And I still learnt distance.

They cared.

And I still grew up preparing myself emotionally for what might not be there.

They gave what they knew how to give.

And it still wasn’t always what I needed.

That doesn’t make them bad parents.

It makes them human parents.

People with their own wiring. Their own emotional range. Their own histories. Their own blind spots about what children actually remember.

And as I get older, I think that’s the part that gets harder and easier at the same time.

Harder, because I can see them more clearly now.

Easier, because I can.

Because once you see your parents as people, not just parents, something shifts. Not absolution exactly. Not even forgiveness necessarily. Just context.

You start to realise they weren’t standing above life, handing wisdom down from a great height.

They were in it too.

Figuring it out.

Getting some things right.

Missing others completely.

It really is their first time living too.

And maybe that doesn’t heal everything.

But it does make the story more honest.