This prompt turned out to be quite a challenge. Nothing springs to mind immediately. I will have to sit on this for the rest of the day, hoping the answer will unfold itself eventually.

But I stumbled upon this quote:

“Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.” ― Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose.

If this is true then my childhood, which was not the happiest of times, has turned out quite instrumental for the rest of my life i.e. my writing. It made me who I am today, it stood at the roots of some life changing decisions like for instance me not wanting to have kids of my own, and it was the reason I left home at a really early stage.

But it also turned out to be the cause of problems later in life when I found out I missed certain skills I should have learned in childhood but didn’t. I had to teach them myself or grow into them while at Life’s university. Life itself taught me what my parents lacked. But it’s fair to say I struggled. Then again who doesn’t? Life is never about fairness I think, it’s about dealing with what you’ve got, accept certain aspects of it, learn from it and move on the best way you know how.

I suppose everyone gets what he can take on in life.