Conflicts & Relationships of ourselves and others

I often undermine how much influence my family has brought me. I'm really open about my own mental health struggles, I never felt that I have anything to hide from anyone. In fact I tell everyone everything and I often wonder is that not normal to openly share about deep pains with a stranger? However when it comes to family, I often feel scared to talk about it openly because my mom has the "don't air your dirty laundry in public" kind of thing. But how could I be congruent with myself when our upbringing has much to do with our self worth, beliefs, relationships, worldview, yet I feel ashamed to talk about my family's "dirty laundry" in public?

There was a period of time I think that I could only love people at home from a distant and I don't have a happy family. I felt I never had any role model of what a happy relationship takes and look like. I often envy my friends who have parents who are happy. I was loved, but sometimes my parents' relationship trickled down to us. I've never seen them happy with any friends too. Too young to understand our parents are also human, I didn't realized how I had never learnt how to handle conflict properly. I learnt that space or silence means anger, means I did something wrong. I remember once, I didn't wanted to go to bed early, when I got into the room, my mom was so upset at me, she punished me to squat at the hallway and don't come to bed for the whole night. I cried and went to beg to her every hour or two, and each time she would get mad at me again and chase me to the hallway again for my punishment. The punishment itself wasn't that bad, as a child I had insomnia anyway, so staying up wasn't a problem. But I remember the feeling that I genuinely was scared that she doesn't want me anymore. Of course I don't blame her, discipline is important, I learnt to be responsible, considerate and obedient. But I guess this sort of upbringing also left me with a deep fear of abandonment. Thus I've crave for closeness and happy endings a lot. 

I want to get married early when I was younger, marry a guy who loves me and live happily ever after. (Only now that I'm 25 and I don't think I'll see myself get married anytime soon and happily ever after doesn't exist) I've always like hanging out with friends than being at home. I learnt to speak and think fast because my sisters would talk over me when I don't speak fast enough. I was a confident child as well. I could take challenges when those friends in standard 2 got upset at me and had the whole class not to be friends with me, I fight back and I was quite a campaigner too. I was quite a power craze and a control freak by standard 6, that's when I started hearing people say that I'm bossy. As things developed, my need to control may be a result of trying to keep things predictable, a coping mechanism, or at least I learnt that changes are distressing. I noticed around standard 4 that people don't seem to like me much. Whenever I felt my friends drifting away or doesn't like me, I don't know how to deal with that. I wanted to be close but I was also upset, so I withdrew myself. I got to secondary school then I wanted nothing to do with people from primary school. That's fine, I will find a partner that would make everything okay.

The same cycle happens again whenever I have conflict with my clique of friends where I felt rejected, I just left. It has never occurred to me to ask them or talk it out. The more experience I had with cliques that just falls out, the more I'm afraid of people not liking me. I was feisty, so I thought that was the problem. I tried to change myself, tone down my need to control (that's a sign of fear btw), try not to rock the boat. Form 6 was the time I tried the hardest. I felt rejection all around me, and when I finally open up to say something is wrong, nobody believed me. I left again. I didn't know how to be with myself either because everyone had denied how I actually feel and want to act so much that I internalized and see myself as faulty. When relationship falls apart, I just thought that every relationship is meant to fall apart anyway. When hard feelings developed, I have no idea how to deal with them, that talking it out is even an option. Thus I was always alone.

I guess I see this in my family, most of us don't have a clique of friends they hang out with all the time like how I see my friends does. Only that they aren't as bothered about it anyway. But I question myself a lot. Why am I always alone? This is not how I like myself to be. After things happening one after another and a ton of reflection and mindful processing and therapy, I realised I just wanted to be able to bond with people and have healthy lasting relationship with people who don't make me feel like a freak. I just need to learn healthier ways of maintaining and getting through conflicts, skills that I didn't had. For that I need a healthy relationship with myself, that I'm not going to make myself or put myself in situation where I feel like a freak.