#plus i cant access the other version i had of this on my old blog so i had to re-writ

[smirkbastian]

   early  childhood  influences   ♔

This entry focuses specifically on the primary people that Sebastian was surrounded by in his early childhood years and how those people made him out to be how he exists today. This explains a moderately in-depth description of how the Smythe household functioned, and information about both his parents and his deceased brother individually/Sebastian’s relationship with them. This timeline focuses on ages 8 and under, but statements about parenting tactics existed until the day Sebastian left the house. The way Sebastian was raised have shaped him to be who he is today, as well. 

                          content warnings:  child abuse, alcoholism, suicide

♖  (  parents.  )     -     The Smythe family was strange. Though they seemed to be the average snotty rich family living on an estate and traveling like it was a casual trip to the grocery store, they weren’t average. In fact, they were a very specific breed of fucked up. It was that kind of fucked up where it was hidden behind glamour and high-class status. Adam and Elise Smythe were parents who removed themselves emotionally from their children’s lives--- all while Adam tried to control how they navigated their lives in every other aspect. They had two sons, the eldest was Damian Smythe, while the youngest was Sebastian Smythe. Adam always wanted sons, and that is exactly what he got. Elise didn’t care either way--- she just wanted children because she felt like they would make her happier with herself as a person. That maybe caring for a child would distract her from her own demons. The Smythe household was not one where being free with your emotions was encouraged. There was an unsaid rule that a Smythe is never caught emotionally weak. 

The Smythe name stood for a very specific thing. Adam and Elise knew that their goal to bring children into this world was to pass on the values of the Smythe name, and bring a new generation of power into the bloodline. Adam had grown up living up to the Smythe name as well and knew he would grow to become a lawyer like his father, and Elise had married into the family as a woman who had no family of her own blood herself. She had come from wealthy foster parents who weren’t the best people but paid for her to go to school so she could eventually use her medical degree to become a very prestigious plastic surgeon. Elise never really knew if she loved Adam, but she loved the idea of belonging to a permanent family, not a temporary one. Elise and Adam disagreed on a lot of parenting tactics, but with the abusive tendencies that Adam had revealed to her through the years, she struggled a lot with speaking her opinions and straying away from the way Adam wanted things to be when it came to raising Sebastian. Because of this, Sebastian was heavily raised under his father’s morals. 

Adam believed to raise a successful young man, you had to condition them for an adulthood where failing was not an option-- and that started was the very beginning years of Sebastian’s life. It was never about teaching him to reach for what he wants in a healthy way, it was about teaching him to take what he’s destined to have from anybody’s hands if it meant he would level up. There was never lessons about treating others with kindness, instead Sebastian was taught never to show himself in a vulnerable position. Sebastian learned from a young age that the ‘right’ way to be was to hide his inner conflicts and carry on with a ruthless demand for success. Growing up in these early childhood years really not knowing who his dad truly was, their relationship was very odd. His dad was kind of just a feared man, even an irritating pest as Seb grew older, not a loving parental figure. He knew the name that his dad had in the public eye of law and fortune. He knew what the Smythe name meant for his dad. But he didn’t know what his dad liked. What he was like as a child. Where he came from. Adam Smythe was a private and closed off man, even with his family. 

Elise was never a horrible mother in a direct manor, nothing like her husband, but her own problems and lack of power within the household caused her heart to be drowned out and hidden behind the state she kept herself in so that she didn’t have to face issues. Actually, especially while Sebastian was eight and under, Elise was still present to a decent extent before her alcoholism went overboard. Yes-- Elise was an alcoholic, one of those women who hides the fact they have a drinking problem, but everybody knew without saying that she had a problem. She always kept herself flawless, hair and makeup done, the nicest designer clothes. While Adam’s discipline was more present than his time, Elise’s time was more present than her discipline even though she was still a busy woman. She never laid down any kind of discipline. She feared doing the wrong thing but she also feared Adam so instead she did nothing. Sebastian did have some fond memories of her, though. In fact, when Sebastian was still young, Elise was at least good at showing her love when she could. She knew that she didn’t truly love her husband and she didn’t truly love her life behind all of the material things and status she had-- but what she did know was that she loved her sons. So much. Sebastian has his mother’s eyes. Sometimes Elise would tuck Sebastian in before bed and stroke his hair until he fell asleep and would just smile at the fact that Sebastian had the same eyes as her. 

However, after her oldest son Damian took his own life when Sebastian was eight, Elise became so much more far gone than she was before. Nothing was really the same after that. When Elise was unable to keep going as the mother she had the glimpse of being before, Sebastian really started to look at her as a coward in his teenage years and see flaws in her the same way he saw a million flaws in his father. Because Sebastian had grown with such twisted views on life, he didn’t understand how to empathize with why she was never present. It was a horrible way to look at her but Sebastian was being encouraged to become horrible by his father. There was nothing else you could expect from him. 

♖  (  damian.  )     -     Until the age of eight, Sebastian had an alive and well older brother, Damian Smythe. A lot of older brothers can be mean to their younger siblings, but Damian was anything but. There was never a rivalry or bullying. The only person he had a horrible relationship with was his parents. Damian and his parents would fight day and night. They really raised Damian to be the perfect model of a child. If you think Adam was controlling of Sebastian, Damian had gotten it much worse because he was the oldest. The first possibility of a perfectly shaped Smythe boy. They parented him harshly (more so Adam). He was almost more of a leader and role model for Sebastian because despite the fact that their parents were always upset with Damian, he always taught Sebastian that he should pursue whatever he wants to in life and be his own person. Even at that age, Sebastian understood exactly what he meant. I guess you could say that because Damian had lived eighteen years with the Smythe’s as parents, he knew what would be in store for Sebastian and he was putting these ideas of self-worth into his head before his parents could get to Sebastian like it had messed with Damian. 

Damian would care for him a lot when Sebastian’s mood was too frustrated to accept the care of any nanny he had once behavioral issues came to bay for Sebastian. Damian was also the only person that could calm Sebastian down when he was upset. Damian was the reason Sebastian took a big interest in music that wasn’t purely classical or French as his parents enjoyed (which Sebastian also liked too, admittedly). The older Sebastian got, the less time Damian spent at home. Nothing to do with Sebastian. It was their parents driving him insane, Adam hounding him every moment spent together about how he’s fucking his life up with his plans and how difficult it was having to tell all of his friends and acquaintances that his oldest son wasn’t going into law as expected. Damian’s relationship with their parents worsening by the day, things got really tense. He couldn’t live up to the perfect son image. Damian was pretty much what you could call a genius in science and mathematics, and because he dismissed this in the sense of his career and instead took interest in the arts, he was ostracized by his parents.  

At the age of eighteen, Damian took his own life. The details of how he did it were sad and didn’t matter. The point was--- he took his own life because beyond his independent thinking and trying to fight to be the person he wanted to be, there was a cracking point. Even for the ones with the strongest will, there comes a point where it’s hard to keep trying. He was a highly intelligent mind that felt depressed. Damian was diagnosed with clinical depression at a very young age, and was never given the proper tools in his home life to help it. With daily threats from his father and his mother doing nothing to stop this, Damian developed a lot of stress and a lot of self-image issues. The point of life was fading. His dreams were being denied--- what now? After Damian committed suicide, Adam and Elise really stopped trying with Sebastian as far as knowing where he was and what he was doing as long as his grades were good and he kept on with his curricular activities. Which is why Sebastian grew up to be a teenager that always seemed to be where he wanted to be. No curfew. No restrictions.

Adam was very quiet about the suicide. He almost fully ignored it, and acted like it never happened. It was almost like he was ashamed of talking about it or there was no world where he could even bring himself to get in touch with his emotions and cry. He acted like what Damian did was selfish from the little words he did say about it to Sebastian. Elise was a mess after it happened, she isolated herself and medicated herself with alcohol non-stop for the full year after. Never around. It was a strange time for the Smythe home, and people in their rich inner circle were talking. Rumors. Horrible things. Suddenly, Elise became a barely-there mother to an absent mother for Sebastian at the time where he needed to know how to feel about all this the most. Sebastian missed his brother. Even at eight, he knew it wasn’t just some selfish thing he did. He knew Damian had left him because he was sad. This is when Sebastian’s behavioral problems worsened heavily, and he became a true problem child.