I guess as someone who has a fairly picture book family, immediately, I don't have proper perspective on this. I don't know what it's like growing up with a crazy mother. As this person who has no respectable opinion on the matter, I think it's pretty amazing that your family history is so colorful. Well, what you know of it, anyway, and what your mother's told you. I would hold those journals very dear to me. Or at least, if I were a generation or so down, I would. All my family really has is pictures. And we were all extremely boring from what research I've done. I've tried to find anything dark or mysterious, but no.

You're right though. Parents fuck their kids up no matter who they are. So you have to decide for yourself if you want children. Without thinking about them. I guess it has to be a selfish thing first, and then you know that you'll take care of them when they're born because they're YOURS and YOU wanted them.