It Starts to Break

It's been getting hard to sleep again.  It's not just the no contact thing, it's a combination of being busy and ignoring those issues inside.  When I don't deal with my feelings about my estrangement from my family, they begin to grow ugly roots around my heart and I need to spend some time untangling it all.

This morning I listened to the song I listened to after leaving my mom's psychiatrist's office.  I let myself sit with my morning coffee and climb back into that grief so that I could let it out and accept it.  I don't know why it's so hard to just feel it the way it is, without all of the rumination and internal fight.  Without still battling her.  Or them.  Or me..

Today I had the space to just feel it.  The sadness.  The loss.  The grief.  It's all dancing inside of me like a hauntingly sad, silent ballet.  I feel relieved to finally feel it again.  The raw emotion.  Not the anger and the frustration and the guilt that seems to attach themselves so easily.  The pain that is where acceptance comes from.

I need now to accept that I have lost my aunt.  I have accepted that my brother and I will likely never have a relationship again.  I think I have grieved my dad.  I never expected him to protect me or to look out for me in any real way.  Plus his health has been declining for so long that I had already been preparing myself for loss.  My mom told me 15 years ago that he was showing signs of early Alzheimer's and I think I cried for two days solid (I don't know why she said it, she has also told me that she thinks she has Alzheimers).  When I found out his body was starting to shut down on him,  diabetes, arteries almost closed, little heart attacks and he kept on smoking and drinking, I grieved.  Ambulance calls, hospital stays and still he couldn't let go of his vices.  I cried and cried and cried.  I let go and let go.  Little did I know that all of that grieving would help me now.  My mom is like the rest of his vices.  He won't see how unhealthy it all is.  Even when faced with what seems like the worst.  He let go of his beer finally, but I can see now that it was only because he couldn't drink anymore without falling over.  He never did it for the better of our family.  He couldn't made choices like that and I can walk away from him easier because of that.  My mom always made me believe that everything she did was for our family and I couldn't see how selfish her choices really were, how mentally ill she really was because I was raised to see her the way she wanted to be seen.

So that's where I am at.  Still struggling to accept the loss of my aunt.  Beginning to accept the loss of my mom.  Accepting the loss of my dad and brother.  It's a long way from where I started.

One day in the not so distant future, I think we will drive away from this place and make our home somewhere new.  And I want to find peace before we go.

"Sometimes the tears we cry, are more than any heart can take.  We hurt, just keep it inside, it's no wonder that it starts to break."  - Birdy

Update:  5 hours after writing this post, my dad showed up.  He asked why I can't be stronger than this.  He told me that my mom just lies in bed all day.  He said that he and my aunt aren't in our lives because we 'snubbed them'.  He told me to quit bringing up the past.  Any peace I had found, turned to anger, tears and renewed guilt.  I told him to never come over and do this to me again.  I told him that he was as responsible as she was for all that abuse because he stood by and did nothing.  He allowed it.  I asked him if all those days she spent in bed when I was a kid were my fault too.  I told him if he wanted things to improve to quit enabling her by re-enforcing that I am the problem.  I reminded him that I will not open the door without hearing from her psychiatrist that she is showing enough improvement to have a healthy relationship.  I reminded him it doesn't have to be perfect, but it has to be healthy.  I told him that what I am doing is requiring an unbelievable amount of strength and that I am doing for my daughter what nobody did for me.

And I shouldn't have bothered saying any of it.

It Takes a Long Time

It takes a long time to get through this.  It has been awhile since writing here - it has been difficult to make sense of things and I think this is where I come when I finally start to feel some kind of peace.  Sometimes that means a long absence while I walk through it, lost.  It would be more beneficial to write than to wander lost, I'm sure!

To catch up on the basics, after repeated requests to have my dad respect our boundaries, 8 months into NC, I let them know (through my aunt) that I no longer want contact with either one of them.  No more cards or gifts on holidays and we don't want them going out to our cottage (a place that they were always welcome before).  It put me into the darkness for a bit.  Back into that sadness that is too painful to have anything beautiful about it.

And now, I feel officially like an orphan.  It hurts so much that this is the healthiest option.  The pain runs so deep and it feels like a secret.  It's not like my parents passed away, both within 8 months of one another and I can talk openly about my grief.  It is a dark family secret they don't want anyone to know.  I am used to those, but so tired of them and I want to be able to be open.  I want to be able to own my decision and not feel like it's my deep dark secret.  But if I were to be open now, the anxiety and guilt that would result from telling would be more than I can handle.  In my heart I know that it's her secret I would be telling.  I want to get to a place where I feel like I can own my truth over keeping her secrets.

Lately I have been thinking about Christmas time.  How scared I am already that I will run into my mom at a mall.  Today that thought triggered so much pain.  Not because of feeling scared at how painful it would be to see her and have her see my daughter (it would be heartbreaking and I dread that ultimately inevitable moment), but because I thought about how painful this coming Christmas will be for her.  My mind's eye saw her shopping for presents for people she no longer has in her life, and my heart shattered at how sad I know she is.  And I want to make it better but I can't.  And I want to have a mom but I can't.  And I want to understand why, but I can't.