It feels as if I will struggle with letting go of my daughter and grand-daughters for the rest of my life. I cut contact because I was tired of having my needs invalidated and of being cut out and left out of their lives. Of being told I couldn’t have access or enjoy my grand-daughters because my daughter thinks I am ‘unsafe’. Of being told that I will never be allowed closeness and care in action rather than only words. Of being told I was abusive and neglectful (I wasn’t – this is attribution error and deliberate mis-attribution / misfeasance).
Basically, of being held in contempt of my own life by someone who wasn’t there for any of it until I birthed them, and being punished for being who I am because it’s easier than accepting me as I am… par for this course, but I’m no longer accepting it, be that as statement or treatment.
I deserve better; so I’m finally starting to give it to (and insist upon it for) myself.
I know this is progress, positive progress, but it does not feel that way. When family holidays (birthdays, mother’s day, et al) come and go without a word, I know my daughter is happily holding to what I said, because she puts more faith and trust in words than in actions. Mind you, I’ve known this for decades, so I suppose every year’s string of verification is just proof that so long as she has words to point to (i.e., you said…) she’s perfectly vindicated to just keep on behaving as she always has. For me, I figured I’d just give her what her behavior and statements have always insisted she wants more than anything from me: Nothing.
I’m grieving, I think. Mostly anger and hurt these days. I don’t think she will ever understand how much she has hurt me, and frankly, I don’t think she cares that she has. Many times, it seems she was quick to accuse me of hurting her and demanding all manner of performative behaviors to mollify her. Oddly, she always acted like her apologies, usually a quick ‘I’m sorry’ without any real demonstration of how/why behind them were supposed to be super-charged and instantly put everything back to her preferred configurations. So of course mine were/remain ‘never good enough’ and required constant and scrupulous coddling and catering.
And, of course, to say this ‘hurt her’, which was always, infinitely more important than any hurt here.
Ultimately, her complete inability to see beyond herself exhausted me; mentally, emotionally, and physically. Her inability to realize I’ve been as ‘there’ as she would ever allow in her adulthood and, if there is some blame around it, it rests with her and on me only when I retreated once more from daily proof I simply did not matter beyond the lip-service and remaining a convenient emotional towel that could be wrung out to her benefit. The moment I needed more than lip-service? Oh, I was being manipulative.
I know I have finally made the right choice, because I know she will never willingly change and she will never acknowledge or accept that I too, am injured by this life and, unlike her, I haven’t had others willing to stand by me or help me long enough to stabilize. She admits I broke generational trauma chains for her, but will not accept I’m still stuck in/by/with them and in need. No, actually, that’s not quite accurate – she admits this, but like so many before her, doesn’t see that as being relevant to her or her life.
And it finally occurred to me that she treats me like I treated my mother and father… and for the same reasons. And that no matter how much I know she doesn’t see or understand, in this, she is exactly like me. Which is how I know it will never be any different, never change. And I finally see in her the generational legacy she doesn’t think she holds. And I understand that this means it cannot change.
Because until I finally saw it in myself, I couldn’t change it, either. And this is the hardest part of all, because now that I ‘get’ the ecosystem in which all of this exists, I ‘get’ that neither of us has the power to change it until and unless we’re willing to work on it together, every day.
She will never be willing to do this because it requires more than distancing me.
Thus I am no longer willing to endure a pseudo-relation at distance because I deserve happiness in my life and I cannot find/have it with this millstone of her unresolved anger, resentment, and punitive passive-aggression in my life.
In this processing stage, I find telling myself the outline is better than the detailed narrative. I still have the proofs from credible third-parties, I still have the old emails. I know what was said, what happened, and the universe of things she will never acknowledge or accept. But they don’t matter in the end, because in the end, it’s about how she has shut me out of this relationship and how I feel after decades of trying to endure through it.
I’ve taken abuse and neglect from her that I wouldn’t allow from anyone else in my life. She has never understood this was the case, thus never appreciated that I was willing to put up with being mischaracterized and maligned.
I’ve taken harmful and hurtful behavior from her that I silently, quickly, and utterly cut swaths of humans from my life for so much as attempting. She has never understood this was the case, and never appreciated that she received so many more ‘tries’ from me in this life.
I have continued to send what small gifts I could to my grand-daughters, hoping to have some relationship with them, but this year is the last year I will do so because it is obvious that I am not to be permitted more than long-distance and gifting and the lack of closeness is now harming my mindset and inflaming my loneliness; in the sheer lack of care, I choose for my own well being so that I am not adding to the weight of its lack.
No more birthdays. No more mother’s days. No more holidays. I take them back for myself and will now give them to myself because otherwise, I’ll simply never have them and I deserve to have them!
I look forward to the day it no longer hurts this way. I wonder if that day will ever arrive. I suppose it is possible; my son is but a quiet ripple on the surface of life these days, even as I still wish that could have had a different outcome.
Time is the ultimate cure for all human woes.