This week the writing prompt at Studio 30 Plus revolved around holidays with the family. I’ve avoided it like the plague. I almost made it through the week without responding to it. I don’t know if it’s me: being such a cynical, pessimistic girl, or if I’ve truly had some extraordinarily bad luck when it comes to holidays and family. Frankly, I’ve stopped trying to figure it out. It only comes down to this: My family situation is different than most, and there are millions of others in the world who could say the same.
I saw that prompt, and the first thought that flitted through my head was, “Oh, no. NO. You will not touch this prompt with a ten-foot pole.” And yet…I can’t get the damn writing prompt out of my head.
I give up. I will talk about it.
I want to say up front: I am not trying to be a whiny girl, acting all “Woe is me,” because I know—I KNOW—that my lot in life is nothing compared to others. There are people who grew up in households with horrific, physically abusive parents, there are people who spent childhoods in less than desirable foster care situations, there are people who have no family—or are separated from their families by thousands of miles of land or sea. That’s not me. I have some of my family, and I have created a family, and I have families I have been adopted into. I have plenty of family to surround me on the holidays, no matter where I go.
It still doesn’t make up for the family I cannot see, despite everyone’s best efforts. Holidays suck for me, more often than not, because even when I am surrounded by my family of choice, I think about those I have no chance to see. When I am at my in-laws house on Thanksgiving (and they put on the most spectacular Thanksgiving you could imagine—my mother-in-law could feed an army and often tries to do so), I cannot stop myself from thinking of the family I cannot see.
This is the one thing we don’t often talk about: When you remove someone toxic from your life, and they happen to be family, nine times out of ten, you remove that entire side of your family—whether you want to or not. You work hard to put this person out of your life, to break the cycle, to make yourself healthier or safer (or both) and all you get for your efforts is further alienation. Even if your extended family does not want this to occur—even if they want to maintain ties with you, oftentimes it’s not safe for them to do so.
This year marks the ten year anniversary of me not speaking to an entire side of my family—my aunts and uncles, cousins and grandparents. In the past ten years, babies have been born and people have died. People have been married and others have moved away. Cousins have graduated high school and college. I have been witness to exactly none of it.
I don’t know if they miss me. I don’t know if they care that I’m not around. I don’t know if they understand that I could no longer accept the drama of that one single person—to the point that I was willing to give up dozens of relationships to escape the abuse. I don’t know what is said about me, or how they feel about me, or the story that has been created in family history to explain my absence. The choice for me was this: I had to make a break, so it was best for me to make a clean one. I did not enjoy it, I think about it all the time, but in no way do I regret it. I would make the same decision today.
The creepiest thing I know is that the person I removed from my life still stalks me on the inter-webs today. I gave up an entire side of my family, and I still cannot escape. This is what burns me the most. This is what keeps me awake during the night—usually on the eve of some holiday—seething with an anger that I would never guessed I possessed, otherwise.
I am working on that, though. Stalk me all you want, but stay away from me and mine. That’s the line I will not bear crossing.
As for the rest of my family—the loved ones I have not been able to speak to for nearly ten years now, due to one person’s bad choices: I hope you know. I hope you know how much I think about you. I hope you know it was hard for me. I hope you still love me as much as I love you. I think about you every holiday. But I had to make the safest choice for me, mine, and you. I hope you understand.
I hope you are reading this. I hope for this most of all—if I have to deal with the fact that I can never be free to be myself, can never be rid of the feeling of being watched, can never be free of the fact that the person I removed from my life still knows about my life because they stalk me… Well then, at least I hope you’ve been able to run across me here as well.
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