I've been struggling for the last week as to if I should cut ties with my Mom's side of the family. The ties that are there are limited. We view each others FB activity but don't interact. It's litereally been decades since I've had face to face interaction with any of them. What little interaction I have had is usually some form of a guilt trip for not talking to my parents. It's painful when I have them telling me that I am acting like a child. I know that it is out of ignorance as to my reasons why I have broken contact with my parents. I don't like to talk about the brutality that I grew up with. I know that I don't owe anyone any explanation for why I have made my decision to cut all contact with my parents. And yet, to make these relatives to stop guilt tripping me, I would have to drag up all the old wounds. Doing so would hurt and I would be at the risk of them justifying my parents' behavior as necessary or saying that I was overreacting because they were raised by parents who were equally brutal.
At the same time, I can not live this lie anymore. I don't have a loving and supportive family in my family of birth anymore. The people who were loving and supportive are all dead save for one or two. The living members stand for things that would see people like me punished under color of law. An uncle once said that my choice of religion made me as bad as a pedophile and that they'd call child protective services on me. My brothers' both treat me like a piece of furniture that happens to be in the way when we're in the same room. Aside from that they fully support the eugenics policies of people like Donald Trump. Therefore they feel that anyone with mental illness or some form of defect should be killed because they're a "drain" on society. This attitude is encouraged and supported by my parents.
They believe that Covid-19 is a government conspiracy. They believe that Black Lives Matter is all about rioting and destroying property (which they arroganty believe is owned by white people). They believe the conspiracy theories about how wealthy people (read wealthy Jews) are keeping the money from the working class. At the same time, they look at Jeff Bezos and Donald Trump as examples of what a 'real' millionare should be like and claim that they're beyond reproach. Especially Donald Trump. My father's been an acolyte of Donald Trump since the 1980s. I have loathed Donald Trump since the 1980s.
In all of this, my mother's side of the family is absent. Occasionally presents were sent up. But, I came to realize early on that they're trying to purchase affection and loyalty. I had something of a relationship with my maternal grandparents for a while. When I cut ties with my parents, the guilt trips came constantly. So, I went no contact with them. I tried at one point to be a part of their lives (my grandparents) but it was always one-way contact. I had to play court to their good favor to get a reply. I had to stroke egos to get favorable responses. I know now where my Mom learned to play that game.
So, I am in a way becoming an adult orphan by choice. I didn't have it happen that my parents disowned me, as happened to my nieces. Which I will never forgive my brothers for, becaues they were disowned due to the fact that they were not born male. But I might as well have been disowned. My parents told me that my brother should have been born first. My parents told me that I was a failed abortion. My parents told me that I was inferior because I was female (somehow this didn't apply to my mother, just me). My parents told me that I was their problem child and assumed that I was on drugs. They denied me privacy (telling me that privacy was a prvilege but giving me hell if I interrupted my brothers with anything). One time, they took the door off of my room because they were mad at me for not allowing them in when they wanted in. (And my reason for not allowing them in was because I was changing clothes, but this didn't matter becuse my room was the only passway to their room at the back of the house on that floor.)
I was raised with this cultish belief that family is everything. I was raised with this attitude that the honor of the family (going back generations) depended on my actions. I was raised with conflicting messages about what it meant to be a woman but the default messages beneath them was that I was to be submissive, subservient, and my value only mattered on what I could do for others/produce. I was a commodity. I was chattel. My parents saw me as a potential meal ticket when it became apparent that I had some talent for writing.
My parents saw me as a potential meal ticket with my first boyfriend (the abusive bastard) going into the navy. They envisioned him rising in rank and getting a nice fat check that we would be obligated to provide for them in their retirement. As I went off to college, they had similar designs upon my future hoping I was going to leave Beloved for a wealthy doctor or some lawyer. I didn't and they did just about everything they could to sabotage my relationship with Beloved. My parents never invested in savings for retirement. They were always chasing the next scheme that was supposed to make them rich. They took the money that was held in trust for me to go to college and spent it on gods only know what, but when it was time for me to go to college they said the money was gone.
When I graduated college, they called me a failed investment becauese I didn't get a big ticket job right out the gate. They called me a failure because I wasn't working the jobs they thought I should be. They thought temp agency jobs were beneath me. They thought that retail jobs were beneath me. When I got sick and I lost my job at the call center, they threw me out of the house because I wasn't providing enough support for the household. Mind you, there was no discussion of rent. I was paying for my own food. I was doing chores around the house when I wasn't at work (where others were not, I basically went to work and came home to clean house for them). So, when I got sick enough that I couldn't work, they threw me out.
It was for the grace of my paternal grandparents that I had an apartment to live in down in the southerntier. My parents were angry and after my case because I wasn't paying rent to my grandparents and I wasn't paying all of the bills for the apartment. I was barely working and still sick. I had a job at a farm supply store that was half-time. My parents shamed me for getting food stamps (despite the fact that they had been on food stamps for a period of time themselves). My parents shamed me for everything the could think of when they randomly showed up at that apartment. Including the curtains that they said marked my apartment as the residence of a whore.
They had the audacity to sabotage my wedding plans. The wedding I got was not the wedding I wanted, it was the one that they wanted. They told me that it wasn't about me and I had to stop being so selfish. They loved to tell me that I was selfish when ever I stood up for myself and demanded that my concerns be considered. They loved to tell me that I was selfish when I took time to attend to my own needs. And when I got sick, they blamed me for it. It didn't matter why I got sick. It was always "if you only drank more water and got more exercise this wouldn't have happened." I was told that when I had to have surgery for an ovarian cyst. I was told that when I had to have an appendictomy. I was told that when it came to my mental illness. I was told that when I had problems with preeclampsia with both my pregnancies. And I was shamed for having a c-section for both pregnancies. I was shamed for my getting an epidural for my first pregnancy. And my mother threatened me with violence if I screamed while I was in labor with my second child.
Thus, she wasn't there when it happened. Not too long after Snuggle Bug and I came home from the hospital, Mom showed up and wanted to 'talk' about our relationship. She went into a rambling tirade that ended with a threat to burn down the house that my nieces lived in regardless if they were there or not. I couldn't sleep that night. It was 3 in the morning when I sent an email to my father about this. When I got back was "sometimes parents say what they need to say in a way you don't like." He backed her up on the threat against the lives of their grandchildren. At which point I sent a return email stating that if anything happened to any of my nieces and I had reason to suspect they were part of it I was sending the emails to the police.
The next day, they showed up on my door step. I didn't let them in. I hid in the bedroom with the children and prayed that they'd go away. Cue 5 years of no contact with them or the rest of my father's side of the family (with the exception of my grandparents). Then Grandpa got cancer and I was there for the family. Which consisted of reestablishing the treatment like unwanted furntiature for the sake of my grandparents. When my Grandma died, I walked away. Now, I'm getting ready to walk away from my mother's side of the family because we literally have nothing in common but blood. And that didn't make a very big difference to them in the past. I don't think it's going to matter going forward.
I invited my cousins to my wedding. And I find out after the fact that they got married. I sent letters to relations about how my family was doing. I was like dropping them into a black hole except for the occasional letter back from my maternal grandmother about how I was acting like a spoilt child and an ingrate. With a dash of "you parent's aren't well and they want to see you." Well, they know where I live. My phone number hasn't changed in the past 16 years. I know they have it. My email address hasn't changed. I know they have it. They're playing a game of chicken. They want me to blink first and come back to be the victim of their misogyny and the one who bears all the blame for their fuck ups.
I'm sorry, but I can't do that. I've got my own life to live. I've got children to raise and a marriage to keep. You were so sure my brothers could do no wrong. You were so convinced that I was the problem child. And where do we stand now? My brothers are living with you. Neither of them are employed. One has abandoned his family and is an alcoholic. The other has just disowned his daughter for asking him to walk her down the aisle at her wedding. And then there's me. Your problem child daughter.
I've been married for 16 years as of next friday. We have two healthy children who aren't terrified to be themselves and are, yet, still well mannered and well behaved. I have a college degree from a prestigeous college. I had built up the beginnings of a career in teaching before I became disabled and unable to continue that career. I am working on a career as an author despite my disability. I have over seven books to my name. I am working on a part time job as a tarot reader where I make enough money to cover the investment needed in my writing career.
I'm not the failure here. I am successful beyond my wildest dreams because I have accomplished my goals. So, I'm cutting ties that no longer serve my health and well being.
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