Wearing Thin

CONTROLLING MOTHER: I can’t describe the pain I feel when you pull away from me. I need you to need me. I can’t stand the thought of losing  you.  You’re  my  whole  life.  I’m  terrified  that  you’re  going  to make some horrible mistakes. It would rip me apart to see you get hurt. I’d rather die than feel like a failure as a mother. 

I never loved my birth parents, I never felt comfortable around them.

i am a bad daughter

i am a bad daughter

you made me that way

Years ago my father caught the genealogy bug and began searching for every gnarled branch of our family tree he could possibly find proof of and contacted them. We might consider these people strangers but to him they were family and that meant something. Something significant. Something sacred. 

This isn’t too strange when you think about it, not really. How many weddings / funerals have we been invited / dragged to because the parties involved were family? In these cases, family embodies an unspoken obligation to support and participate in the lives of people we barely know. Family often means being there when we really don’t want to.

And that raises an interesting question: What do you do when your family is toxic, when it does more harm than good?

Culturally speaking, we’ve been taught to grin and bear it. To tolerate your family’s insufferable behavior because, someday, family will be the only thing you have left and you just might need them.

I find this viewpoint absolutely abhorrent. A relationship you didn’t ask to be a part of, are forced to tolerate / maintain, and aren’t allowed to leave? How is that remotely healthy? Every other relationship we have in our lives lives and dies by how positive an effect it has on us. Is your significant other abusive? Leave them. Has your best friend since high school turned into a raging asshole? Ghost ‘em. That person you used to do everything with but now have nothing in common? Let things dissolve naturally and both parties will come out better for it. But not attend that racist uncle’s wedding? Not let your deadbeat cousin crash on your couch for a couple of weeks? Or worse yet: stop speaking to your parents because you finally realized how manipulative and destructive they are on your (now adult) life? You’re a goddamn monster.