This space was originally slated for a very different post.
It was a post that needed to be written, but it may need to be revised.
It was raw, painful to write, and painful to re-read. I put it down several times, and that was after shutting it off many more times in my head. It was a family post, one that tried to explain all the icky things I’ve felt of late but have largely kept quiet. My therapist knows. Andy has seen it. And a few close friends are aware. It’s the same things that have been fostering the dysfunction that’s gone on for almost five decades – and it’s literally taken me that long to see the overridden arcs and patterns as they repeat themselves in different ways. I’ve addressed it directly, in various ways over the years, as I’ve repeatedly had opportunity after opportunity of being hurt to do so, and the last time it happened I tried again. Exasperated, I blurted out at the end of an extended silence, “It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine,” my Mom said.
“You’re right,” I said, speaking out in a way I don’t think I’ve ever done. “It’s not fine. But it keeps happening, and here we are again.”
I realized then that it was a familiar scene, and in its familiarity I realized it wouldn’t ever change, and there was nothing I could do to ever make it change. I’ve seen my parents and how they interact with their grandchildren – it’s startlingly different from how they interacted with me and my brother – and that’s absolutely how it should be. It only stung when my Mom let it slip once that she may be treating them differently because she wanted to make up for what we went through in our childhood. That felt like one of those back-handed compliments and acknowledgments – it’s wonderful that she dotes on her grandchildren – it’s a slap in the face to make it up with them when I’m still here and still getting hurt.
That probably sounds quite silly, and I’ve been told to grow up for saying far less. It also doesn’t much matter, other than in my own need to let it out. It won’t change anything, and after 49 years I finally get it. I’ve also been told that distancing myself might be helpful, for my own mental health and protection, and so I’ve been removing myself from those who have kept this cycle going. Not in a petty or mean way, at least I hope that’s not how it’s perceived, but in a self-preserving way – a resignation to how things have been. In place of that emptiness I once feared I find myself curating time with Andy, time with friends, planning for Boston holiday visits with old friends, and reading classics again – the way I would find comfort on scary high school nights when I felt isolated and alone, nights in which I wrote out in rage “I WILL LEAVE HERE AND NEVER COME BACK” on my bathroom mirror – losing myself in literature and trying to find a way out through words.
And yes, this was the kinder post. Enjoy the detour.
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