Content Warnings: Physical abuse, Emotional abuse, Parental trauma, Death, Disordered eating, Religious trauma, Self-deprecation, grief
Dear stranger,
You’re supposed to love your parents, right? The idea of being apart from them should cause you pain, the fact they’re likely to pass in the next ten to thirty years should bring visceral sorrow and tears to your eyes. People say “I love you” as nonchalant goodbyes without thinking about it. To be honest, I think it has the same emotional weight and intent as “how are you?” I have never felt a great impact or reassurance from hearing those words. A little embarrassed, maybe, along with some contractual obligation to say them back. Maybe because I’ve never emotionally connected to someone else, whether as a friend or a significant other. I can’t say that I’m emotionally bonded to my parents either, so it mystifies me whenever other people say they’re so sad and pained to have been apart from so and so for so long.
I’m pretty sure I’m capable of feeling love. I know that I love my dogs. I bawled my eyes out when I had to put down my childhood Pomeranian, and cried on a daily basis for six months afterwards, at which time I moved on to crying every two to three days. Seeing my elderly Chihuahua refuse to eat wounded me deeply, and hearing my Dad casually bring up euthanization and go off on an unprompted lecture about how it’s the way of life, something something great aunt, incenses me and leaves me feeling isolated. I couldn’t feel any of that if I didn’t possess love, right?
When I think about it more, I probably subconsciously decided from a young age to run from my Dad as much as possible. Maybe when he gave my Sundays to Bible class, church, and language classes. The first time he put his church admin duties over me getting to my cousin’s birthday party on time. Or the time he beat me into accepting thirteen was pronounced “turteen”. I don’t know much about him, other than superficial details like he enjoys med-rare steak and hot sauce.
My mother is probably worse. We don’t even speak the same language. When she speaks to me, expecting me to understand, she gets annoyed when I don’t. Yet when I talk to her, you better believe she gets huffy and says “just speak in my language”.
I have nothing to say to them. Vacations to my sister’s apartment are incredibly awkward as it becomes increasingly obvious that we are nothing to each other when we are forced to exist together in her one-bed apartment. But is that really reality, or am I projecting my own insecurities and pessimism onto a situation that is actually fine? I don’t know. Actually, why wouldn’t it be? This world tells you to never throw blame away, that other people are inherently more important for the simple reason that they aren’t you, so I guess the conclusion here really is I am broken.
