alone

Another two years go by. I have such a love/hate relationship with the holiday season. Within my own little nuclear family, it's bliss. Christmas at home is wonderful. Not going anywhere is wonderful. The thoughtfulness of my children as they get more and more into gift-giving in our little family is heartwarming.Visiting with my husband's family, who live locally now, is mostly nice.

But.

I'm lonely.

Everywhere I turn, there are people celebrating with extended families. Cousins, aunts, uncles, siblings, parents, grandparents, great-grandparents. And I feel so lost.

There is no big extended family for me. I hate this. I chose it, and I stand by that choice, but this "best" choice still sucks. I want it all. I want the lovely Christmas with my children ANDalso the big hoopla of the extended family AND I want them to be awesome, kind, empathetic, healthy people, and to love me, and to love my kids, and for us to be happy.

That won't happen. Can't happen. But it doesn't stop me from wanting it.

It gets me going down that path of "did I make the right choice?" and "how bad would it be, anyway?"

Really, how bad would it be?

I try to remind myself that holidays with my "one big happy family" were never that happy. They involved marching orders from la madre, everybody held in her thrall, total denial of anybody's desires or comfort except for hers, siblings programmed to think of me as a bitch, ignoring anything I say while laughing at each other's stories, driving home heavy with disgruntlement and hurt. I was no less alone then. It only looked less alone, because I had the big family pictures to show for it. See? We're a happy family! Look at this multi-generational awesomeness!

It's like my favorite Vonnegut book comments: "no damn cat, no damn cradle." It was all an illusion.

My kids have five cousins, but only remember one or two of them. They've never even met one of them. I have no contact with my niece and nephews. I'm estranged from one brother and not at all close to two others. That sense of family ties, family tradition? It's all snarled up.

How do I rewrite my mind to accept that the five of us - me, my husband, our three sons - are enough? That this small, genuine celebration is better than the large, fake one? It's really nice not to go anywhere on Christmas, not to worry about competing inlaws.  I grew up with a big, big extended family. Quiet holidays with just us five plus my mother-in-law and father-in-law are so small. So...boring. How do I learn to accept this as normal and love it for what it is?

Do you know?

oh, brother

It's on a mousepad! It HAS to be true!!

So, first, something good: on Saturday, I received a text out of the blue from brother #2. He sent a picture of something funny he saw in a store, knowing that I would enjoy it in the same snarky vein that he did. It led to a long text discussion back and forth, and tentative plans for a visit. It felt especially good following the despair I was feeling on Friday regarding him and brother #1.

Now, the not so good: brother #1 was indeed at the party at the mutual friend's house, and I have a definitive answer to the "is he not speaking to me, or does he think that I'm not speaking to him?" question.

He totally blew me off. Totally. Like I didn't exist.

I knew things wouldn't be good when the first person I saw when we pulled up was SIL, and after she returned my wave, she walked off with a friend of hers, literally turning her back on my family, rather than wait less than a minute to say hi to us. If I had been in her shoes, I absolutely would have waited. I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt, but I'm having trouble thinking of a good reason for her choice. Once in our friends' yard, I heard my brother greet my oldest son, but absolutely no acknowledgement of me or my husband. Whatever. I tried to give the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he thinks I'm not speaking to him and he's not sure what to say. Maybe he is too busy talking to the guy beside him and doesn't see me.

At some point, I awkwardly tried to join my SIL and her friend in their conversation. She was cordial. No, civil. Cordial sounds like smiling would be involved. She was not warm. I last saw her in August, when she and I and our kids got together at a park; she was cordial but not friendly then, I'd say. I badly wanted to ask her about my brother at the park that day, but didn't. We have established in the past that we don't talk about the family drama.

Back to Saturday's party. A friend of mine arrived (huzzah!) and joined our conversation, and then we went inside to get some food, at which time SIL and her friend broke off quickly from me and my friend, and we didn't hang out any more for the rest of the evening.

Meanwhile, my brother was still not registering my presence. I had been thinking over the past day or so about how to say hello to somebody who you strongly suspect is not speaking to you. Especially when he's your brother. I mean, it would be rude to just come out with "are you purposefully ignoring me?" in a party situation. Real buzzkill for other guests. But you can't introduce yourself to your own brother, and at this point we had both been there long enough that it was too late for the "hey, good to see you!" thing you can do upon arrival. So when he passed by me, making zero eye contact (it was like I was a piece of furniture), I gave him a sisterly fist bump to the shoulder and said "hey!" in a cheerful voice.

Nothing. No reaction. at. all. My friend asked who that guy was. My brother. She was a little shocked by what she later called "the snub."

My husband later cornered my brother - literally, waited until he was in a spot in the kitchen that was surrounded on three sides and took up a position on the 4th side, so my brother was trapped into conversation with my husband. My brother avoided eye contact. Tried to pull other people into conversation - those people are apparently not close enough to Bro#1 to save him from somebody he doesn't want to talk to, and they avoided joining the obviously awkward exchange. So Bro#1 was kindof forced to make small talk with my husband, who eventually, when the kitchen emptied out, asked him point-blank if he's not speaking to me. My brother confirmed that he is not, because, as he put it, he is "just fucking DONE."

You're DONE? Fuck you. And the high horse you rode in on. But at least now I have confirmation of what I suspected was going on, and can rest assured that there is no miscommunication here. It's possible that he thinks I'm not speaking to him, but I think my lame attempt to engage him should prove that incorrect.

He avoided us like the plague after that. We left not terribly long afterward. When I hugged the hostess later, while saying my goodbyes, SIL was next to her and I said goodbye and felt weird - I mean, normal people would hug their SIL goodbye, right? So I asked, "can I hug you?" and she said "of course" (ha, there is no "of course" with her) and I hugged her and told her that I miss them.

The end.

This led to some processing, of course, during which I had some moments of clarity and also some moments of added angst. It is important to note that I felt about 70-80% fine during the party, even after being openly snubbed. I enjoyed the gathering. I met new people, had happy conversations...and for an introvert who was being actively shunned right that moment by her brother, that is HUGE. Those numbers are totally scientifically derived, by the way.

The Clarity

• I am SO grateful for people in my life like my friend, with whom I had a tête–à–tête after my husband's intelligence mission. She acted as a compassionate witness, assuring me that what I experienced was indeed a blatant snub, and also reassuring me that no, not everybody has huge happy family fun times at Christmas. She reminded me of some of her family dysfunction and essentially made me feel less alone in the world. Everybody should have friends like this, who know how to make you feel like a normal human being instead of like a broken lonely freak. 

• I am also grateful for Brother #2, who knows me well enough to share something with me that we will both find funny, who doesn't agree with my choosing NC with my mom but who still wants a relationship with me, and who, apparently, is not totally embroiled in the "Claire is a Bitch" psychodrama.

• I can now go forward with the knowledge that Brother #1 does indeed hold a grudge. It's not my imagination, it's not crossed wires. 

• I need to do some emotional work on how I have previously viewed my relationship with Brother #1. I was closest to him growing up, in part because we are very close in age and had the most experiences in common. He and his wife can both be judgey sometimes (she alienated a mutual friend in not-too-distant history by telling the friend that her house is essentially a temple to consumerism), which put strain on our relationship when our lifestyles were not extremely in sync. When we were all childless and vegetarian, we were friends. When we had kids and they didn't, they got judgey and distant. When they started having kids, it was initially awesome because we make a lot of the same parenting choices, but then it got bad again, in part because I had the audacity to buy a minivan, which, in SIL's words, "represents everything wrong with America".  If I'm honest with myself, the best time in our friendship was when I was 17 and he was 15. That's more than 20 years ago. 

• I need to put more effort into my relationship with Brother #2. He is a laid-back guy who hates the family conflict stuff, so he is not likely to be the one to maintain our relationship. I have been slack because I was tired of people blaming me and felt like, you know what, if they want to talk to me, let them come to me. Time for me to put more energy into it.

• I'm also having more clarity about what exactly makes a good sibling relationship, and which of my siblings I really enjoy, and why. Ultimately, in order to be friends as well as siblings, we have to have interests in common, compatible personalities, and be willing to talk to each other without namecalling and blaming. It's no coincidence that the two siblings who share my sense of humor and who have a less black-and-white view of the world than Bro#1 are the two to whom I feel closest.

The Angst is a whole 'nother post, I think. But the nutshell version is:

• Do I contact him to try to mend fences? If I do that, am I disrespecting his desire to go NC the way my mom disrespects mine? Would it be ok if the communication was non-shaming and non-blaming and showed a willingness on my part to take responsibility for my actions? But how do I do that when I really don't regret my actions? 

• And...the kicker...isn't that pretty much the same situation as I have with my mom? Being treated by him the way that I treat my mom makes me wonder about how those two situations compare and whether or not my decision to NC is an appropriate one. My husband says yes. My gut says "oh please don't go back to her". But is it hypocritical for me to cut somebody out of my life and then think somebody else is wrong for cutting me out of theirs? More on this later. 

A few good things came of this. I texted Brother#2 back to thank him for our earlier conversation. I told him the things that I enjoy about him. We chatted very very briefly about the family situation. Later, I thanked my friend for being in my life and told her that I love her. I don't say that to friends often enough. And I also thanked my husband for what he did at the party. It was unasked-for and while it was a little aggressive on his part and I wouldn't exactly call it a nice thing to do, it was helpful. (And my brother can suck it if he didn't like it.)

Our city is having a very warm Christmas, and I've been practicing the mental task of focusing on the good in things rather than focusing on what I wish were happening instead. I wish that we had cold weather, because it's nice for fireside cocoa and feels Christmassy and cozy. But I am focusing instead on how nice it is to go out without a jacket in December. How awesome it was yesterday to open up the doors between my kitchen and back porch and breathe in the fresh, spring-like air while I baked. How my friends from warmer climates are feeling happy and enjoying outdoor meals. I'm going to do the same with my social networks: celebrate what is right rather than mourn what is wrong. There's nothing wrong with mourning, but right at this time, seeking out the bright spots and appreciating them is important. So I'm going to do a lot of that. I'll still write about my brother angst, but I'm keeping light alive inside of me and focusing on the people I love.

the holiday vacuum...and avoiding getting sucked in

Some years aren't so bad. Some are great, even. But this year, I'm feeling the loss of my family.

Yeah, I know, you can't lose what you didn't really have, and we were never one big happy family, even if we liked to think we were, but in my head we were, and I miss that feeling. And at the very least, there was never a lack of people. Family = more people to go Christmas shopping for, to share traditions with, to have big gatherings with. I like all of that stuff. I like the planning and the feelings of anticipation and the gathering. And now I don't have people to do it with.

Holidays can bum me out because my friends are all hanging out with their families. Their big, smiling, families. They have plane flights and long car rides to other states or grandmas coming to stay in their guest rooms. They have cousins baking cookies together and photos with four generations on one couch. I know that many of those smiley happy tableaux are masks for the dysfunction underneath, I know. But some of those families really are functional and loving and happy. They really are kind to each other and happy, truly happy, to be together. And I wish I had that. I hate being an orphan at Christmas.

This month, it has been 2 years since I last saw my oldest brother. I will probably see him at a mutual friend's house tomorrow, and that is freaking me out a little bit. I am feeling so, so sad for my kids that they barely know his children, and almost never see them. My kids know their other cousins, my second brother's kids, so little that they wouldn't even know their names if you were to ask them. My kids don't really have a grip on who their aunts and uncles are. I don't think it bothers them, this is their normal, but it bothers me. I'm feeling sad and angry about my brothers being more loyal to my mother than they are to me. It didn't have to be this way. We could have been closer, might enjoy each other more. But when I stood up to my mother and ultimately decided that being near her was unhealthy, I lost my brothers. Collateral damage.

I still have my husband and our awesome kids and the traditions that we have forged together. But it just feels so impoverished to me, so anemic. So isolated.

We also have my in-laws, who live in our city now. In general we have a good relationship, although they've been annoying me a bit lately. Nothing huge. Just imperfect human stuff. I don't particularly want to share Christmas with them...so yeah, I'm whining about not having family, then whining about not wanting to hang with the family I have.

So, anyway, to sum up: I'm feeling depressed and lonely. So I'm blogging after another long break, and googling looking for things to perk me up or people sharing their own similar stories, because solidarity helps so, so much. And now, a few links to holiday-estrangement-type stuff - mine and other people's.

• So good to remind myself that two years ago, I was feeling down and lonely and then had a totally lovely Christmas day. (Also worth noting that the ornament mentioned in the down & lonely link is on the side of my tree this year, not the back. Progress!)

• Also so good to remind myself that the holidays of yore were not all that great. Oh, ghosts of Christmas past, thank you. 

• From E-stranged: "Family estrangement does not shrink your heart. If anything, it touches it with deeper awareness about the essential, universal, human need for connection and belonging." Dig into the holidays/events archive. 

• From Chicago Now: "10 Reasons I'm Grateful to Be Estranged During the Holidays".  Accentuate the positive! I should make my own top 10.

• The Invisible Scar's list of 10 Tips for an Emotionally Healthy Holiday is a good one. I love this one: "purposefully seek to see things during this season that are uplifting and good".  Amen.
  

Ok, I really need to get some sleep so that I can tap into more zen and less loneliness tomorrow. I hope that life is treating my fellow estranged ACONs well. Happy holidays, y'all. 

blurred lines

It's never simple.

I miss my family.

No, I miss the idea of family. Or the family that I thought I had. Or the family that we wanted to pretend we were.

I want my mommy. Well, not the one I have. The one I wish she could be.

My brothers are jerks. Well, sortof jerks. And I wish I were closer to them. Why would anybody want to be closer to people who are jerks? I long for the good old days. I'm not sure there ever were any good old days.

My sister is a miracle. She has empathy. She gets it. She sees it all. And yet she fears commitment. She doesn't want children. She worries she would mess them up because she tends toward anxiety and depression and we had no good models for how to handle that shit or how to be a good mother. She doesn't realize that the fact that she even thinks about that at all is exactly what would save her children.

I wonder who my brothers and sisters would be if not for my mother. And my father.

I miss my dad. I love him but I don't tell him that. I don't love my mom. At least, I don't think I do. I don't speak to either of them, but really, I let my dad off the hook because I consider him a victim, too. Or did until he spat ugliness at me that sounded like a script written by her. I let him off because he's weak. She preyed upon him. He depends upon her love. She privately scorns him. I feel sorry for him. He has self-esteem issues. He has mommy issues.

But I don't have any problem with my grandmother, his mother. Who must have been a monster like my mother in order to produce a son so needy. Right? I never saw her that way, though.

Not like I see my mother. I don't love my mother. I don't like my mother. I wish I didn't look like my mother. I feel revulsion toward her for the way she treats people. But isn't she a victim, too? Isn't she the product of genetics and a narcissistic father and a weak mother and bad luck? Is she any more able to control who she is and what she does than my father is? Both are broken people. Each is dependent upon the other to keep afloat. He needs her. She needs him. Why am I willing to absolve the passive parent but not the actively aggressive one? It took both of them to create a dysfunctional family.

Is the enabling parent less harmful? More harmful? Equally harmful? Is there any way to tell?

I wonder if there is an alternate timeline out there, one in which my dad never meets my mom. One in which he falls in love with a less poisonous woman. Would his wounds still have prevented him from finding a healthy mate? Would some lovely young woman from a functional family have found him? Is there another universe in which he marries a woman who helps him to grow and heal and become emotionally whole?

I will never know. I will never know. This is all I was given. This is all I get.

I miss something I do not want. I want something that will never exist. There is no happy ending, only a stalemate. Pick the life that sucks the least.

It is never simple.

how to be an orphan

One of the things I love about blog comments is that often they lead me to somebody new, somebody who has his or her own understanding of the experience of being mothered or fathered by a narcissist. Today I read a bit of When the Ring Swings Forward, a blog maintained by Cassandra Squared. In her most recent entry, written last November, she writes about a letter she gave to her mother; in it, she refers to childhood experiences and beseeches her mother to give some thought to what she says, stating that if her mother is unwilling to take her seriously and treat her with the respect due to her, "I'll give up. I'll learn to be an orphan."

How often in the past three or four years have I described myself as an orphan? I have a biological mother with whom I lived until I was in college. She is still living. My biological father is still living, as well. But with regard to the nurturing aspects of parents, having people who know me deeply and love me unconditionally, I have nothing. I have a mother, but not a mommy. The problem is, I didn't understand my orphanhood until a few years ago, so I have to learn, as Cassandra does, how to be an orphan.

I traveled out of the country last week. After arriving back in the United States, the woman next to me (one of my travel companions) made a series of phone calls to her parents, her brother, her sister, her husband, her best friend. Each of them had been eager to hear from her. Each of them had tidbits of their daily life to share with her and words of love to give her. I almost cried. My siblings are barely aware of the things happening in my life, and would think it strange if I let them know that I had returned. There is no warm, welcoming, concerned family group waiting for me, outside of my husband and children. While I can create - and have created - a tribe of friends for myself, it's not the same as an intact, loving extended family. It's just not the same. And I long for it even while I know that I will never have it.

What do orphans do on Christmas? Whom do they call when they need maternal nourishment? Do they ever stop missing what they cannot have?

christmas present

Assorted thoughts about the impending holiday:

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I'm finding this Christmas season lonely. The first couple of Christmasses that I decided not to spend time with my parents, I felt liberated. I loved not making the trip, not having to endure the visit, not feeling frustrated with all the things I wished for that didn't happen, not dealing with overtired kids who weren't acommodated at all, not having the post-visit recap/rehash with my husband as I sought validation for the things that bothered me about my mother. This year that freedom is something to which I've become accustomed, and in the absence of the newness of freeing myself from spending time with people I don't really love and who don't really love me, I'm feeling the void that's left. Friends are sharing images of extended family together. Nearly everyone I know is traveling. Friends here at home are wrapped up in their own holiday preparations. We're spending time with my in-laws, but it's not enough for me this year. I miss belonging to a tribe not of my own making, but of my birth. It was never what I wanted it to be, but for a long time I believed that it was, and today I'm missing the blind faith of the enmeshed.

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Last week brought a minor victory. While decorating the tree, I came to a little box that contains a blown glass ornament given to me by my mother to commemorate a vacation we took together. Last year, I felt bitter when I found the ornament, and I ended up hanging it on the back of the Christmas tree. This year I realized I didn't need to hide it. The trip was fun. My mother was herself, of course, but I was in her favor at the time and felt special to be included on the trip. The city itself was brilliant, and I felt adventurous and energized. When I picked up the ornament, I had a moment of remembering the good stuff, then hung the ornament in a place that's not extremely prominent, but not hidden, either. Then I moved on to thinking about other ornaments.

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I've been listening to the local "lite" radio station a lot lately while working in our basement. This is partly because I don't have other options in the basement, and partly because they play Christmas music at this time of year and even though most of it is really schmaltzy stuff, I'm still a sucker for it. "Lite" stations are often a tad on the excessively-cheesy, mom-and-apple-pie side of things to begin with, but they really amp it up at this time of year. Sometimes while I listen, I get really annoyed by the blind devotion our culture often has to a certain sense of family. While I understand that for many people, there really is "no place like home for the holidays," it bugs me that this is held up as the ideal, the standard. People who don't go home are to be pitied. Dysfunctional families are celebrated (seriously, if I hear Delilah laugh about the wonderfulness of family dysfunction one more time, I'm going to scream...or send a sympathy card to her 12 kids). I wish there were more diversity in the way people conceive of holidays. Not everybody goes over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house. Some of us spend those days with friends. Some of those like to be alone with just our nuclear family. Some of us think family dysfunction is anything but laughable. Some of us think that the best gift you can give to yourself is freedom from this ridiculous idealization of blood kin.

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This is the first year that I'm not aware at all of what my parents and siblings are doing for Christmas. Not a single detail. It's weird.

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happy days are here again

A friend posted this image on her Facebook page, and my gut reaction was OH HELL YEAH. This was a mojo-less summer. I normally pride myself on being an adventurous mom, with fun things up her sleeve. Not structured arts-and-crafts-project kinds of things, but the kinds of things that just flow more naturally: living and breathing nature and art, summers spent playing in mud or swimming in the river or picking orchard fruits or taking little road trips to interesting local-ish places or getting out the art supplies and just exploring them all over a messy porch.  Bringing friends together, living the summer as a big raucous tribe, having spontaneous backyard dinners with each other because hey, we've spent the whole day together and now it's dinnertime and why part ways now and what can we throw together to eat? It's a season of togetherness, of wholesomeness, of living juicy, wild, and free.

This summer never got rolling for me. Maybe it was my kids' ages. Maybe it was the oppressive heat. Maybe it was the summer starting off with my parents ignoring my "please don't contact us in any way" request by prowling around the outside of my house and yelling up at my windows, frightening the neighbors and confusing my kids. Whatever the cause, I was in a do-nothing funk and most of the adventures and friend gatherings never materialized. We spent too much time in PJs (some time is fun, too much is depressive) and watched too many hours of Netflix. Our garden, dilligently planted in the spring, grew weedy and neglected; okra was choked out, herbs wilted, tomatoes fell to the ground.  Paints and pens languished on shelves. The kids bickered, I wallowed, the kids whined, I growled and worried about becoming just like my mother. 

So thank goodness for September. Thank goodness for the return of our school year routine, which makes it so much easier for me to feel internally organized. Thank goodness for more frequent sightings of friends, making it easier to plan outings or have spontaneous adventures. Thank goodness for cooler weather washing the sluggishness off of my skin. And so long to a miserable, boring, isolated summer. 

With that, I am off the computer to tackle the tilting piles of unsorted papers and to plan my autumn projects. 

What will fall bring to you?