I want to set the record straight and I say these
words with love and kindness. Yes, it is
true that I do not interact with almost all of my family. But lets face it,
most of my remaining family is kind of toxic. We all have that alcoholic and
narcissist gene. I stay away so my family doesn’t trigger mine. I try to keep
it in check.
But mainly I guess I inherited my stubborn German bull headedness from
my dad. I inherited a lot of things from him. Nothing good. My family will tell you that it was ME that
disappeared. Well that may be so, but
there is a reason why. Through the years
in the beginning I reached out to my family and my blood many many, many times.
Of those many times I was pretty much dismissed, cancelled on, ignored or
forgotten. So in my defense and for my
health and sanity, I had to extricate the things that made me feel so
abandoned and yes, hurt by not being quite that important enough to maintain
some communication. It felt like my father abandoning me all over again every
time. It was always me that would have
to reach out, visit, come to you. Never the other way around. The worse was and
still is holidays by myself. Everyone
else with big families and couldn’t even remember to invite me. And that is
fine. If that is your world well then that’s ok. But for me, my only defense is to just no longer have these people in my
life so that I do not continually hope, or expect. I took myself out of the equation to guard my
heart from continuous rejection.
And at this point I do not need an invite as I certainly am not going
to go out of my way and leave my comfortable home to visit those that never
were able to get in the car to visit me. I say this with love and kindness. I know that communicating with me may take
more “work” that my family is not capable of, like “quit drinking” or set aside
rigid rules they created for themselves, or forget and forgive the person I was
in the past. And especially dismiss lies about me they were told. I say this with love and peace. Because I am at peace. I understand why my
family dismissed me so easily. I ask that my family understand why I need to
keep them at arms length. For my own heart and soul’s survival. I have grown by leaps and bounds. I have
created a most peaceful and wonderful life for myself now, overcoming the
terrible things I have inherited from my dad. I would love to share this with
my family, but part of my sane mental state is not dwelling on the past or
setting myself up for disappointment. So
I will not hope any more. I will not allow
any negativity in my life. I wish my
family well and a very very good life.
Peace
