Trigger Warning: This post contains references to abuse, addiction, family trauma, fatal accident. Reader caution is advised.
I’m scared to write this out loud, scared of what a reader’s perception of me might be for even putting it into words. I want to detach myself from it, and in many ways I already had.
But I’ve been in search of something I can’t quite explain — almost in detective mode, trying to uncover anything I could, not trusting anyone’s account of my story or the extended story.
My head is pounding. I think I naively hoped that talking to this woman would give me some sense of belonging.
She is the mother of my half-sisters after all, and still in touch with my dad’s brother — another person outside of my mother’s family with a memory and perspective of their marriage and early parenting.
On reflection, though, I think she enjoyed hearing about the breakdown in the relationship between me and my mother.
It undoubtedly confirmed to her that her parenting style was “better” compared to my mother’s. I can’t argue with this. There’s no right way between the two of them. Polar opposites, both in need of validation. Both with children to the same man.
And I think I also wanted to believe my dad was a better person than my mother had portrayed. That could be true in some ways. He may even have been a victim of her narcissism.
But I’ve just recalled another element of his story that the “other woman” clarified: he had killed an elderly woman while driving under the influence of drugs, the same year he died of a heroin overdose. He was on bail at the time of his death.
So while he might not have been the monster in the marriage my mother portrayed, and hopefully not capable of deliberate harm to an animal, he was still a man capable of destruction in much more complicated and devastating ways.
I’m left holding both truths at once — the hope for a less bad version of him, and the reality of the damage he caused.
And in that space, I feel like there’s no hope left, no relief to find in people, no point in talking to those I already have. No one close left. No relations who might feel what I do.
I think it’s important I turn my attention to myself. Healing and accepting what I don’t know.
This was difficult and continues to be a difficult conversation to process but had I not had it, I would have continued to want to have it.
I didn’t get clarity, I didn’t expect it.
I can put a tick in the box — something completed. Without it, I would have remained stuck in longing and speculation.
Sometimes healing is just going through the necessary motions to move slowly forward.
I’ll keep showing up – for me.