Always December

A couple of days ago, I would have given anything to get out of front. And I did try to switch others in with minimal success. It felt like a constant fight to keep them fronting,  and the exhaustion of doing that wasn’t helping. I was tired, crabby, in pain, and out of sorts. I just felt empty and irritable, to the point of it being overwhelming. I wanted an escape from feeling that emptiness. I felt like I was smothering the rest of the system and dragging them down to my level. It felt like it was all inescapable and like I had irreversibly changed how our system would function. 

I’m still not the happiest about fronting right now. I really want a break, but now I know that I need to be in front to process things. If I’m going to become more stable, I need to let the random bits chasing themselves coalesce into actual thoughts that can be then written out into something that makes sense. It’s gotten quieter: the void isn’t yelling currently. 

Recently mom and us were talking a bit more and she mentioned that she and dad were unaware that our sister and us went through all the bullying and other struggles in elementary through high school. It’s been in the last year that either of us has really started talking about what we dealt with. And while I believe her, in some ways, it just makes the neglect from them all the more apparent. When she asks why we never said anything, I have a hard time answering. I’m still trying to figure out how to express everything without completely breaking the dam and emptying the reservoir all at once. We stopped telling her when she didn’t support us, when she didn’t listen, when she put the blame on us for it. I don’t understand how she thought everything was fine when we were breaking down every few weeks and couldn’t suppress our pain any longer. To me, there were plenty of signs something was wrong and we needed help. To her, we were supposed to reach out first. We had tried that and gotten rebuffed. I’m worried that once we start, we won’t be able to stop until mom knows the full extent that she and dad hurt us. And while in theory that might not be a bad thing, I know we are being held back by many things, and so say nothing to answer her questions.

We were trained that a child is obligated to love their parents, and that they are bound by that love to obey and respect their parents, and to not burden or cause harm to their parents. Fully admitting the role mom and dad played in our trauma would certainly hurt them. I highly doubt anyone likes to be confront with their failings. Furthermore, I know that our relationship with them will not be able to remain what it is. Many of us are scared that bringing this up will cause them to pull even further away from us, rather than repairing the damage and bringing us closer. And as uncomfortable as we are with how things are currently, we’re still desperately clinging to it. Our fear of them rejecting us completely is holding us back from saying what most likely needs to be said.

Mom has been more willing to talk and more open about the things she and dad could have done better for us kids when we were younger. We have been trying to reciprocate by telling more of what we’re dealing with and being more honest. But I still have my doubts. It feels like I’m still waiting to hear specific things they know weren’t good, not just a general “we weren’t there for you”. And maybe that’s not reasonable of me. If they don’t have knowledge of what we were dealing with, how can they know what specific things they could have done better. But how do I explain to them that our trust in them is shaken and that many of the things they assume we know (like that they love us), we honestly don’t or, at least, struggle with knowing? 

It’s not like our dad was ever very forthcoming on what he felt. So we have to just take our mom’s word for it that dad has regrets about stuff he and mom missed when we were growing up. He himself hasn’t expressed anything about it, and so far, we can’t tell much difference in the way he acts. I wish I could say that I trust mom’s word, but I don’t feel like I can, not completely.

I know some in here are hoping that there was a time, hidden in the years we don’t remember, when our dad did care about us and expressed it. I fear it’s more wishful thinking than the reality we’re going to uncover, and would caution them against leaning into that hope too much. I feel it is more likely that we will find that he acted much the same as all the other times we remember: at the least, not expressing his love for us, but also possibly the same feeling of disappointment and contempt that we experienced as we got older. And if we do discover that hope is justified, what then? What explanation do we have for what changed and why? I don’t want this to cause more damage than it already has. We already feel that we will never receive his love and approval, no matter what we do or how hard we try. How much more cruel to learn that at one point we had his love, only for it to be ripped away? Some things are best left alone for now. I know we are not ready to confront that yet. 

-Saturn?