One of the most difficult things I’ve ever done was choose to cut off my biological family. Though I’m still in contact with two siblings and briefly reconnected with a single cousin (who stopped responding and fell silent at some point last year–or maybe the year prior, I really don’t remember), I haven’t exchanged more than pleasantries with any one else in years (barring one moment of connection with an uncle I thought would be cooler about everything than he eventually was and my multiple attempts to extend a hand to my parents in the hope that they’d be able to grow enough for me to build some kind of relationship with them). Only a few still try to keep in contact and while I absolutely could do more to stay in contact with my wider family, that’s not really something I want. I cut them all off, not just my parents. I would tell pretty much anyone that my primary reason for doing so was because I didn’t want to come between my parents and their siblings, or drive any kind of wedge into the family at large, but those are things I’m currently discussing with my therapist as a result of how reflexively I say them and how they all center the well-being of my parents and family rather than admit the truth, which is that I can’t just ignore the fact that they all bore witness to the abuses of my childhood in some capacity and chose to do nothing. Regardless of the reason behind it, I still made the choice to potentially never speak to any of them ever again. I didn’t do it as directly as I did with my parents and I didn’t go as nuclear as I did with my brother, but none of them know where I live and I haven’t responded to any of their attempts to draw information out of me despite knowing exactly what all that would mean. I did, after all, set a rule in place for what it would take to reestablish contact with any of them, like I did with my parents and pretty much anyone I’ve ever cut contact with. And like my parents and most of the other people I’ve cut contact with, I knew from the outset that it was incredibly unlikely that my rule would ever be satisfied.

It’s not a difficult or complex rule, mind you. It was simply that I wasn’t going to volunteer any information about what was happening but that I’d respond openly and honestly if anyone bothered to directly ask me why I was staying away, what was going on, or what had happened to prompt my distance. I needed them to directly express genuine concern over my well-being rather than continue on with the subtextual fishing and passing of rumors that is how my entire family has communicated with each other about anything that was “difficult” for my entire life. I needed to know that they were capable of growing outside of the confines that our family had been stuck inside. Partly because I needed to know if they were going to be able to break out of their lifelong habits of inactive observation that had contributed to my continued abuse as a child, but mostly because I needed to know if they were capable of the work I’d spent most of my life doing in order to break the generational cycles of abuse and neglect that made them that way in the first place. After all, I’d reasoned, if I’m going to break this awful wheel, I can’t let people who are going to constantly reinforce it, maybe even try to chain me back down to it, be a part of my life once I’ve begun to do the work.

In the six and a half years since then, no one has asked me. My cousin, during our brief reconnection two years ago, told me that my parents refused to talk about it, so it was clear that people where curious or concerned, but weren’t willing to be direct with me about it. They’d rather fish for gossip from each other and whatever my parents were willing to privately divulge than give me the agency of answering on my own behalf. I felt very vindicated in picking my rule when I did all those years ago and, several months after the exhausting disaster that was my (currently) final attempt to get my parents to grow enough to properly see their place in my awful childhood, I opted to make my peace with that rule never being satisfied like I’d set aside thoughts of repairing things with my parents. Unfortunately, this did not last very long. Just like every Christmas, I got another bevvy of cards that year and the wave of “we’re not going to say you should have come visit, but we’re going to assign guilt and suggest you’re doing something wrong via subtext” messages really started to needle at me. After all, I’d put in so much effort to try to fix things with my parents, effort my parents either weren’t willing to put in or were incapable of putting in despite how explicit I was about exactly what I was looking for, and it had done nothing but ruin my mental health for six months. What right did any of them have to tell me, directly or by implication, that I was wrong to do as I have done and stay away?

This continued to eat away at me, quietly, in the year that followed until it was busted wide-open by a card from a distant (geographically, in this case) aunt who was trying to be supportive in her own way and that had been so geographically removed from most of my life that her and her family were one of the exceptions to my general frustrations with my entire family’s inaction/willful ignorance. She was unfortunately very wrong about why I’d stopped showing up, but she was still the first one to reach out in a supportive manner, rather than attempting to manipulate me with guilt or suggest some moral deficiency on my part, so I spent the first few months of this year alternating between thinking about replying and delberately not thinking about it at all. I eventually set it all aside since I was in the middle of dealing with the disruption to my life that was trying out various antidepressants and couldn’t handle that as well, but I’ve passed that point and am slowly getting myself back into order after the disruptions that have plagued my life the past two years. Just in time to get another card, this one for my birthday, that stood out. This time, it was because it was so directly a call to return to the fold, to forgive my parents because they need me, that I had to put it down and not think about it for a couple weeks before I could even begin to consider it without my mind reflexively flinching away from it like a hand from a hot stove..

Everything I’ve felt for years about my extended family spouting off about something they didn’t understand, about attempts to manipulate my feelings in order to bring me back into their proximity, about the role I’d been assigned and played for years that everyone still expected me to fill, has come back in a way I can’t entirely ignored. My best attempts at containering it fail quickly. I can barely get through an hour without some errant thought disrupting my day. It is all I can do to continue to function while I keeping this seething anger and old, familiar grief tucked away where no one else can see them (I don’t really want to talk about this with people who will need explanations). It’s a nice change of pace, to feel anger instead of guilt, at this collective disruption of the peace I’ve been attempting to cultivate, and it is driving me to act in a way that is probably long overdue. Better to take the time to carefully consider my words and who I wish to read them than to eventually explode at the first person who happens to ask about my life the right way. So I’m writing a letter. It’s currently four pages and so exhausting to work on that even an editing pass wipes me out, emotionally, for the rest of the day, but I’m chipping away at it and will probably give it a couple passes this weekend when I can more cleanly escape it once I’m done working on it for the moment. I’m probably even going to let myself start playing Final Fantasy 14 earlier than planned so I can drive all thoughts of it from my mind when I’m done. I mean, that’s what I’ve been using all year to distracted myself from all this, so I might as well return to my escape.

Worse than all that, though, is the grief I feel. I can’t really do anything with it, is the problem. I can’t mourn the loss of my family since they’re not dead, just uncaring people I’ve cut out of my life. I ca4n’t mourn the loss of a chance for a reconnection with my family because I’ve been holding open a door for any of them that decided to come knocking. I can’t even publicly work through my grief because it’s a separation of choice and there’s little room in contemporary U.S. culture for children of abusive or neglectful parents mourning the loss of what they’d wished they had when those parents still live. No one would outright say that, of course, but I’ve had this conversation enough times with enough people that I have no illusions about how many people don’t agree with the finality I’ve chosen. How could they? None of them have spent thirty-odd years trying to get their parents to acknowledge the harm they’ve done through their actions, let alone the harm they’ve done through their inaction. It’s not a decision I arrived at easily! It tooks years of consideration and therapy to take the first step of creating distance and a year of contemplation combined with multiple failures from my parents to respect my boundaries for me to decide to cut them off. Why should the last vestiges I have of the family I grew up with be any easier to excise or laboriously care for? If I cut them off completely, so that only two of my siblings remain, then that will truly mean that there is no hope of me ever getting the family I wished I’d had for most of my life, and that’s a difficult thing to give up.

So now I write. One letter to go to almost all of my aunts and uncles who had, intentionally or not, become a burr in my mind and emotions that is ripped free and reattached with every text and card, and one letter to the vaguely supportive aunt and her husband to tell them more or less the same thing but provide them with the knowledge that my occasional visits with them and my cousins were some of the only happy parts of my childhood. I’m not going to ask any of them to pick a side. I’m not going to volunteer any information that would be “damning” or that might be used to drive a wedge. I am going to give them enough information to decide if they want to learn more and to back up why I’ve been so distant these past six or seven years. Enough that they know that this permanent separation from my parents is an intentional choice and not one I can be made to back down on. If any of them follow up positively, I’ll talk. If things carry on as they have, then I’ll block numbers and toss letters. If neither… well, that’s an answer too and it saves me quite a bit of effort. My ideal outcome, if I’m being honest. At least I won’t have to put a lot of energy into anything if they decide to let the distance and silence stand. Either way, once these letters are sent, I’ll finally be done. I’ll have done what I can and will hopefully be able to stop thinking about this for the first time this year. Maybe I’ll even be able to put my life back together in some semblance of order. I don’t know. It’s been on my mind for so long, weighing me down, that it’s difficult to imagine what life will be like should I ever break free from it.