On Letting Go

Mom, I wish we could be close, but I’m tired.

I can’t take responsibility for your pain anymore.

I’m sorry you grew up in a time where marriage to a man dictated your worth, but you chose a broken, abusive person to love. Instead of believing who he told you he really was, you dreamed up a fantasy and lived inside of it, never accepting the facts.

I’m sorry you were forced to work overtime to care for us children, but when our father left, you left us too – we had to emotionally and often physically fend for ourselves, and it shows. Today you wonder why we can’t be adults: it’s because we were forced to grow up when we were far too young.

I’m sorry there was chaos you didn’t understand, but there was abuse happening you didn’t want to believe and PTSD you wouldn’t acknowledge inside of each one of us. Three lost children, standing together but alone before you, our desperate hands reaching up to you and only you for help, but you couldn't see us. You didn’t want to look.

You couldn’t focus on anything outside of work, because work was easy. Work had rules and structure and purpose, and dealt with ideas of people rather than the truth of your own family.

I think you didn’t want to look at us for who we really are, because we are a reflection of him. Our father, who was your entire identity, ripped from your life.

But he left us twenty years ago. Let’s forget what he did, forget what he said, and forget who he is: it doesn’t matter. There's really only us. The four of us which have now grown to six, are stumbling through the highs and lows of life together.

I’m grateful to you for so many things. I wish you could see how powerful you are, too.

I’m proud of you for stepping up when my father didn’t care, and I’m grateful for all the love you’ve found room to give. I’m grateful for our home, despite the way it still shoulders the burden of our lingering trauma. I’m grateful for our family, because we are all here and we’re all just doing our best to smile and heal and grow.

I’m grateful for you, because you put your children’s needs before everything else. You did everything you could, completely on your own. You gave up your life for us.

But that’s part of the problem. Giving up your life for your children meant you had no identity outside of us, you had no purpose except to give to us, you had no joy unless we were there to validate it – which means none of us is allowed a life outside of this home, or outside of you.

And now we’re trapped in this pattern, and perhaps we all subconsciously believe we have to be this way forever.

Children learn by watching, not listening. They will do as you do, not as you say.

I know you’re angry. I know you’re depressed. I know retirement is looming over your shoulder and you’re suddenly faced with the fact that you can’t put yourself into work to escape the truth.

You have to face this. You have to face the trauma, and you have to let it go.

I wish you would love yourself just because you’re you – and not because of your job, or your looks, or because a man told you he loved you. I wish you’d love yourself the way we do.

I wish you would take care of yourself first, so you can give from a place of love and peace, not a place of anger and resentment.

I wish you would fall in love with life again. I wish you would enjoy the things you enjoy, freely and openly. Take the weekend trip by yourself, cook a delicious meal for yourself without counting calories, go to the AlienCon, visit that old friend. Be weird, be silly, be unafraid: tap into your inner child and make art again.

You were a great artist. You have the heart, the vision, the talent. But you let it go for him and you never picked it up again.

And it breaks my heart, but it’s not my burden to bear. It’s yours.

It’s my purpose in life to let all of these things go: to be independent, to establish firm boundaries, to choose and love myself first, to learn how to be part of a community, to give from an open heart and to celebrate the life I’m building for myself.

If I can be the artist of my dreams, maybe you’ll see that anything is possible.

I want to be here to support you, but I don’t think you’ll do it until I leave you.

So I’ll go. Love you.