It has been a strange couple of weeks for me. I feel like I have this abyss between my childhood and my adulthood. It seems so impassable and I don’t know exactly when I made the final leap to the other side. Seeing my mom and interacting with so many of my family members has left me with vertigo. I don’t feel like I can hold both sides in me at once.
As an adult, I’m struggling to choose to be around the chaos of my dysfunctional family, when, as I child I had no choice, and desperately wanted to be any where but with my dysfunctional family. Mostly I feel tired. Tired of trying not to hurt someone’s feelings. Tired of trying to connect beyond the simple fact that we are related. Tired of worrying about if my reaction to the situation is viewed as appropriate. Tired of being told how to feel. Tired of feeling like none of this fits in the life I have built for myself.
How is it that I can feel both apathy and grief that I will soon no longer have either of my parents alive? My parents weren’t parents, but they were the only kind of parents they knew how to be. I feel like my mom passing will be like the bridge to other side being cut down and I feel incredible sadness equal to a happy relief.
I can finally understand why it takes so many generations to break the cycle of poverty and substance abuse. The the abyss looks to be impossible to cross from this side. It is no small feat to take that final leap.
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