Belonging - Or Not.

I’ve been thinking over the family side of things a lot more lately – since going No Contact with them (not that they probably even realise) it’s really hit home how much they never did care about me.

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My mother is a narcissist. She exists for herself. She has no capacity to really truly love or feel empathy for another (although she’s a good actress).  She believes she is special and everyone else in the world is inferior. She has no love for me – she has been a cruel mother and used me for gain in any way she could.

On the flip side – she took me to ballet, my life’s passion – a passion that kept me going when I couldn’t see any other reason to live. She taught me to read – encouraged a life time love of books – another true gift.

My older sister is a full-blown classic sociopath and perhaps one of the most horrible people I’ve ever met in my life. And yet, she appears so lovely to the world. An upstanding mother and citizen. A Naturopath and Justice of the Peace.

This is a lady who has sexually abused children. Who has engaged in cruelty to animals, causing their deaths. Who has dabbled in black magic.

This is a woman who stole from her own mother, in order to make her think that it was me.

This woman proves that there are evil people in this world.

My brother, I will not say much about, except that he was violent and vile. He might have changed now, but he will never apologise or own his past behaviour and when challenged, will forever deny it and aggressively try to turn it all back on you.

And then there is my little sister. I love her, but I have lost her. And that’s my fault – for shoplifting (she is disgusted). I was caught on the day of my Dad’s funeral. I didn’t think they even knew, I thought I’d managed to keep that a secret and make it seem like I’d just been a lot longer on the walk I’d gone off on.

I was  not coping with the days before Dad’s death, trying to help my stepmother, trying to be strong. I spent all day at Dad’s side, and all night in my room, bingeing and purging the night away. It was the only way I could survive at the time. And I don’t expect her to understand that because she never could.

But in her eyes, for that I am evil.

So there is my family. Gone. I am better off without the most of them.

And yet, I grieve. I grieve the dream of a family who love me and truly care. A family who realise how hard I’ve fought and how far I have come. Who understand who I am as a person.

I realised when I was eighteen that my own family, who had lived with me for nearly seventeen years, did not even know me. They did not even have a clue about the very basic things that made me the person I am. They had spent their lives either not caring, or trying to make me into who they wanted me to be and only seeing that person.

I realised when I was in my twenties that my mother would never love me. I was in emergency, having been rushed there from the Eating Disorders unit, and my heart was struggling because my potassium was so low and my bicarb levels so high. They told me that they did not think I would live through the night, and asked to call someone. I gave them Mum’s number – this was before I made my friends my family and my next of kin.

My mother lives a ten minute drive from the hospital and yes, she drives, and yes, quite long distances and at night. But this night? She did not want to come in. She did not care if she ever saw her daughter alive again.

I did not die  thankfully! But she didn’t know that would happen. Her reality that night was that her daughter was going to die and she did not care at all.

It broke my heart. But it also gave me the push and the shock that I needed to start separating myself emotionally.

They do not know where I live now. They never will again if I have any control over it. From here, I will eventually cross the country, change my legal name, and vanish from their lives for good.

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And they will not even know I have gone – because they did not care if I was in their lives to start with.

My family are my friends. They are amazing people who love me, accept me, understand me, are honest with me. Who are there in bad times as equally as good times. Who actually know me. Who I can trust with every fibre of my being.

And they are all I need.

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