CW: Abusive/toxic family environment and events, grieving
Spoilers: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Mason Deaver’s I Wish You All the Best
I like this blog. I forget it exists most of the time, and so does the rest of the world the rest of the time. But sometimes there’s things I want to explore, and they’re too long to put on Twitter, and I want to also put them in a place where it feels shared with the world. So this is perfect. Nothing I’ve ever written will top that grammar pun piece, either, so I don’t have to aspire for perfection. Just accuracy to my current topic.
I got a call from my sister earlier today. That, in itself, was surprising, because the last time we talked was back in August 2019. I texted her to confirm Mom’s exact birthday, because at that time I was still guilting myself into acknowledging it. And in that conversation, she directly told me that I shouldn’t contact her again, unless it was a literal emergency.
I took her at her word. To this day I don’t know why she decided to tell me that, but I’ve respected it. I didn’t message back to ask why, or to argue, or anything like that. I left it where it was.
It was honestly devastating, for reasons I spent several sessions picking through with my counselor. It’s not like my sister and I had ever been close. But I had my mom’s voice in my head, telling me, “The nice thing about siblings is that they have the same background as you. They get the things that pretty much only you get, since you grew up in the same house.” And so, even as I cut my parents out of my life, there was a part of me that expected that one day my sister and I would connect and have some sort of special bond.
(At the risk of sounding really cynical, I probably should have known better than to listen to anything my mom has to say about family)
I didn’t recognize this until later, but there was also an aspect of “escape guilt.” I’m still not sure how to fully explain this, but Hannah, Ben’s older sister, in I Wish You All the Best, is a pretty good example. Over the course of the novel, Ben harbors frustrations with Hannah for leaving their parents’ house, and leaving Ben alone there. And when Ben and Hannah finally talk about it, Hannah confesses that she feels deeply guilty about the same thing. She got out. Ben didn’t. Ben had to keep living in that space, until the day when they were thrown out by their parents.
And so there’s an aspect of that with my sister and me. I know that her living with my parents is not healthy for her. I know that it wasn’t healthy for me. But I also know that there’s nothing meaningful I can do about it. Living in a coercive environment reduces your choices a lot, and while I can’t be sure of the exact choices she’s made, she’s still in my parents’ lives, and they’re in hers.
That was a lot of pretext for my sister’s call today. It came in while I was in a call with some friends, and so I had two reasons to let it go to voicemail, which I did. The first is that it was technically an interruption, while the second was that I wanted to be able to filter her call and decide if I was going to engage with it in a way that was safe for me.
And I’m glad I did. Because her voicemail was telling me to contact mom. Which I’m not going to do. And it would have been horrible to have to have that actual conversation on the phone. I’ve previously tried to set boundaries with my parents, and they not only refused to respect or acknowledge my right to do so, but also used it as an opportunity to criticize me as a person.
I’ve been steadily blocking all of their methods to contact me. About once a month, they generally find a way to get a message to me, and I block that method as soon as they do. I normally self-flagellate a little first by reading it, which I want to somehow help, but I know that it won’t.
See, here’s the scary thing about my parents. They seem like good, kind, caring people when you meet them. And for the first few hours I spend with them, they are. They pay for things. They ask about my life. They talk about theirs.
But it’s all building towards something. They’re taking notes. They’re bottling frustrations. And they’re going to make sure to let it out before we separate.
There are two different kinds of explosions with my parents, with dad specializing in one, and mom the other. Dad’s are random, haphazard. He’s always mad, and he doesn’t have an outlet for it. So he just holds it until he can’t anymore, and then he goes off, telling people whatever horrible narrative he’s written about them and citing whatever small things they did that have bothered him as proof. He’s a bully, and if you react directly, you can send him back into his sulk. Just know that that will augment his next eruption, and likely bring it even closer.
The other, mom’s, are scarier. For one, they hit everyone. For another, you can see them coming. Like dad, she bundles, and she bottles, and she stores. But there’s warning signs. She’s less conversive. She’s more likely to ignore people. She hisses when things are frustrating.
I have a vivid memory, which must have been around the time I was 10-13. My dad and I were driving to visit his mom, who lived in town at that time. As we drove past the front office and onto the 8 MPH road, he said, “Your mom’s about to erupt. Lay low. Don’t be the reason she does it.” It was a cloudy day.
And therein lies part of what makes mom’s eruptions the scary ones. There’s a “reason.” It’s not the actual Reason. The actual Reason is that work is stressful, and she’s tired, and her knees are hurting, and the dog threw up this morning. But whoever she picks to go off on? They’re the “reason.” And so they get the brunt of the fury. They get to deal with the screaming, the criticism, the blame.
But it’s not just them. Everyone gets some. You walked through the room and didn’t make eye contact? Here’s some for you too. You put a dirty dish in the sink and then went to the bathroom. Here’s some more.
And everyone knows whose “fault” it is, who the “reason” is for this eruption that’s ruining the night.
I remember being relieved when my sister was the “reason.” It meant that, as bad as things were, at least other people wouldn’t be blaming me. It meant that when dad erupted as well, he wouldn’t be focusing on me. And it meant that I didn’t have to carry the guilt for the eruption.
It’s fucked up. Have you heard the question about one sentence or 3 words you would say to your fifteen year old self? I don’t know what to say to them, because how do you convey in such a limited space that your mother’s emotional mismanagement isn’t your fault, that you don’t deserve what you’re receiving, and that you’re worth more than this? I don’t know what sentence would have saved me at that time, or have hastened the timeline for me getting away.
Because I did run away eventually. At first, unintentionally, unknowingly. I went to college 4 hours away, and was “Terrible” about communicating home. At the time, everyone just assumed it was because I was disorganized and forgetful. But that wasn’t it. Because I was on top of everything else, and never forgot anything else. It’s that I didn’t want to engage with my family, because even though I didn’t have the words to express it at the time, I knew talking to my family hurt. It felt bad. It made me feel lesser.
My parents came to visit me at college once. And I “forgot” they were arriving and lay in bed until after their arrival. They tailgated into the building and banged on the door.
And the first thing my mom did was sweep her gaze around the room, and say to my sister, “aren’t you excited to go to college so you can live in a pigsty like this too?”
I’ve told that story a few times since it happened. Some of my suitemates say they would have asked my mom to leave. Some of my other friends would have challenged her on it.
I let her say it.
It was safer that way.
And that sort of thing continued. I wrote her an email once, in my sophomore year, explaining that “it” was hard, and that I was trying. I didn’t know what “it” was. But yeah, depression, anxiety, and trying to push through that to maintain a relationship with cruel people is pretty fucking hard.
Grad school came, and I moved to the midwest, about 2 days from them. I actually made an effort, in a few ways. In between my first and second years, I had to move, and my mom got involved. I mentioned to dad that I didn’t want her help, because she would want things a certain way, and if I asked for it to go another way, then I would be in trouble. His response was to say, “Just let her have her way, and then change it after she leaves.” I disagreed. I guess he must have mentioned that conversation to her, because she actually was pretty communicative to make sure I had what I wanted in my own living space.
And when we were shopping for interview clothes, I was able to express that I hated dad’s choices. In a petty way, sure. After he vetoed several of my favorites and put these hideous black suits on the table, I said to mom, “I guess what I want doesn’t matter,” and she benched him. We still picked an uggo suit, but it was at least less uggo (and honestly, most suits are pretty ugly).
So things were looking okay. Distance meant that eruptions happened away from me, and since I was calling home biweekly during grad school, I had pretty good odds to miss them. Also, me calling was an occasion, so I got to avoid the worst of it.
Until graduation day. I invited my parents to be present, because that’s the thing that is done. But I also mentioned that I had to work all weekend, because my job environment was toxic and controlling and I was doing the work of at least 2 professionals as a grad student, and my supervisor was more interested in skipping work than making effective processes.
Apparently my first sin was not putting a shoutout to mom in my graduation memo. And my second was in saying in that same memo that I didn’t want to live in the Midwest anymore. And my third sin was being “ungrateful” and making mom feel like a “burden.”
So I got to do my penance in public, as we sat around a table in a Planet Sub and they laid into me. Over and over again. Nitpicking every decision I made. Criticizing everything I said (“you should give your supervisor more credit. I’m sure he’s trying his best”, regarding a supervisor who had made me and my coworkers do his job all year, for example), and telling me that I needed to love them.
When I asked what I needed to be doing, I was told I should just know. I said “I’ve called twice a week. Is that enough?” And was told, “I don’t want to feel like a burden. I want you to enjoy this.”
And it was horrible. It was humiliating. It was painful.
And it was eye-opening.
I didn’t have to put up with that. I had invited them into my space. I had made these plans. I didn’t have to let them do this.
That summer, I moved to Vegas to stay with a friend, who’s honestly done more for me than my parents ever have.
And I called with mom one time. We made conversation, pained on my end, and fine on her end. Because why wouldn’t it be? That public berating was normal for our family, after all.
And I ended the call by saying, “Hey, after our conversation at graduation, it sounded like you’ve got a lot of stuff going on. Have you thought about talking to a professional about it?”
Silence. Then, “No. I’m fine.”
And we hung up. For the first time in my life, I didn’t respond to “Love you” with “love you too.” Lying didn’t seem worth it anymore. It had never saved me before.
She texted me later. “Were you actually worried about me, or were you just trying to correct me?”
I texted back that I wanted to help, but that I couldn’t be that help. But my counselor in grad school had been life changing (and in hindsight, not even that good of a counselor. But still life changing, because the bar was so low).
No more real communication, from June 2018 to December 2018. During that time, she kept emailing me regularly, and started sending them to my work email. Her first one to my work email opened with, “I know you’re not good at email, so I found this one, which you’re paid to keep clean.”
Maybe I should’ve confronted it then. Instead, I wrote a filter to send her emails to a folder and be marked as read.
Finally, December 2018, I knew something needed to change. So on Christmas, she texted me and said she wanted her present to be to hear from me.
And I agreed.
And in the hardest conversation of my life, I tried to lay boundaries. I tried to explain that I was had been hurt, and while I was healing, it was healing wrong, and I needed to never have that injury inflicted again. I asked for action steps, for what I needed to be doing to meet her expectations of me.
And there was only shame and misdirection in response. I needed to see that since she hadn’t meant to hurt me, it didn’t count. That this was a two-way street, and I was the only one in the wrong on it.
And so I ended the call with a lie. Still not effective, but I told her if she messaged me I would try to respond “occasionally.” And I’d been shamed into thinking I meant it. Coercion reduces choices and creates lies in the mind.
Each time she sent me an email, it ached. The wound reopened, the pain and rejection and guilt threatening to tear me apart. I got a counselor, and we made some real progress.
Such good progress that when my mom texted me to ask if I would get lunch with her, I told her no. Wow.
But the messages kept coming. And so I started blocking things. First dad’s texts, when he gave out my contact info without my permission. Then my sister told me to never talk to her again. And then she texted me to tell me to talk to mom. So her texts next, and then mom’s texts with that, to be sure. Then emails.
You know how easy it is to bypass an email block? Just change one of the emails, sender or receiver, and you’re back through. I’ve blocked mom’s emails 4 or 5 times now, including her personal and work to my work email after I explicitly asked her to stop emailing it.
Recently, communication that got through is changed. It’s short notes, with requests to know that I’m okay. And I refuse to send that confirmation. Because I know that she’s made her choice, that she will be the person she is, and that she will continue to lay the blame for that at my feet, despite it being her and who she is and who she wants to be.
It’s not my job to carry that, or her anxiety, no matter how much she hands it to me. No matter how many ways she hands it to me. And no matter how she tries to get other people to hand it to me.
I promised She-Ra spoilers at the start of this, and I started writing this because I wanted it involved. We’re almost 3000 words in, so it’s probably time to pivot to that, as a conclusion of sorts.
I enjoyed the first part of season 1 of She-Ra. But I fell in love with it when Catra and Adora end up running from Light Hope’s spiders together in the Crystal Castle. And they’re both trying to convince the other to listen to them. Adora wants Catra to come with her, and Catra wants Adora to stop trying to protect her.
They’re both running from their past, they’re both running from the pain of growing up under Shadow Weaver. But they’re running in different directions. Catra is running up, through the Horde, trying to show the world that she is everything Shadow Weaver said she wasn’t, and that she’s worth something. Adora is running out, trying to get out from under Shadow Weaver and the Horde, so that she can find worth.
They’re both struggling to work out how to live with the abuse they have endured. They used to endure it together (“as long as we’re together, nothing can hurt us. I promise”), but that’s just not possible anymore. They’ve had to face their pain, and while Adora is doing so by trying to save others, Catra is trying to deflect it onto others.
Like me and my sister. I ran away. Because I couldn’t take it any more. And she stayed. For her own reasons, that I don’t know.
And then the show goes into the question of how our abusive parents can be redeemed. Shadow Weaver defects to the Rebellion, and then sacrifices herself to save Catra and Adora.
But does that make up for what she did? The way she pitted Catra and Adora against each other, the way she tore them apart, the way she lied to them?
I don’t think it did. And the show agrees. The true redemption comes when Catra tries to sacrifice herself, fails to die, and has to face the people she hurt. She has to own the person that she was, she has to own the pain she’s caused, and she finally has to acknowledge the pain she’s been carrying, that it’s hers, and no one else’s, and the things she’s done under its influence are still hers as well.
At this point Catra isn’t my sister any more. She’s a warning to me. Pain and injury hurts, and clouds our judgment. But it cannot be our excuse. It does not allow us immediate absolution for the harms we commit. We don’t get to lash out and expect no one to care.
But also, if we work at it, we can be better. And others can see that we are better. They don’t have to. They aren’t required to. And they might never. But we can be better, and we can move forward.
It’s hard, and it hurts. There are days when I ache like someone took a giant ice cream scoop to my soul, and I want to call my parents. But I know what lies down that road. I know that they’re committed to not changing.
And so I have to find somewhere else to be. Somewhere else to go. And She-Ra and I Wish You All the Best shows me that it’s possible to do.
So many of our stories end with families reuniting through adversity and division. But that’s not always possible. And I love the stories where they don’t. Because they’re real to me. They help me face the pain I’m carrying. And they can heal the wounds a little bit.
prussia2 
