And My Heart...It Aches
Hello, it's been awhile.
I can't say "I miss you" because every time I come to this site that's been my public diary for going on 15 years, it's never...for good.
I'm back because my heart has been heavy lately. Maybe it's the winter blues or holiday slump, but I generally feel this deep sadness. Not loneliness per se, but a sort of melancholy that I can't seem to drown out with hours of TikTok.
I remember a time I used to LOVE the holidays. That there was a sort of romanticization to the spectacle of it all. The music used to fill me with warmth; the decor brightening up the streets. In these past few years though, especially this season, it's left me with a particular emptiness. I don't know if that's a product of age or inner-trauma work, or both, but it's feeling more like Krampus than Christmas this year.
After these past few weeks of emotional turmoil with family, I'm finding it hard to put into words how deep my pain is. It's like a cloud is following me no matter what path I take to shake it off. It prevails. It follows.
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I wonder if there's a support group out there for daughters and sisters of angry, abusive men. I am sure there is and I just haven't looked yet because I feel so deeply uncomfortable with the idea of having to admit out loud that the two men who are supposed to love me in this lifetime, in fact, do not. That these two men who have been a huge part of shaping the person I've become today wish I were someone else, or not someone at all. And I'm sure you, anonymous reader, think "Surely it can't be that bad" and you're right to a degree. My dad and brother have never committed the type of violence you'd call authorities over. They are not people that on the surface you'd have a problem with. Which, makes the situation all the more maddening. It's a more insidious pain. One that plants little seeds throughout your life that later root itself like a stubborn weed you can't rid of. I chop and chop and chop at its branches. Pulling its roots every chance I get. I think sometimes "Well there's some flowers on it, maybe the weed isn't that toxic" and then I find out it's left cracks in the foundation of my home.
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When I started my healing journey in January 2020, I actually didn't realize what I was healing from. I walked into my therapist's office thinking I was going to talk about romantic relationships and work trauma but all of a sudden this inexplicable ball of emotion came up through me and I started sobbing about my brother. A relationship I had never truly examined before that moment, and yet like a divine intervention of sorts it came out of me to do so. I am grateful for whatever came over me that day to open that wound as I would not be where I am today without doing so, but the journey has not been linear. More of a bell curve that frankly I still feel at the bottom of.
In these past four years, I have put a lot of my hurt onto my brother and the things he has done to me, but I have been too afraid to acknowledge my father's role in it all. Subconsciously, I've known the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. That my brother cannot be who he is without the man who made him that way. But like I said earlier -- your father is supposed to be the one man in your life who loves you, all of you, unconditionally forever. Also my dad isn't a textbook "abusive" person. He never did drugs as a parent, quit drinking in my youth, didn't hit my mother, etc. He's not the stereotype you see on TV and understand that as dangerous man. I still feel like I am gaslighting myself of the depth of my father's trauma as I shout into the void of my family for reassurance and receive nothing back. You can see in the eyes of my mother and grandmother that there is hurt, but they too follow the tradition of centuries of women before them in our communities. Bound to horrible men out of fear of the devil they don't know vs. the devil they do.
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I sit here with tears welling up in my eyes, thinking of all the ways these men have hurt me. So unintentionally but so profoundly. I find myself often saying, "my dad loves me, but I don't think he likes me," to which my partner says "you have to like someone to love someone."
I have caught myself talking to my partner about my dad, explaining how unalike they are, which I can tell makes him uneasy. He's said to me before at the beginning of our relationship, "You are only dating me because I'm nothing like your dad" almost as if I'd date him just to make my father angry.
To that notion -- I am sorry. I understand where he's coming from, but I am not a 15-year-old Becca looking to spite my father in a teen rage. I am an almost 30-year-old woman who is so lucky to have found someone who loves me deeply. When I say they're nothing alike, I mean that with the highest compliments awarded. I mean that my partner and I talk every day, sharing our lives because we care about what each other is going through. I mean that my partner shows up for me, even when it's hard for him. I mean that he compliments me and values the things I hold dear and special. I mean that my partner not only likes me, but loves me too.
