December is always a month where it seems my family of origin come in. Typically in a friendly fashion, breaking the silence - perhaps a birthday wish, or christmas card etc.
This always seems odd to me.
For our relationship is estranged, severed, and pretty non-existent. And in pops a normal seeming exchange.
I was feeling anxious about it. And, I pondered the root cause or why this felt so threatening, while it appears so benign.
What I learned about conflict in my childhood home, was that something would happen, someone's feelings were hurt, and instead of talking about it, silence would ensue. The silence often stretched longer, if the hurt was deeper, until enough space passed, and then life returned to 'normal'.
A wound was left in the middle of the relationship. A hurt that was never acknowledged on either side. Silence, and not talking took the place of resolving issues.
My mother left me many times, abruptly on a weekend, to 'run away' - leaving me in charge of the house and however many kids were still home. And, on Monday Morning, she would not tell me where she went or why, but appeared all chipper "Rise and Shine everybody" would echo up the stairway.
Her respite from her life was successful, at the cost of my weekend plans.
The pattern of no discussion and hurtful feelings going unnoticed etc, and then time passing and all is back to normal, without any type of sorting things out, leaves me cautious of family that now pops in.
I no longer will leave the wound undiscussed.
The estrangement wasn't easily navigated.
So, as this Solstice of self-reflection arises, I am sitting with some family entering into my life and what this means.
It feels disingenuous to me to let our wound and estrangement not be spoken about. To just begin again, from here.
The potholes of my childhood wounds that went undiscussed, left me handicapped and stunted. I didn't just move on complete; but was filled with emotional scars and psychological deficits.
I am sitting with my inability to let bygones be bygones without discussing and reconnecting, as part of who I am now.
I am trying to discern within me, what is just letting 'social niceties' happen, and when it feels like the patterns of old?
It appears that their casual interjections into my world are just that, casual.
Yet it feels more passive aggressive to me in the face of the years of silence.
Mostly I have to sit with what do I do with casual social niceties.
What is the cost or toll, to my world, and who I am?
I get confused, when an estranged relationship has social niceties.
Which is my whole childhood. Things not appearing as they were.
Where a dad is an abuser.
It feels like the messy relationships are appearing nice.
I can't imagine living in a world like this as a child. Where things appear one way, but are really another way. The shifting landscape of dysfunction, not knowing what is truth and what is fiction.
Happy 2019 Solstice.
My self-reflection includes my estrangement. My renewal looks at where I am today and how, or if I would, change my actions/choices. And, what is my response with family's social niceties.
