The Multiplicity of Emotions Going No Contact

Back in January of this year, my paternal grandmother died. It was the first time my biological parents had contacted me about a death in the family. Mind you, both my grandfather and sister-in-law had both passed previously. Not.a.word. But this particular woman was the “matriarch” of the family, despite the fact that she had absolutely nothing to do with matriarchy and was, for all intents and purposes, in my world, the Wicked Witch of the West. Her duplicity and ability to manipulate people could have won her an Oscar. I digress...

What made this moment different from my perspective is how much they loved her, the solid relationship they shared, and her pain. She died of colon cancer. It really is an impossibly hard fate. The only time my mother believed in my magic was when I would do death magic. She called upon this skill when my great-grandmother died in 2018. I do not believe in suffering. I never will. So I did death magic for her. She was gone in days. I hope she finds peace and truth in the next life. The shift in my energy after releasing that tie... it was glorious. That is a blog for a different day, though.

Then in May, the man I called dad for almost 20 years — the one who had chosen to be in my life with unconditional love and support despite not meeting me until I was 18 — was finally taken by lung cancer. His death was the third in nine months. The grief...the rage...I handled it well from the outside, but it almost broke something inside of me. This time I broke no contact with my father because they knew him, too. The compassion I was met with from my biological father and the absolute kindness from my mother...I knew I would receive it from my bio dad, but my mother had NEVER met me with that kind of compassion before. Never. Not once.

All of this made me sit so deeply with myself, with my circumstances, with all the emotions of times past. I wrote them a letter that I never sent. But it helped me navigate and sort through everything I was feeling. Because it was A LOT. That is thing people don't understand about the no-contact journey. They see these tiny little snippets on social media without ever seeing the entire story. They don't sit with the myriad of emotions that play in the brains and hearts of the folks who have had to make that gut-wrenching choice. They also don't see the before and after. The healing that occurs after going no contact.

A nervous system that could never settle before becomes regulated. A closed-off heart becomes vulnerable. Success is finally achievable. Everything shifts. But even in the shifting, even in the healing, there is a multiplicity of emotions that feels impossible to navigate sometimes.

Today, adult me has so much respect for my father for standing by his wife repeatedly through everything. Because lemme tell you...that man is a saint for dealing with that woman. I don't know how he does it. I always said, as a teenager, she must be one hell of a lay because that's the only way I could wrap my brain around their relationship. Crazy how an immature brain can process things. 😂 I now have a husband who does that, and it is a gift. He has stood by me through thick and thin. I give credit to our relationship for being able to respect that choice in my father.

But as a daughter...the inner child part of me that had to heal from never being chosen, or being chosen in secret...the adult me who had to listen to him parrot the words that so often came out of my mother's mouth that absolutely broke me...I will never understand. There is no rationalization for watching someone abuse your child and just standing idly by, letting it happen. There is no justification for that.

It is knowing that when I had walking pneumonia, my mother dropped everything to come to my aid. Or the way we cackled over me plucking her eyebrows horribly because she couldn't see without her glasses. She started getting them waxed after that. There are any number of good times that I can readily call to mind from adulthood. I cannot say the same for my childhood or teenage years, though.

And the bullshit as an adult...

Being told that you aren't liked. Being told you have to prove you are worthy. Being told, without question, that the shitty behavior will NEVER change because that is just "who she is" and I have to take it or leave it. Being told that I am the problem. That no one likes me. That I am mentally unstable. Being asked if she could pray for me to have a miscarriage. Never being good enough. Never being able to do anything right. Never hearing the words, "I'm proud of you." Not even as a child.

"But you only have one mother! You can't expect her to be perfect!" Yes, and she only had one daughter. And she can't expect me to deal with shitty behavior, over and over and over again, with zero apology and zero change in behavior. Children will forgive so fucking much if parents genuinely apologize and repair the relationship. But that is an emotional maturity that she just couldn't reach.

I truly believe she did the best she could. I didn't for a very long time. Being a mother changed how I saw all of that. She overcame and healed SO much in her life. I am so proud of her for getting to where she is. It wasn't enough for us to have a relationship, though. I deserved better. Being a mother also allowed me to see that. So I simply believed what she had told me my entire life.

"I don't like you."

I stopped being around people who don't like me. And learned that I was never the problem. Did I make fucked up mistakes as a teenager? Even as an adult? Of course I did!!! We all do. That is what being human is about. But I grew from every mistake I made. I am an expert at making decisions that look outside the box when being stuck between two impossibilities. I became a really phenomenal adult. But they never chose to see that adult. They chose to see what they wanted, which was a worthless piece of shit that wasn't worth liking. I'm okay with that now. But it is a twisted, fucked up mind game to try to navigate learning to love yourself more than you were ever loved by the people who are supposed to be the people who instill security and acceptance into your being.

All of these thought processes come with their own turmoil, and I can tell you it's not a single emotion that is being navigated. It's not even a single emotion at one time. It's everything all at once. There is joy. Happiness. Confusion. Grief. Anger. Feeling like you're crazy because how the fuck do I feel so many things all at one time?!? There is a sense of wanting justice. There is the forever longing for things to have ended differently while simultaneously knowing that they couldn't have ended any other way.

Sitting in the strength and pride of forging a different path and putting in the work to heal. Wanting your mom but not the mom you had, because that mom will just make it worse. Wanting to be free of it all and never thinking about it again. The burning anger at a society that always seems to side with the perpetrators instead of protecting the victims. The jealousy that rears its ugly head every so often when you watch a friend have a great relationship with their mother. It's the fear of making the wrong decision. Hope that one day things will change. Disappointment when they never do.

And then blissfully, waking up one day, knowing that you have forgiven them for everything. You aren't obligated to. Forgiveness is this crazy idea that has been forced upon those who are healing when really it is just a guise for shaming their anger. We get to be angry. For however long we need to be. Slowly, over time, their faces fade to distant memory. The heart-wrenching choice fades into beauty as you watch yourself transform; no longer feeling crazy like you once did.

And yet...they can still disrupt your nervous system in ways that you wish didn't exist. This is not a failure, though. It is a nervous system doing what a nervous system is supposed to do. It is your body and brain and chemicals all working exactly how they are meant to. Responding to a threat does not mean you are not healed. Quite the opposite. You fucking did it. Existing in life, responding to stimuli as they come, and then returning to baseline is regulation.

Feeling and experiencing movement between fight-or-flight and rest-and-digest, in its vast and complex array, is the very definition of being regulated. It is the ability to move between states of being fluidly, not getting stuck in one or the other. It is finding emotional maturity when you can recognize that you aren't okay with how someone is treating you and setting boundaries accordingly. Reaching out to someone when you know you need support. It is being able to listen to your body fully without the fear of how people will respond to you.

This is the life of a child who has had to go no contact. This is the multiplicity of emotions going no contact. This is the lived experience of a decision that never should have had to be made. But I would make it again in a heartbeat if I had to go back in time. I'd actually make it a lot sooner than I did.

With love,