Allison Washington
Aug 25, 2017 · 1 min read

Thank you Jessica, this is validating.

I don’t speak to anyone in my family at all, save one OK step-sister, with whom I communicate on rare occasion, just so I’ll know when someone dies. I’m not even sure why. Morbid curiosity, I suppose.

The hard one is my daughter. We were very close most of her life. I was a single mum from when she was 5. I worked. She had trouble in school. It was really tough. It was us against the world. Even once she’d left home it was hours on the phone every week and frequent visits home.

She’s in her mid-30s now. I don’t know when it happened, but sometime in the past couple years we discovered that we don’t like each other, no longer respect each other. I dislike the woman she’s become. I suppose she feels the same about me. We hardly spoke all last year and it wasn’t friendly when we did. Now we have a best-behaviour phone call every month or two, but it wouldn’t distress me if we skipped it. In fact, I think I’d prefer that. I feel shite for feeling this way.

We live 8000 km apart now. I’m OK with that. Except when I’m not. I miss what we had, a lot, but I guess those were two different people.

Thank you for your story,

❤ Allison

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Allison Washington

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Journalist & essayist. Reporting from Cairo.