What I Wish I Knew Before Cutting Off Contact With My Family
Parting ways with toxic family members brings a lot of change, and a whole lot of different emotions.
No one ever has it as part of their life plan to stop talking to their family, and I didn’t either. It took a fair amount of time and encouragement before I made the decision for myself, knowing it was for the best. Here is what I have learnt since then.
Not everything is black and white.
When people think of someone who is abusive, they typically conjure up an image of someone who is constantly nasty, belittling, and possibly violent. This often isn’t the case, however. Many abusers switch between being awful and at least pretending to treat their victim(s) nicely — it’s just another way of keeping them in their grip. This can cause confusion for someone who has recently cut off contact with a toxic family member, especially if they have had people play down their suffering before (“they just want what’s best for you”, and the like). Abusers generally show the outside world a very different face, fooling those who don’t have to deal with them behind closed doors, and to some degree, their victims too. You may ask yourself if you are making a big deal out of nothing (hint: you aren’t).
These two sides of an abusive person make cutting contact with them difficult, especially if they are your family. In the first 6 months or so after going no contact with my family, this is something that I struggled with, particularly with my mother. I had memories of our inside jokes, lunches out together, and laughing until we cried… that doesn’t sound like someone bad, does it? I had to remind myself of the manipulation, the name-calling, the neglect, and sometimes, the hitting and other violence I had been subject to since I was very young. The good times don’t take away from what I had otherwise experienced.
You will miss them —and that’s okay.
Another side-effect of those however-infrequent good times is that you will miss those who have hurt you. It becomes the case that you will not necessarily just miss the people themselves but the very concept of family. I still struggle to see healthy mother-daughter relationships, and even to watch animated family films (I can’t watch Inside Out for this reason — the parents in it are so gosh darned supportive). Birthdays, Christmas and other special events can bring up feelings more than any other time. I will admit that over two years on I still feel a twinge in my heart when I receive an (albeit unwanted) greetings card from one of my estranged family members — I have to remind myself that it’s just another attempt at manipulation and that I shouldn’t feel guilty for having feelings towards them. Again, anything I feel does not invalidate my pain — even if other people may not understand missing them. That takes me on to my next point…
Some people just don’t understand.
No, we haven’t had a “falling out”, and no, I won’t suddenly be reuniting with them for Christmas. I’m not some kind of unfeeling demon-daughter, either. Quite the opposite.
It will be one of the best decisions you ever made.
The beginning of this new phase of my life was incredibly hard. It occupied my thoughts every day, and I started to get terrible nightmares now that I wasn’t having to put a wall up. I mourned the good parts of my family and what could have been. I continued to question “what if” — but ultimately I had to accept that they had chosen to behave in the ways that they did, and that they didn’t truly love me, as much as I didn’t want to believe that. Fortunately, along with pain came a newfound freedom. I was no longer bound to people who asked things of me that went against my morals, those who put me down and stripped me of my confidence and independence. I am a new, better me — and I know that in the end, it is to be nothing to be without family than to be stuck with people who don’t deserve that title at all.
