A few days ago I quit an incredibly toxic job. It was destroying my mental health, the owners turned a blind eye to (and actively encouraged) workplace abuse, my hours kept getting cut and I was being put on spite-shifts where they knew I wouldn't get a day off work with my husband for months at a time - they actively wanted me to quit, but wouldn't fire me, so they just made it as unpleasant as possible until I left. It should have been a decent job. It should have been stable, the work was consistent, it should have been okay, and it wasn't - it wasn't.

I quit with no other job lined up. No notice given, no discussion, no exit interview, and I blocked the ex-employers on every platform possible, so they couldn't send me the abuse I knew would come. I was just so tired. Tired of being degraded and demeaned. Tired of the xenophobia I was experiencing. Tired of the ableism. Tired of retching every workday, the fear and anxiety consuming me. Tired of fearing for my physical safety, the fear that someone would cause me to have "a little accident", that I'd "trip", that I'd "fall down the stairs" - it was scary, and it was such a heavy emotional load to carry.

Only three days after quitting... I have a new job, at a competitor's business. The competitor is a big chain (vs the small mom and pop business I worked for previously) and I'm so excited. I'm so glad. I'll be able to keep afloat, I'll be able to buy my husband a Christmas gift, I'll be able to live and breathe and so much of the unknowing of being unemployed is gone and I'm just... grateful.

Three years ago, I almost died. I have a severe anaphylactic allergy to an ingredient in dyes. I learnt this the hard way- the hospital way. The multiple-doctors-pumping-me-with-meds-to-keep-me-alive sort of way. I didn't tell any biological family that I'd nearly died until a week after getting out of hospital, as I was swollen to the point of being disfigured, and didn't feel like dealing with guests. When I told my father, and explained what it meant for me moving forward and the restrictions I now have to live with, like potentially being unable to get more tattoos in future, he replied with "Good." He himself has an anaphylaxis allergy. He's been hospitalised a couple of times due to his allergy. He knows how terrifying anaphylaxis is. He knows. "Good." Some days the guilt of estrangement is crushing, a huge weight upon my chest, a self-flagellation of shame. I feel so bad for cutting off my elderly father, knowing that he says I am his "purpose in life"- and then some days I remember.

I remember that he tried to drown me as a child. I remember the drug and alcohol abuse that featured through most of my childhood. I remember the physical violence he inflicted. I remember that he didn't come visit me after I'd told him that I'd nearly died. He didn't even ask how I was feeling. He didn't call to check up on me. He didn't ask how I was healing, or show any empathy at all. I remember that he told me "good." "Good."

My father refuses to maintain contact with me.  It’s been 18 months since he ceased all communication.

I have such a range of feelings over this. He made me promise not to stop talking to him, he told me I was his “whole life”, he sobbed and wailed and gnashed his teeth because I was moving away- and then he cut me out of his life.  It took me entirely too long to realise that he’s been playing this game for decades. I had to call him on my own birthdays, I had to call him around holidays, I had to make contact, or he’d completely ignore me. If I didn’t continually feed him attention, he’d simply... stop caring. He’d guilt me, he’d abuse me, he’d tell me that he loved me- all while refusing to contact me, because he thinks it’s my duty, and mine alone. He’d hold his affection behind a wall of demands, every year growing stricter and harder to meet. He’d make me beg for the smallest scraps of love. I continue to email him. It’s bland, flavourless grey-rock walls of pleasantries- and still, I continue.  18 months of unanswered emails, a new one sent off into the void of silence every 2-6 weeks.  Every couple of months, I debate stopping. I tell myself to give up, that he doesn’t deserve the effort.  Every couple of months, I convince myself to continue. 

I email him for myself, at this point.  I email him so that when he does finally contact me, full of anger and accusations of abandoning him, I can show him the proof that I tried- that for years, I emailed him regularly.  It’s a self-protection. 

Touch Grass

After some deeply damaging trauma, I locked myself away. I locked myself into a box where few could see me, where my only responses were empty, grey-rock cardboard that was meant to save me- to protect me from any further harm. I sunk myself deep into an ocean, further than I’d been in years, deep into the reaches where I tried to protect myself from my parents, opening boxes of old wounds and aches.  Deep down, deep into the sea of disassociation and fog, into panic and quiet- oh, such quiet, as the numbness overtook all else. I’ve been terrified- terrified of opening up, of letting people in, terrified of being hurt again and terrified of losing people in my life. I have been trying to claw my way back to the surface, and it’s so hard, with currents and eddies throwing off my sense of upwards, nights obscuring the light to swim into- it’s hard, and some days, I doubt I’ll ever be myself.  I tell myself I shouldn’t fight the to surface, I tell myself to give in- that I should just sink deep into the  dark. Every day I have to remind myself to touch grass and reconnect with reality vs living in the memory of trauma. Every day for the last couple of weeks I’ve been forcing myself outside, to talk to people, to try a little harder, and piece myself back together. Every day is a reminder to be kind on myself, to remember that healing isn’t linear, to remember that I deserve basic kindness. I’ve been planting seeds, and they’re sprouting, they’re growing, and soon, I’ll have a lovely flowerbed full of new blooms. 

I will never be good enough. I’ll never be thin enough. I’ll never be successful enough. I’ll never be good enough. I’ll never merit a proud-parent-Facebook-post. I’ll never be educated enough.  I’ll never be pretty enough.  I’ll never be clean enough.  I’ll never be pleasing enough.  I’ll never be good enough for my parents. And that’s okay. It’s okay.  I spent over 20 years trying to be enough. Trying to find validation in empty husks of humans, And I was never enough- in any way. I’d break and bend myself, contorting to try fit- The standards were always too high, impossible to reach, Impossible to attain.  And that’s okay.  I am slowly loving myself enough, and that- that’s enough for me.

Surfacing repressed memories feel like found pieces of a shattered mirror. I can’t see it all, but I can see the parts that made the most impact, and some of the pieces connect. It can take years overall to remember the full picture, if at all. 

Today’s clicking pieces were on allergies.  I found out a couple of years ago that I am deathly allergic to certain types of hair dye. I say “found out”, when I’ve been allergic to hair dye since my early teen years, but it was repressed and the reactions I had were dismissed as a teen, so I lost the memories to the fog. 

It’s the anger that gets me. It’s the anger that I dyed my hair as a teen and was told I was “being dramatic”, that I was “just sensitive”, that it “wasn’t a big deal” when I had a reaction.  I stopped dying my hair with those certain types of dye, and the problem went away. I started using different types, and it lasted less and stained more, but it didn’t hurt. I thought I was indeed just dramatic. That I was clearly unable to remember what I went through, as my own “proclivity for over-exaggeration” (thanks, mom) meant that I’d imagined the allergic reactions that made my skin bubble and blister, that made me so incredibly itchy, that made me so horribly uncomfortable. In time, I forgot the welts that would cover my arms, and the weeks my scalp spent recovering from the dye.  Until I ended up in hospital. 

The anger isn’t so much that I was gaslit into believing I was misremembering my own memories to the point where I forgot I was anaphylactic allergic to something (which is horrifying in its own right)- it’s that my mother knew, and she still had me use those same allergy-inducing dyes to colour her hair for her.  She knew, and she made me dye her hair for years, well after I’d stopped colouring my own. It’s the memories of the welts that almost immediately formed along my arms where I’d accidentally touched, where I’d get perfect circles of allergies as the dye dripped onto my feet. It’s that she insisted I did it for her, when she could have others do it. It’s that she manipulated me and guilted me into touching something she knew I was horribly allergic to, for the sake of her appearance.  It’s the anger that I experienced allergies with foods, that I was diagnosed with severe lactose intolerance, that I wasn’t a “picky eater” at all- just suffering from bad sensitivities, allergies and intolerances, and that my mother knew about the food, she knew about the dye- It’s that she goddamn knew, and she did not care. 

I think of being No Contact as a burnt-down house. It’s cold and empty, down to the charred, cracked foundations.  I set the NC fire to cleanse, to burn, for warmth, because I needed something- a light, a torch, an ember. “When you are not fed love on a silver spoon, you learn to lick it off knives.” When you’re raised in a house without warmth, you’ll burn everything down to feel anything at all. I think of NC as the packing before leaving, before the fire, before the red roar-  Taking sentimental pieces, burdensome, baggage.  I think of it as an unboxing, a burnt suitcase, a releasing of all.  I think of the journey after NC as not building up from the foundations,  But as a new plot entirely. A choice in decorating,  A choice in what we can plant.  Not rotten stumps and flaking flooring,  Not the broken windows and immense clean-up,  a fresh start. Something pristine, green, full of potential and love.  Peaceful.  I am not planting a garden of pain and misery on the bare-bones of my trauma-  Oh- I will not do that to myself.  I deserve the self-compassion of something new. Something for myself,  unhaunted by the ghosts of an old dwelling in which I wilted, cold.  I deserve a roaring fireplace, soft blankets, blooming flowers and strong-rooted trees. 

I’ve been applying for work, lately.  I applied for jobs I never dreamed I’d be able to do, and I got a call from one. They wanted an interview. Me. They wanted to talk to ME? I couldn’t believe it.  I told myself that I should cancel. That I should confess to them- Confess that I’m a failure. That I’m incompetent. That I can’t be trusted to be a good worker. That I’m not worth hiring. That I don’t deserve to work for them. That I shouldn’t even waste their time with the interview.  That I was sorry for having the audacity to apply in the first place. That I was sorry, sorrysorrysorrysorrysorry-  I didn’t tell them any of that-  Instead, I simply cried. A lot.  I cried a LOT.  I rejected the self-sabotage only to find myself overwrought with crushing anxiety, completely unexpected, when usually I do so well with interviews.  It was very awkward. The interviewer was very gentle and kind with me. I told myself I don’t deserve their kindness, and to apologise profusely for the burden I was placing onto them.  I was absolutely paralysed with fear and anxiety, like a swirling vortex of water, pulling me under as I slowly drowned, watching the sky above me blur and ripple as I descended deep into the cold depths of despair.  I spent yesterday recovering. I made tea. I ate good treats. I made myself wash my hair and scrub my skin, removing the salt-trails, a crunchy reminder of the panic and pain. My beloved husband brought me some of my favourite food. I ate it, because I deserve it- because my intake of food isn’t dependant on arbitrary standards of success. 

After calming down, I picked through the information from the interview, and realised the job wouldn’t work for me, anyway- I cannot work those hours, and that’s okay.  I am sad that I had such overwhelming panic on something so routine and so common, something I have a lot of experience with and am usually pretty confident in, but it was also a learning curve- that things won’t go perfectly, and that I still deserve to eat afterwards, that I deserve and need self-care, that I shouldn’t give up. Not everything needs to be a lesson, I don’t have to derive meaning from everything, but dang, if I didn’t need something positive to pull from that interview.  I’m proud of myself for how I cared for myself afterwards. I gave myself time, space and gentleness, instead of continuing the pattern of self-destructive thinking.  It’s going to be okay. I’m going to be okay.

As a teen, I pooled my money and got my abusive mother a knock-off Pandora bracelet. It was expensive despite being off-brand, and I didn’t have a job- I saved as much as I could to buy one for her. Pandora too much for me to afford, the one I got was identical. 

My mother refused to wear it. She threw it into her least-favourite jewellery box. She wouldn’t even try it on. She demanded jewellery as gifts from people, and from then on, I tried my hardest to buy her real gold, real diamonds- but it was never enough. I could never be enough for her tastes. 

When I was in my mid-20′s, I bought her the real, name-brand Pandora bracelet. One of my siblings insisted that I buy it for my mother, because they’d bought a couple of charms. I was left with the bulk of the cost, and against my better judgement, I bought it. I also got her some gold diamond owl earrings. She liked owls, they were ‘real’ metal and gemstones, surely it’d be enough? 

I think I just wanted any bare scrap of affection, or gratitude, or even acknowledgement. 

My mother told everyone that my sister brought the bracelet. She told everyone that would listen. She told people I bought her “nothing”, that she “got nothing at all from [me]”. People said I was a disgusting daughter, that they couldn’t believe that I did that to my poor mother. They also COULD believe that I’d done something so mean, because my mother had smeared my name so thoroughly, it was seen as “just another [me] thing” to add to the long list of grievances they had against me. 

I went No Contact a few short months later. 

I broke NC with a sibling that I haven’t been in contact with since late 2020. I got a phone call from a third party, telling me that the sibling had been asking about me, wanting to know personal information, wanting to contact me, wanting to talk.  I messaged the sibling on an alternate account. I asked them what they wanted, and then waited...  and waited...  and waited...  A whole week passed and went, they didn’t responded to me. They didn’t even open the message.  I unsent the message and then deleted the alt account, reclosing the door before they could step through it. Part of me goes “Well, it was only a week, they didn’t have time to respond!”, but I know that they’re online often and frequent. I know they would have likely seen it. I also don’t care to chase them- because this is their MO. They ask me for attention, and then they make me wait, and wait, and wait, drawing it out for weeks or months before responding. If I express any upset over waiting so long, they get very angry and tell me that they “have a life” and “have better things to do than respond”, that I’m not a priority to them and never will be, that they do not care about me, my time, or my feelings. 

In the week I waited, I remembered.  I remembered why I stopped putting in my time and energy, why I stopped talking to them. I remembered why I went NC, and why I told myself “This time is the last time, I cannot do this any longer.” When I heard that they were chasing after me, I was so angry. They made it sound like it was absolutely an imperative that they contact me as soon as possible, that they needed to talk to me, that I should contact them quickly. I fell for it. The desire to be wanted by them was so strong and overwhelming that against all of the big, waving red flags, I opted to message them. 

I am grateful that they didn’t respond.  I am grateful that I remembered why I went NC.  I am glad that I remembered that we’re so deeply strangers to one another that there’s nothing they could ever say that would be worth breaking estrangement again for- that there isn’t anything they need to say to me. That they only want to reconnect so that they can gossip about me to other family that I’m estranged from, like my parents. While I will always hope that they’ll make sincere and genuine efforts to get better, I am not counting on it, and I am not going to hold onto a fantasy version of them, where they magically care for me. 

This year is year 5 of no contact and estrangement.  5 years is a long time,  yet it feels so short considering.  I left when I was 24, after attempting to go NC for 6 years prior. 

On and off no contact, on and off low contact, every time a failure. My mother used my illness against me, moments of vulnerability,  forcing her way back into my life every 6 months or so.  She made me dependant and convinced me that I needed her, that she was the only one who cared,  that she was doing it out of the goodness of her heart- and as soon as I moved back in with her, it began again. Sometimes it would be days after, sometimes hours.  It took me 6 years of moving in/out, escaping and returning.  6 years for me to repair my shattered sense of self-worth,  to get the therapy I so desperately needed, to get the professional validation and support. I’m so proud of myself for cutting her off.  I don’t have much to be proud of, but that-  the acts of self-love and self-respect that come with estrangement? That’s a thing to be proud of. 

He tried to drown me. 

He held me under the water until my lungs screamed, Until my screaming stopped, Until I gave up fighting.  He was going to drown me and there wasn’t anything I could do to stop him. 

I had splashed my younger sibling in our pool.  We were young,  and it took me so long to stop blaming myself. My sibling was fine- he was tired of playing with me, and not as confident in the water,  and I splashed one time too many.  When my sibling cried, I heard thundering, pounding steps down the hallway. bam bam bam Like a war drum. My father barrelled out enraged. He didn’t ask what happened, not really.  That wasn’t his style.  He didn’t ask and discuss,  he was always straight into punishment. Sometimes it was bad. He’d make us eat bars of soap, once he forced a bottle of Tabasco into my mouth, holding me so I couldn’t escape.  He forced me to drink it,  even as I screamed in pain.  He’d hit us He’d belt us or kick us or destroy our belongings. He’d rip the pages out of my books, Or throw them all away.  He’d cut off my access to anyone who could help. and remind me that no one would love me  like family does. 

BAM BAM BAM My sibling had cried something about drowning, and that’s the last thing I remember before I was grabbed and shoved under. held under. forced under. He held me under the water until my lungs screamed, Until my screaming stopped, Until I gave up fighting. The chlorine burned my eyes, and then it burnt my mouth and throat, and then it burnt my lungs.  I could hear my father yelling at me. That I had tried to hurt my sibling. That I deserved this for splashing them. That maybe next time I’d be a good child. That I deserved it and WOULD learn this time.  I remember when he let go,  breaking the surface and vomiting out the searing water.  I remember the raw ache of my throat, and the agony of my chest. I remember endless coughing of liquid that lasted days. The way my eyes smarted, the redness and the puff.  I remember the gratefulness. The worst part wasn’t that they didn’t take me to hospital, because they knew there would be questions and investigations, like previous injuries they’d hidden and denied me medical care for.  The worst part wasn’t the act itself, or even that I still dream of drowning, or even the injustice that my sibling and I didn’t have time to explain- No. The worst is that I spent twenty years defending him. I would tell people “He saved me from drowning when I was a toddler”, But I never mentioned that he tried to drown me a few years later, and if I’m honest with myself, he would have carried through with it. If his anger had lasted just a bit longer,  If he’d snapped a bit more than usual. I ardently defended him for so long. “He’s the good parent. It could have been worse.” “He comes through where it counts.” “He is complicated and we all are, I should be understanding.” “I should have been better behaved.” “I was a bad child” “I deserved it.” It took me twenty years to be able to admit that  He tried to drown me, and that is fucking horrifying. Child abuse is a weird thing to process.  It comes and goes in waves of varying horror.  Sometimes the past leaves me sleepless, feeling like a haunting dwelling within the house.  I wake up screaming or crying, or gasping for air. I wake up covered in bruises, where I’ve gripped myself enough to injure, and tasting chlorine on my tongue.  I can’t even bathe some days.  The fear of being held under lingers. He tried to drown me. He held me under until my lungs screamed.  I defended him for over 20 years. I still dream of drowning, and I am fucking horrified.

The self-loathing is so strong, lately. Every day feels like a battle to prove worthy to myself, to convince myself that I’m not awful. 

It’s funny, the way smaller events can dredge up such trauma and agony. It’s funny in that “laughing and crying equally hard, then outright broken sobbing” way. I’ve been reaching out more to a sibling and I even contacted an aunt, but I don’t view this as good- I view contacting the aunt as an act of self-sabotage, a way to make me feel shittier about myself.

Despite how the above sounds, I’ve been doing better. I’m trying so hard, and while some days are battles, things are looking up. I slept a full 8hrs yesterday, and it was wonderful, even if it was through the day and I missed two meals as a result. I have been trying to eat better, trying to clean more (and managing!) and I’m re-establishing self-care. I had a headache for days on end, and it finally eased after the 8hrs of sleep, too! I’m planning for the future with my beloved, and I’m savouring the happiness and brightness I have.

Sometimes I tell myself I don’t deserve to love myself. I don’t deserve to love my chunky legs, I don’t deserve to love my chest, my hair, my nose, my eyes. I tell myself I don’t deserve to be proud of who I am, and what I am growing into. I tell myself I’m not allowed to be proud of the progress and the healing. 

After all, if my parents couldn’t be proud of me, no matter how I contorted myself, broke myself for their approval, how could anyone else be proud- and how could I have the audacity to appreciate myself? 

It’s so tiring, though. It’s so tiring to self-hate. It takes more energy for me to hate myself than it does for me to just... admire and appreciate. Appreciate the legs I got from my paternal grandmother. The eyes that are wholly unlike anyone else in my family. The hair that I maintain and care for.  It’s exhausting. My parents punished me so much, over such little things- over the smallest of mistakes, and part of me breaking the cycle is, I think, in breaking THAT cycle, too- the cycle where I punish myself. When I have a child, they deserve parents who love them AND themselves- parents who are proud of themselves, parents who doesn’t speak negatively and degradingly about their body, parents who are gentle and kind with themselves- parents who leads by example in regards to self-love and self-respect.  My beloved and I are working on this together, and it’s beautiful, wholesome and affirming.  I deserve to love myself. To be able to look at my legs and acknowledge that while they don’t look the way I want them to, they carry me up mountains. That my hair is lovely, and that I genuinely like it. That my chest isn’t inherently bad or improper. 

I’ve been going through something lately, and it reminds me of the later months where I still had contact with my mom. The lies, the manipulation, the desperate attempts to reel me back in, the smear-campaigns, the hatred, the way she’d flip a switch and go from love-bombing to vomiting vitriol-  It’s been a learning curve.  A painful learning curve.  From it, I’ve gained self-respect.  I didn’t add fuel to the fire by responding. I kept things civil. I didn’t insult, demean, degrade or even defend myself. I didn’t project my trauma onto others, I didn’t lash out with an infestation of fleas, I didn’t say a thing. The urge to protect myself, my reputation, my character is always so difficult, but responding only further condemns me - and I know this.  I learnt it with my mother. When I’d protest her ill-treatment of me, when I’d try tell people “this isn’t what happened! This isn’t the truth!”, it’d only make me look worse.  My mother laid the groundwork for my bad-character to people so well that they already had that opinion before I’d needed to defend myself, and I couldn’t be bothered, in the end, to try win them over.  If they so readily accepted the worst, I couldn’t be bothered putting in the emotional energy to win over my relatives, my mother’s friends, her workmates, her new partners- I couldn’t be bothered. I’m proud of myself for disengaging. For refusing to be drawn in. For the refusal to give an emotional response.  It has brought up so much trauma. I have abandonment issues from my parents, and it made a resurgence in the last few months, and I’m. so. proud. of. myself. I’ve been talking to people about it. Explaining how I feel, that I KNOW it’s a trauma-trigger that has ben activated, and that I’m processing it.  I’ve worked so hard to get to the point where I’m aware that I’m experiencing trauma reactions, to be able to healthily deconstruct it all.  It’s been a learning curve, but I’m proud of myself, and I love myself just that little bit more. I trust myself more. I believe in myself, just that little bit more.

I’ve been no contact for 4.5 years, now. My abusive mother sent me 3 emails last week, And every night since, I’ve had nightmares.

The emails were not traumatic exactly, She said she loves me, That I should call her. Then again, That I should call her. And again.  That I should call her.

I did not call her, dear reader.  I will not break No Contact. 

She doesn’t love me.  She isn’t capable of it. She misses having someone to hurt. She misses that I came running back no matter what she did to me.  I always came back. It’s taken her 4.5 years to realise that this time? This time I may not come back. That I wasn’t lying when I said I wouldn’t come back.

The nightmares are all-consuming. I dream that my best friends put me outside, into the rain, telling me I’m a bad cat. I dream of vacuum cleaners endlessly. I dream that I am stuck in loops of anxiety In a car that never stops, or a plane that never lands.

I sleep at night beside my beloved, and wake up crying, shaking and cold. I wake tensed for flight, I wake curled into a ball.  I wake with the whispers of her voice, snaking through my sleep. I nap through the day, and jolt awake, hypervigilance overwhelming, Fear overriding. 

I’ve been no contact for 4.5 years, now. My abusive mother sent me 3 emails last week, And every night since, I’ve had nightmares.

There’s been a weird, slow sadness lately,  The precursor was a realisation, quiet and cold. 

My dad refuses any contact with me,  And this isn’t the first time,  But I feel like this may be it.  The last time, if you will. 

The realisation is that he’s sick- Sicker than I have fathomed before, Sicker than he realises, too.  He’s an addict and an alcoholic,  And he won’t stop. He cannot stop. I think he’s in late-stage addiction.  There’s no final stages beyond this. It’s a crushing realisation, but it’s also not something I can fix, and not my responsibility. 

He’s told me over and over that he chooses drugs. He chooses alcohol. That “you will always lose” That he will always prioritise his next fix. He will take any drug And drink any alcohol.  And I cannot fix that. I cannot.  He won’t call me. He doesn’t get cell reception, And when he is in cell range, he still doesn’t call. He won’t email me. He won’t make a new email,  Or fix his old account,  Even knowing  that it’s the only way he can contact me.  He won’t write to me. He could, And he doesn’t. I could, and  I don’t. Because he won’t make the effort to stay in touch. I’ve tried for years. I’m not the priority. He likes making me play emotional games, mental gymnastics. He wants me to chase him, crying, Pleading for his affection, attention and love. He wants me to thank him for the barest scrap of acknowledgement.  My husband and I want to have a baby.  I cannot- I WILL not play those games with my father, Not anymore. I cannot keep running myself down, over  and over. My father tells me that I’m his greatest joy in life. That he’d do anything for me and my sibling. That he loves us endlessly, But that love came with physical violence. It came with so much abuse. It came with so much pain and suffering.  I cannot sacrifice myself to save him anymore,  While trying to bring forth a child of my own. My dad refuses any contact with me, And this isn’t the first time. It’s been 9 months,  and over a year since a proper conversation. I feel like this may be it. The last time, if you will.