Part 9 - Cutting Contact

I was so uninspired to write to my parents. I tried so many times, but the words never came out right. At the beginning of the summer, I had said I would write. Nothing my parents did to me during this time provoked the right words, including my father's phone call. Oh yeah, did I mention that doozy? He convinced me to call him under the guise that it was important. Considering his upcoming heart surgery, I figured something was medically wrong and agreed. I called, he told me something I'd already heard from 3 family members, then launched into an obviously prepared speech. "I don't trust you right now. I know how you've been treating me behind my back. I know what you've been up to, and you need to come to me in repentance..." *click* I hung up. I knew better than to subject myself to more of that! My hands were shaking as I cried afterwards, and then I ate about 1/3 of a 5 gallon tub of ice cream. Oops. Did I mention he called from his church office as an associate pastor to tell me all that? Excuse me while I go throw up...

By the time the summer was a little over half over, and I felt dead inside. My soul had dried up with the efforts I had taken with my family up to that point. Finally, my brother called me one day and described what my parents had said to him that week. It was outrageous and truly wrong. I talked him through it, hung up, and resumed my duties of an overachieving housewife. I cleaned for a while as I listened to music, then turned the music off and started washing dishes. In the silence, I began to reflect on my brother's phone call, and my protective instinct bubbled into a need to write. I got two dishes done before the words came spilling out onto a notebook. In one sitting, and in under 25 minutes, the perfect letter flowed through me. It was a magnificent gift to myself.

I sent it to a few people for proofreading, and showed it to my husband. I was on cloud nine. Everyone said it was perfect. Two of them even immediately responded by telling me they were proud of me. I was so happy...until I received an email that night from my dad's boss, Brian Sayers, about how I was "needlessly delaying" the process. I will write a post about his involvement later. I plummeted into a sad state; it dampened my happiness and put a cloud over my glimpse of freedom.

I'm not sure if it is right or wrong to post the letter here, though I am completely open about it and I do wish to shed more light on the situation. I have no problems at least summarizing it, and I can post it if the need arises. For now, I outlined more examples and types of abuse, shared with my parents how their abuse hurt me, how worthless I felt because of them, gave them my qualifications for contact (apology only) and their outlet for doing so (They are to contact David with their apology first. He then would proofread the letter to see if it meets the standards of a true apology, with no blame, and David would then pass it on to me.).

After I sent the letter, the silence was deafening. I knew the day after they got it, because my dad made posts on his social media about why egalitarians are forsaking Jesus (I had mentioned Egalitarianism in my letter. I'm almost positive he went to his favourite Danny Burke blog, plugged the unfamiliar term into the search bar, and posted the first three articles that came up! Talk about missing my point!), and my mom made a post from Desiring God about how sometimes you fail people without realizing how much you hurt them (which is also missing my point, because I told her many times growing up how she had hurt me, and she ignored it). I heard through a sibling that they acknowledged that they had hurt me, but they didn't think I'd want an apology if they wouldn't admit to the actual word "abuse." Damn straight I won't. I don't think it is an unimportant label. This is, once again, them not admitting to the depth of their wrongs because of their same old fear of man.

I haven't heard from them since. I'm not sad about it at all, because they're totally toxic. I suppose I am sad in the sense that I grieve never being parented, but cutting them out of my life was like cutting off a horribly mean stranger, and I feel more free from their attacks than I ever have.

Not to mention, my stress levels have gone significantly down!