Who Does Estrangement Hurt the Most?

I cut ties with my family twenty years ago, and here's what I've learned

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I always knew that the relationship with my father was living on borrowed time. He considered too many topics to be “off limits.” There was too much he refused to recognize or discuss.

“We aren’t going to talk about that BS,” he said. “Now drop it!”

If I persisted, he gave me his ultimatum.

“I said, drop it!”

This wasn’t a case of “we’ll have to agree to disagree.” It wasn’t a declaration that we could, “disagree and still be friends.” The message was clear. I either had to stop following the call of my intuition or it would be the end of our relationship.

Comply or be left behind.

Well, what are you supposed to do when you’re a child? You’re totally dependent on your parents. You can’t fend for yourself. So, I complied. I accepted the reality that he presented to me. I lived beneath the roof and within the walls that he’d constructed.

There was plenty to do in there. We had books and movies and toys and board games. In the evenings, when we could no longer stand each other, we retreated into our private rooms. As I got older, I excused myself earlier and earlier.

Anyone could see what was coming.

Eventually, there came a day when the world that he offered simply wasn’t enough.

“Ungrateful! Disrespectful! Don’t you realize how much I’ve sacrificed? How dare you?”

But I’d found a door and I decided to walk through. I couldn’t stay there any longer. I couldn’t stay within the confines of his little world. I couldn’t pretend there were only good times and force myself to forget the bad times over and over.

I didn’t leave with defiance. I left thinking that his resistance couldn’t be real. We didn’t have a particular battle that led to us not speaking to each other. He made it easy. When he left my mom, he expected us to make the journey for visits.

Why should I go out of my way? Hadn’t he conditioned us to stay in the house that he claimed to have built for us? He found a door. It led to his new reality. If he wanted me in his life, he could visit me in mine.

“Absolutely not!”

So, essentially, I took up residence in my new space. He took up residence in his. He expected me to come for visits, but he wouldn’t lift a finger in return.

I think of this now not with regret, but with amusement. Even then I thought it was funny. He was as petulant as a toddler. Surely he’d reconsider with time.

As it turned out, he wouldn’t.

When I started this journey, it was with hopes and expectations. Today, I have a freshman in high school, I have another daughter in middle school.

I spend most of my time thinking about the future rather than the past. My children fill me with such pride. They are so compassionate and talented. They fill my life with magic.

I dream of a future where I’ll be there to help them. I look forward to helping them move into dorms and apartments and houses. If their car should break down, I hope I’m the first person they call. I’ll come running. When they have children, I’ll be there to change diapers and make sure they have a few hours to sleep.

I’ll do all the things my dad never did for me.

After all these years, I no longer see a point in seeing our relationship in terms of who was right and who was wrong. There are no more vague threats. The choices have been made. The consequences have already been paid.

It would have been nice to have more support throughout the years. There were times I was exhausted, or sick, or stressed and it would have been nice to have somebody there to help me.

That would have meant everything.

But those days have passed. I weathered the storm. My kids are capable now. They grew up in a household where they weren’t picked on. I don’t allow entry to people who tell lies about me, or who try to cultivate conflict for their own gain.

When I broke off my relationship with my father, the threat hung in the air. “If you go, I won’t help you. That’s it.”

Throughout the years, I’ve heard him blame me. “He’s the one who decided this. He’s the one who refused to obey my rules.”

But that doesn’t matter because the time is gone. The opportunities are gone. The kids are grown. He missed it. He didn’t even write me when they were born. He didn’t labor back in the early days of our conflict to right the wrong.

He refused to even recognize that one existed.

There is a price to pay for estrangement. It’s not easy for a young parent to navigate the challenges of this world. Young parents need our support. When the stresses mount, you become a lodestone for bad luck. A flat tire at the end of a hard week can break you.

That’s why we have to help each other.

That’s why we have to listen to each other.

Life doesn’t make sense. The answers might be in the place beyond the boundaries you refuse to understand.

I paid the price already. I paid it willingly because I couldn’t look into the faces of my newborn daughters and condemn them to the relationship of control that I’d known. I couldn’t do it.

If he wanted to be in my life, he had to change. He had to step through my door. Never again will I step through his.

He chose stubborn estrangement.

There are some people who sit at the lonely end of a broken relationship and hold on to the hope that it might one day be fixed. Do they think a moment of forgiveness on a death bed will mean anything?

That’s a poor trade for a humble life filled with joyous memories.

You’ve missed it.

The first steps, the first words, the laughter, making pancakes, the Christmas concerts, the soccer games, the joy of supporting each other. All those things together add up to form the sum total of a fulfilling existence.

My father made the mistake of thinking he was negotiating from a position of strength. He picked estrangement rather than change.

I’m sorry that he chose wrong. But you can’t tell an adult man what to do. He’s accountable for his choices, not me. That’s a lesson I hope to covey to my own children, by example.

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