So, I really should be doing something on a Sunday rather than writing my blog, but i figured I could write a short post which was inspired by the phone call I had with my dad last night.

I had told people that I met my dad for the first time in 16 odd years recently and that the whole thing had seemed so ordinary, which struck me as both very strange and very reassuring. It is surprising how years of fear can dissolve in a hug, and how normal the interaction was. The other thing that stuck me was how much I was actually longing for that father daughter interaction which was lacking in my life. Even though I had a “father substitute” it just wasn’t the same. A dad is something which i have only just realised is a very precious thing — there are few men in a girl’s life that can love them in a platonic way, and protect them in the same way that a dad protects his daughter. There’s that fierce almost animalistic need to protect and nurture unconditionally and to love unconditionally as well. My dad would love me the same if I were a pauper on the street than if I were a princess, and I know that - it is very good for the self esteem!

I think that maybe people take relationships a bit for granted. I hear stories about people who have these sort of lack lustre relationships with their parents and i feel a bit sad about the fact that both the parents and the children don’t really appreciate what they have. I have spent my whole life trying to fill the void that was left by my dad being absent in my life with teachers, family friends, grandpas and finally to some extent with my partner, and I know what it is like to have that ache of feeling like your parent doesn’t want you. I still have that feeling every day with my mum, and I have to say that having my father back in my life only reinforces quite how bizarre my mother’s behaviour is, and has in part made me decide to become officially estranged from her.

So, it might seem strange that here I am espousing about how great it is to have parents and how people should appreciate their parents and in the next line I am saying that I have thrown away my relationship with my mum, but I guess you would have to understand my “philosophy” on how relationships work to understand why i have chosen to do what I have done.

I believe that noone has a right to be respected simply because they are a parent. Parents are humans and they are falliable. If my parent tells me the sky is red, I am not going to say “yes” just because they want that. As with any relationship there has to be a give and take and people have to work on it. Of course there is the biology aspect, I love my parents because they are my parents, but they need to do more than just that. Conception is not enough, because, lets be honest, conception is pretty easy, and also is not something which I could have decided anyway. What creates respect is how they raise you, what values they have, attributes of them that you admire, whether they protect you, etc etc.

I can say I love my mother, but I don’t like her. This is very hard. I don’t respect her choices and I definitely don’t respect her view on life generally. She believes that the world is a hard place where you are going to get jipped and that you should be “toughened up” to face it. I believe that the world is a balance of good and bad things, but allover is generally a good place. I also believe that what you believe creates your reality, and for my mother, this has proven to be the case, she has no friends and is generally disliked. When I say I don’t agree with her views on life though it is actually deeper than that - I am frightened and concerned about them. She has views on men and sexuality that would curl your toes, and her views on relationships are almost pathological. In my view she is unhealthy to be around - you spend 5 minutes with her, and it’s like an infection, she drains the positivity away.

Perhaps you are wondering why I don’t try to help her, and I have to say that over the years I have tried on numerous occasions to do so. She will not accept any help, assistance or guidance. As far as she is concerned I am a child and am incapable of offering her help. I have to hear the crap, but I can’t assist. I have on a number of occasions said that she might benefit from seeing a counsellor, but she is phobic of mental illness and refuses to acknowledge that she has any problem. She is so phoblic of mental illness that when I was diagnosed with depression at 11 she refused to take me to my appointments and I had to go by bike. I had to hide my bike around the back of the surgery so that noone in the town knew that I was going and I wasn’t able to tell anyone. She actually told me that I should never tell my partner that I suffer from depression, and one day, part way through my sessions decided to pull me out of the appointments all together and take me off my medication cold turkey because she objected to the cost. Depression is related to a chemical imbalance in the brain and the medication needs to be taken for some 6 months after your symptoms disappear to ensure that your brain is receiving enough serotinin. If you stuff this up, then you risk relapsing, which I did in year 12. Anyhow, going off topic! Mum refuses help and I think she has a disorder. I would of course help if she would let me, but she refuses and I have to acknowledge that she is her own person and that has been the hardest part.

I think though, there comes a point, as I said with my blog about mental illness where you have to throw up your hands and say, “It’s your life, you have the choice, I have tried to help you, now I am walking away” This is very, very hard. I was brought up with a huge victim image of my mum. In my mind my mum was always the person being hurt and being abused, she was weak and I tried to protect her. Now I am realising that she was in fact the person who often instigated the abuse, and that she is prideful and stubborn enough to risk a black eye to make a point, but even more concerning she will goad someone into hurting her!

It hurts to walk away but she appears to gain some perverse pleasure from the Bold and the Beautiful-esk life she leads. She is very much the martyr and will talk endlessly about the fact that she is the only one who cares for my grandmother, when I think her presence is what drives other family members away. She derives pleasure from her status as a sufferer, and will vehermentlybitch to anyone in proximity about how I have left her all alone, and will blame everybody but herself - at the moment her scapegoat of choice is my partner, which is a total no go zone as far as I am concerned because he was the person who spent years fixing me up from all the years with her! That I am a functional human being is to a great extent due to his patience, counsel and wisdom and she should worship him for that!

Nonetheless, I feel scared to leave her — will her partner hurt her and I won’t be there to help? what if she commits suicide? what if something else bad happens? But i have realised something - these sorts of people, they don’t suicide - they just find other people to use. If she gets hurt by her partner, then I cannot control that in her life anymore than I can control it out of her life. She is the only person who controls her state of being. Her finger is on the button and all I can do is hope that underneath it all she actually is smart enough to not push the boundaries too far — that self preservation prevails.

What hurts me most though is that my sister is still very much in the world of mum as it were. She still feels like she has to help mum and protect her - she is our friggin mother! We are not her keepers! My sister exhausts herself thinking about mum and worrying about her without any appreciation from mum whatsoever - mum actually kicked her out of home at 14 because her new husband didn’t like my sister, and my sister then had years of vagrant-like existance, where she had no fixed home. She has dealt with being rejected by mum and yet still tries to help. I have to say she is a better person than me, who is much more cynical about the whole thing.

So, I guess I am currently having a stand off with mum. She needs to earn my respect by making some sensible actions - ie getting help, before she is going to be back in my life. She needs to respect my life choices, especially my partner, and she needs to take responsiblity for her own unhappiness and work towards changing it. She needs to respect me generally and realise that I am not going to necessarily agree with her, that I am my own person and that because of this, my views vary from hers. Until she does this, I can’t see her in my life for the forseeable future, which is very very sad, but I have to say that my life has never been more settled and peaceful since I stopped interacting with her.

Mmm, depressing post! Promise happier post soon!

H x