I thought they owed me something. That they should act differently than how they’ve been acting since I was born. My non-acceptance of them demanded they be different than they are. So that I could feel safe, loved. So that I wouldn’t be heartbroken at the abyss that lay between us. The unfillable gap that haunted me in every way. In every communication, every touch, every situation that mirrored it even more.
And because I could not admit or even see the truth for myself, it all be came too scary. They creeped me out. They were absolute strangers to me even as a child. I could not relate to any one of them. And their animosity towards me was obvious. Mother, Father, Sister, Brothers, Nieces, Uncles, Nephews, Cousins. And I denied these feelings, these knowings, these gut instincts because it was too dangerous to acknowledge them.
I am slowly coming to realize that they’ve been doing me a favor all along. Telling me, showing me who they are and I have been refusing it. Denying it. Pushing it all away. Saying no, no, no! You can’t be like this, you have to be like that so that I can have the slightest of chances of being able to survive here. So that I can love you, because if this is actually who you are, I can’t love you, I can’t survive, and you can’t and don’t love me!
Oh, how much I have suffered from this denial. Non-acceptance. How much I unknowingly made myself suffer. I did not know. I did not know any better. And for that I can bring mercy to myself.
Mercy for not knowing. Mercy for doing my fucking best to cope. Mercy for how strong and resilient I have been. Mercy for the pain, the inexplicable pain that would implode at the depths of me at the slightest chance of being seen. Being heard. Being loved for exactly who I am. Mercy mercy mercy.
Mercy for my non- acceptance. Mercy for my rebellion. Mercy for my wanting things to be different. Wanting the fairytale of family to be true for me too.
When they excluded me from my fathers funeral they were doing me a favor. They were saving me the trouble of having to travel with them in the dark of night, in my heartbreak and loss to a strange village to bury my father. It wasn’t my place. It has never been. And rightly so.
I shouldn’t have been there because I wasn’t. And I would not want to be. And that’s the most important admission. To myself. To myself. To myself. I did not want to be there burying my father.