Just bawled for an hour straight watching some stupid show where a parent-child relationship was redeemed on a deathbed. And I sob my eyes out in empathy, although I can't cry about anything related to my family. Disconnect. I can't ever envision a moment like that.
Not because my parents are broken and don't want to connect with me. But, I'm broken and I can't connect. I can't even want to connect. I feel horribly guilty about it. I'm connecting with my T every week on that level and I can't want it from either of the people I'm supposed to want it from.
My mom is much better than she was. I can see, from afar, her trying. Still flakey, still not fully there, still abandoning in a way, but not abusive, and trying harder than ever. I accede to her coming around, although it triggers massive internal invalidation, because I think it's good for Boo to know her grandparents, at least in a small way. And, I feel like, I want to be that graceful person who gives her a chance. And I can give her a chance to show up and participate. But, I am INCAPABLE of giving her a chance with my heart, possibly ever. I am ungraceful and unforgiving and I don't want to be that way. The best I can do is pretend it didn't happen or tell myself I've made it worse than it was.
Outside of one email and a couple of Facebook exchanges a year, I have no contact with my father (except when we visit my H's father, we will see him on the way, because I feel guilty if I do not offer it). I'm sensing a pattern here. I feel bad, because I believe he mourns his failures, but even if he were to suddenly start trying the way he does with my step-sisters, I wouldn't give him a chance either. Not because I don't want to be a person who gives second and third or in this case maybe thousandth chances. But, because I just can't. Too much scar tissue there has made me numb or something.
Someday they will die and I will regret never having been able to connect with either of them. I know it's not my fault they weren't safe, consistent or present enough to connect with. I know it's not my fault when they hurt me or let me get hurt or were too checked out to even realize I had any needs. I get it. But I'm so angry that it has made me into a person who can't feel the generosity I act out with them. I choose to be generous, but I can't feel like I want anything to do with them.
I hate myself. I hate being like this. I hate that every time a little or I connect deeply with T, I feel this deep betrayal inside, because I couldn't do it with the people I was supposed to. I know I've got it switched up a bit, who betrayed who. I can even trace that switch to a SPECIFIC accusation over and over in my childhood from my mom regarding my connecting with my grandma...that made our lack of a relationship everyone's fault but hers. But, it just feels like I'm bad.
This has gone on so long that I do not have a single memory of wanting to see or be near my mother more recent than first grade, I think...and even that was just wanting to go to work with her so I wouldn't have to go to school. With my dad, I made it to maybe 12. Since those times, I can only remember feeling like time with them was something I was giving, something I owed due to their giving me life, something I allowed so that they wouldn't have to feel bad that they created someone who couldn't love them.
Since that time, all I could want was to either need nobody or to replace them with someone better. Neither of those things work, at all. I have been making do with the first one for about 20 years at least. T has given me a lot of things I never had in our relationship, but I know it doesn't stop that I didn't have them when I was supposed to, when they were most needed. I know it won't ever be the same as having that. I guess this is grieving? But, I don't feel like I'm grieving what I didn't have. I feel like I'm grieving who I can never be. I can't be the person who is going to weep at their parents' funeral over the loss of a deep, meaningful relationship. I will be the person who weeps (or avoids weeping) over the impossibility of ever having it, over the regret of not being able to get myself past it. They didn't earn connecting with me, by any stretch of the imagination, but I want to be a person who has grace.
T, a few weeks ago, described a moment, working with his dad during or after college, where he realized, "Hey, this is my dad," and felt connected, despite feeling otherwise for all the preceeding years. It made me angry, not because I want it and can't have it...but because I can't WANT it. No matter how much I want to want it, I just can't want anything to do with these people. So, every time I make myself, it is very heavy. Even the idea of them wanting to connect with me, of them being proud of me (which I know, objectively, they are), of them even THINKING about me is repellant.
If my daughter felt this way about me, I would want to die. It is AWFUL. I feel awful. I feel like the worst. How did I get so unforgiving? How do I make myself want a relationship with them? Is it really beyond fixable, even if they try really hard? Is all I get to have pretending for their sake that I want them around, so I don't hurt them the way that I was hurt by being rejected and abandoned? So that I don't have one more reason to hate myself?
It's one of those days when I wonder whether I am a brave enough person for therapy...