Estrangement & Christmas

The first time I did not spend time with my parents for Christmas was in 2012. I had recently moved to Colorado, and my parents did not approve of the move. At that time, I was the only kid to leave California and they did not seem to understand why I would want to do something new and independent. I was told I was doing something really dumb and impulsive even though I had a job and a house lined up months in advance. A few months later when I visited my family for Thanksgiving, my mother had a really violent reaction to me the day after I went out drinking with my cousins. She screamed at me in front of the whole family about my alcohol use and irresponsibility, and made me cry for a long time. It was all so irrational and disproportionate to what had happened, especially when my siblings and cousins had behaved in the same way, that it felt like an extremely personal attack.

After the Thanksgiving incident I wrote my mother a letter apologizing and emphasizing that I do not need to have my behavior and choices policed. I told her that I wanted to be supported as an adult child and that I wanted her to voice her concerns in a nonviolent way. After a week or so I never got a response, and when I asked my father if she had received the letter he said she had but had chosen not to open it. I felt hopeless and empty. The only tool I had was communication and personal advocacy; so her choice not to engage with my letter was a pretty clear message that she was not interested in how I felt about our relationship, or in changing anything about it.

It was really painful but I made the decision to stay in Colorado that Christmas. I felt the need to assert my independence and to send a message that I would not tolerate being treated like a second-class person or part of the family. I did not realize it at the time, but it was the first step in estrangement. That was nine years ago, and it would still take another 4 years for me to call it quits on the relationship. It was the first time I would feel that type of emotional free-fall, a sensation that would continue to happen over the next 4 or 5 years. For the next few weeks until Christmas and New Year’s Eve passed I felt like there had been a blanket pulled out from under me. In retrospect I was likely dissociated for a number of weeks trying to grasp why a parent would be so obviously unwilling to listen to my feelings and perspective. My mother and I had never had a harmonious relationship, but this was the first time her behavior had really struck me as violent and wrong.

So much abuse occurring within families is out of sight of the community. This keeps young people forming perspectives on the world from understanding healthy interpersonal dynamics — there is nobody outside the family to tell them what is happening is wrong or that they deserve better. I had developed a reality in which it was acceptable for my mother to tell me I am a slut, to roll her eyes at my feelings, to invalidate every accomplishment, and to have violent reactions when I asked questions or did something wrong. It is a really odd sensation to realize you are being abused, and to make a choice to leave the situation. In so many ways it always seemed like it would be easier to swallow my pride and self-respect and just bite my tongue during family gatherings, to keep my mouth shut because no matter what I say or do it will be critiqued and pulled apart. It is so taboo to actively decide not to spend time with family during holidays. In the U.S. it is a romantic and nostalgic time for enjoying one another’s company, sharing love through food and gifts, and one of the only times when large families might be together throughout the year. There is pressure from both inside the family and outside from the greater culture to perform as a loving child, parent, sibling, or partner during this time.

After that Christmas I tried to spend one more Christmas with my parents until I was finally done putting pressure on myself to attend holidays with them.The first Christmas after I had formally estranged myself — I sent my mother an email telling her I needed a break and not to contact me anymore — I had daily breakdowns throughout the Christmas week. I was staying with a friend’s family in Utah and fielding the questions to so many strangers about my family’s traditions and why I was not with them were hard to answer gracefully. Do I say that my parents are abusive? Should I just cry in front of everyone so they stop asking me these uncomfortable questions?

This type of heartbreak is one of the most lonely I have ever experienced. I made the choice not to see my family, so why should I even be sad? Nine years ago, it seemed like I was the only person in the world making the decision to be apart from my family, and there were so few people that knew about my situation to its fullest extent. I had nowhere to look for validation, nobody to tell me I was doing the best thing I could for myself. All I had were persistent emails from my mother telling me how wrong I was and how we had so many fun and happy times together. That week in Utah I cried in bathrooms, the laundry room, basically anywhere I could find solitude. I journaled about the feeling of being alone in this world. I knew in my rational mind that Christmas was as meaningless to me as any other day. I was in a beautiful home with a friend and her family that had so graciously invited me in. But here I was watching a family that loved one another open presents under a tree they had decorated together. Each of those first few years was different, and the feelings got less intense over time, but at the beginning of the estrangement it would start slowly when the first Santa hats and candy canes showed up in drug stores. It would start as a light melancholy that anticipated the deep depression to come. Throughout December each week felt heavier until the week of Christmas when it would crash down hard. I spent so many Christmas Eves sobbing and dreading the next day. It is a tough time to find support unless you are with people, because people are occupied with their own celebrations and loved ones. I am outgoing enough to find my own group to visit with during the holidays, but once they were gone and I was alone again I was likely to cry myself to sleep.

I felt compelled to write about the specific feeling of estrangement during the holidays because this year I only cried once. I cried because I missed my sister — we had just gone on vacation together and we had not been talking as much as usual — not because I wanted to be with my parents. It made me so grateful for my growth and for the chosen family I have built in my hometown of Seattle. It is okay to miss abusive family members and the nostalgia of how Christmas or any other holiday or family event used to make you feel. It is okay not miss any of it and to build out your own special or not-so-special day. Before asserting my independence through estrangement I had never realized how an emotional journey really looked or felt. There are waves, peaks, valleys, and possibly plateaus within all relationships, but the relationship to family is electrified by culture and our chemical connections to one another. Shifts, transitions, and modulations in relationships are not always smooth and it is because people do not like change, especially not when it is close to the heart and requires being open and vulnerable. It is hard not to take the violence, sadness, disappointment, or disgust that might come from the personally when the shift is in your own best interest.