A STREAM OF THOUGHTS ABOUT MY EX IN LAWS.
Do I hate them? Maybe. Is it rational? That's to be debated.
My therapist told me to journal my feelings but she didn’t specify the medium…so am I compromising my progress if I press send on the newsletter and let the chips fall where they may? Maybe. Do I care? Not at all.
Loving y’all was easy, I was desperate to be a part of the inner circle of your cool kids group and while our first meeting went horrendously I guess it was the reminder I needed that the red flags were always there…in neon but boy were they pretty. I can remember sitting a local burger joint, waiting for my classic burger, medium well (I’ve since respected the cooking recs for red meat but I digress) and 2/4 siblings peppered me with questions and none of them positive. It was, “his ex girlfriend gave us presents. we liked her best”, “we don’t get you and our brother”, “meh, he can do better”. And while I took it on the chin and smiled widely at your brother because I loved him I remember how each barb struck me. Imagine, a girl with severe abandonment issues has found the most stable relationship she has ever experienced and the biggest hurdle she has to jump over is his sisters. You stick it out because you know deep in your bones this relationship is meant to last forever, that once these girls like you it’ll all be smooth sailing. Oh sweet child, if only you knew that those same people you fought like hell to keep tossed you out like yesterdays trash the moment their brother said he was done.
I think that level of abandonment at the hands of a family you chose is always the hardest betrayal. The betrayal of being loved and then being forgotten. I still think about it some days, how quickly I was cast out of a family I felt lucky to have, a family I spent years cultivating, a family I spent years loving…and then shocked at how easily I had been exiled. How the “Hi Breana” turned into silence, the phone stopped ringing and god forbid we see each other in public, it’s as if I was a blip in their life, a fleeting moment. A moment to them and a lifetime to me. My therapist often asks, “why do you miss them”, and the answer is simple, 5 year old Bre is still inside me begging to be loved and finally chosen. That girl thought she had found her happy ending and it was indeed an ending, just not the one she had ever prepared for. Maybe it’s not that I miss them…maybe its more that I don’t know how to put something to bed when there are days I’m still wondering why. Why I was so easy to leave behind. Why I am right back where I started. When I will be able to let go of begging for the people who have told me in every way that matters that I am not welcome to choose me.
I don’t hate them anymore, and I don’t know if I ever hated them or if I was so angry that I had allowed them to break my heart when I had given it to them so willingly. I guess this is another conversation to be had in therapy.