Seeing the Pattern: My Journey Through Family Estrangement

A few months ago my sister — who I sadly have no relationship with now because of her choices — emailed me to let me know that my daughter is having another baby. A boy. Due in December. She might as well have told me that Kate Middleton was pregnant again. I felt that level of detachment, which — trust me! — is good*. This is my daughter’s second child, and I found out about both pregnancies via third parties. Not nice, and an alienating tactic intended to be as hurtful as possible on the part of my daughter for any perceived or real slights I may or may not have inflicted on her.

I’ve always been of the (probably delusional) opinion that karma will sort this all out. If not in this life, then certainly the next one. They will get their comeuppance! All of them! They won’t get away with their shitty behaviour! But then I got to thinking: what if I’m the one who’s getting my comeuppance? What if karma is paying me back for my shitty behaviour? I have no idea what I did in a past life that would warrant such a bitch-slapping — I can only go over what I’ve done (or not) in this life. And while I believe I’m essentially a good person, what if my actions in this lifetime — deliberate or otherwise — are catching up with me now? What if it’s me who is being bitch-slapped by karma for family members I’ve abandoned or become estranged from? In fact, that was the original title of this essay.

Having said that, abandonment and estrangement seems to run in my family’s DNA. My mother always felt that she was abandoned by her own family when she was sent to live with her Auntie Lil, my grandfather’s sister, at a young age. From what I can work out from connecting the disparate dots — that is, conversations with cousins over the years because my mother was not at all forthcoming about this aspect of her childhood — this sense of abandonment scarred her and defined her as her life unfolded. Who she married. How she parented. Why she had affairs. Who she befriended. She was essentially a person who was in pain. Hurt people hurt people, and my mother hurt practically everyone she had a close relationship with: husbands, lovers, children. I was hurt by my mother: physically, emotionally, spiritually. She was not a safe, nurturing space. I have tried not to let our relationship define me, but of course it has underscored and impacted my life in ways that are still being revealed. So it’s in this light that I examine the relationships I’ve abandoned or become estranged, and which perhaps is predicated on an entrenched patterns I can’t unsee.

My father

When I was four years old, I remember standing on the front steps of my family home and my father asking me whether I wanted to live with either him or my mother. Of course, I said my mother, because what did I know? I was a young child. I don’t remember my mother or my father saying they were splitting up, but I guess that was the subtext. It was never discussed with my sister or me. Years later, I gleaned from my mother that my father was an alcoholic and that their marriage had become untenable. There were stories of him throwing spiders at me. I have no recollection of that, and I’m not unduly afraid of spiders, so can’t attest to the veracity of these stories. Maybe it was my mother’s way of turning him into a villain in my eyes and the eyes of others. Who knows?

The fact is that my father left my sister and me with the real villain: my mother. He knew what she was like, and he abandoned us anyway. Her vicious streak towards me wouldn’t appear for another four or five years and it was when the marriage to her second husband — with whom she’d been having an affair while still married to my father — failed. More on that below. Apart from a few visits to my father’s relatives in Adelaide during school holidays when I was nine or ten — my sister and I caught the train from Mt Gambier — I had nothing to do with my father’s side of the family. It was like he didn’t exist.

In my mid-twenties while I was at university, I got curious. Who was my father? Was I like him, because I certainly wasn’t anything like my mother. So I searched for him because I’d heard stories that he was living in Adelaide. This was back in the eighties and it was a matter of opening the White Pages and looking him up. No such thing as privacy back then. I sent him a letter, and he called me and I visited him. It really was that simple. He opened the door and I was greeted by a tall, handsome, well-built man who looked a lot like me. I don’t remember what we talked about, or if we even hugged hello or good-bye, but once that visit was over, I didn’t go back. Our paths crossed again via my sister, who later also reached out to him, and invited him to barbecues and the like at her house. I remember thinking having a relationship with him now I was grown was too little, too late. I needed him when I was young to shield me and protect us from my mother, and on a subconscious level, I don’t think I ever forgave him for abandoning my sister and I, so I in turn abandoned him. My sister still sees my father, and invites him to family events, so I guess my daughter has met him. I haven’t seen him in years.

My step-father

When my mother’s second marriage failed, unlike the situation with my biological father, my sisters (my mother had another child with her second husband) and I were required (court ordered?) to see my step-father every fortnight on a Sunday for access visits. I was a teenager by then and found the whole thing excruciating. I did not want to go, but I had no choice. It’s not that he was a bad man, but like my father, he didn’t shield me from my mother’s viciousness, which had surfaced by then and was unleashed on me by beatings for the most minor of infractions. I remember he pretty much stayed out of the way, like a shadow — he was suffering from mental health issues and was later (again from memory) diagonosed with schizophrenia. He was a shift worker so I didn’t see a lot of him, and when I did, I remember feeling awkward; it was a weird thing to experience. You can’t manufacture or engineer a connection, although I do have pictures of him being present with my sister and I before his daughter with my mother (my half-sister) was born.

As soon as I was able to, I stopped going on those visits with my step-father. It’s not that these visits were bad per se, but they were awkward. Uncomfortable. His car and house reeked of stale cigaratte smoke. I’m sure he tried his best: taking us to the movies, to the show, for drives to Port MacDonnell, for ice cream, to the Lakes, but I wanted to hang out with my friends, listening to music. When I stopped going on visits with him, I didn’t see him at all apart from one occasion where he was at the same party I was. I spotted him, ghost-like, in a corner and almost died of embarrassment. What was an old bloke like that doing at a party that oozed cool, young people? My step-father definitely wasn’t cool. Or young. I didn’t speak to him and slunk away as quickly as I could and didn’t tell anyone he was my step-father.

He died alone when I was 26 or 27, and by that time, I hadn’t seen him for 10 years. He had adopted my sister and I when he married my mother so I bore his name, not my biological father’s. When he died, he left everything to my half-sister. I didn’t contest the will because I wasn’t interested, but I did change my name by deed poll. I dropped his surname, and my middle name — Lee — became my surname. I figured I had no connection or obligation to him, financial or emotional, so why keep his name? I changed my daughter’s name too.

My mother

I have written ad infinitum about my mother. I tried for years to win her love and approval, but I failed. I thought it was me — that there was something wrong with me. It took me years to work out that it was not me. By then the damage was done. I still had a relationship with her well into my forties, however. I’m pretty sure she practised a regime of intermittent reinforcement, probably unintentionally, but who knows? I remember calling her when I broke up with The Italian around 2003. I remember when my daughter was 16 or so and I was giving her driving lessons, we’d visit my mother in her various places of abode. By this time she’d moved to Adelaide from Mt Gambier and she’d bought and sold a couple of places in Semaphore, and then moved to a retirement village. That was in 2006. I’d do Christmas Day with her and my sisters and their children (and ex- or current partners), my daughter in tow. The last Christmas I remember we were all together was in 2008 at my half-sister’s place in Greenwith. I think. I have a photo, but I can’t find it. I can’t remember why I stopped visiting or seeing her, I just did. Fizzled out. Ran out of steam. My daughter continued to see my mother, and I didn’t stop her. In fact, even knowing our troubled history, my daughter remained loyal to my mother until her death.

I always felt close to my mother’s parents and her siblings, even though I was one of a myriad of grandchildren and nieces and nephews. My grandfather died of emphysema aged at 80, when I was 22. I was devastated. My grandmother died in 1996 aged 90. I didn’t feel her loss as strongly because by that time, I’d had my daughter and was living my own life. The last time I saw my grandmother was when she was visiting my mother, who I was also visiting. My mother had relocated to Adelaide by this time and my daughter had not yet been born. My grandparents always made me feel welcome and loved and I enjoyed visiting them and spending time with them. I always wondered what they knew about my mother and her treatment of her children, but I heard on the family grapevine that my grandfather was (probably) and alcoholic and I also heard stories of domestic violence against my grandmother. I don’t know how true these stories are. I had good relationships with my cousins — until I moved away from Mt Gambier. I lost contact with most of them as I made my own way in the world, and the relationships just fizzled out.

My half (other) sister

The last conversation I had with my half-sister was just after my mother died. She told me — via Facebook Messenger — that I was a disgrace and a shit person because (apparently) I wasn’t supporting my daughter who was (apparently) devastated by the death of my mother and how dare I bring up my mother’s (alleged) treatment of me at such a heart-breaking time. That was in 2017. My daughter still sees my half-sister, and invited to her wedding — something that we argued about in the lead-up. My half-sister didn’t end up going, but this argument soured things even further between us because I (reasonably) felt my daughter should be loyal to me. She (also reasonably) felt that I had no business telling her who she should and shouldn’t see.

The truth is that there was eight years between my half-sister and I and my mother favoured her and kept her separate from us, her half-sisters. My mother constantly told me that my half-sister was “special” and had to be treated with kid gloves because of her father’s (my step-father’s) mental health issues and the assumption that she would inherit his schizophrenia. I don’t know whether she did or she didn’t, but I do know she has been on medication from time-to-time throughout her life.

By the time I moved out of home, at 17, my half-sister was nine and I had nothing in common with her. Our paths crossed in adulthood but she moved to Sydney for work (she was in the military), of which my mother was immensely proud (I applied for the Navy at the end of high school but failed the Officer’s test). She ended up back in Adelaide, and I tried to form a relationship with her, particularly as she had two children (and later a third) and I wanted my daughter to know her cousins, and have a close relationship with them, as she had with my other sister’s daughter. These relationships are still intact, even as my own relationship with my daughter failed.

Aroound 2009, my relationship with her fizzled out. I think it was because I felt I was making all the effort and she was not particularly interested in bothering with me, so I gave up. I have spoken to her in years, apart from when my mother died and I received that charming message from her. I rarely think about her, and am indifferent to her.

My daughter’s father

I have written about the circumstances of breaking up with my daughter’s father. I now wonder if I made the right decision to erase him from our lives. I made this decision to protect my daughter from a less than desirable situation that she had no choice about. I grew up in a dysfunctional environment and I didn’t want that for her. I wanted stability, love, security for her.

Given her yearning from a young age to belong to a large, extended family, maybe she would have been more content and satisfied in her relationship with me if I was juxtaposed against her father and his family. Would she have had more empathy for me? Would she have been drawn to her (now) husband’s family? This is pure specualtion, of course — and I can’t undo the decisions I’ve made. All I know is that carving him from our lives was the only sane decision I could make at the time, and it was the correct one, although I did tell my daughter that when she was an adult, she had my permission to contact her father — he is very easy to find — but not to involve me. I also made it a point not to badmouth him in front of her, so if she did pursue a relationship with him, it would start from an objective basis. As far as I know, she never did contact him.

My daughter

My daughter has rejected me and actively distanced herself from me at various times across her life. When she was two, thirteen, nineteen, twenty-one and the entire time I was in Vietnam, and when I returned. I didn’t see the pattern then, but I do now. When she was two, she wanted to go home with a little girl and her father who she’d spent the afternoon playing with at the pool. Of course, I said no. When she was thirteen, she called The Italian, after we had broken up, wanting to live with him. He declined. At nineteen, she spent Mother’s Day with her (now) husband’s family. When she arrived home that evening, I told her I couldn’t believe that she’d spent the day with people who didn’t give birth to her and certainly didn’t raise her. At twenty-one, right after her party, she swore at me for the first time. I wasn’t fucking going to the after party, she screamed, a ball of fury. In Vietnam, she barely contacted me and I had to plead with her to answer messages. Even when I was hospitalised for 10 days with my liver failing, she didn’t check on me. In 2020, after I’d been back in Australia for three months, at dinner with my sister and niece, she announced that she grew up in a concentration camp. Well, hardly. And this was the first time I’d seen her in three years.

She is now in an environment (her husband’s family) that celebrates and encourges her non-relationship with me. It’s convenient for them because they have my daughter and grandchildren all to themselves (even though her mother-in-law said to me at the wedding that she hoped I didn’t think they’d taken her from me and it didn’t register with me at the time because how could I possibly know how things wouldn have turned out?). I often say, jokingly, that my daughter has married into a cult — although my reading and research has proven that this is actually insightful and correct. She is rewarded for her compliance by being made to feel special. Unfortunately, special is not how I make her feel, and she has made that clear.

I am not confident that I will have a relationship with my daughter moving forward. However, the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth) says that it is in the children’s best interests to have a relationship with their grandparents, and that is what I am pursuing. It will be a long, arduous process, but one I am prepared for, thanks to my (almost finished) law degree.

*As the due date got closer, though, I did want to know.

About the #12Essays2024 Challenge

I haven’t given my blog much love or attention over the last couple of years. I wasn’t in the headspace to write, at least not the personal essays I’m known for. But in the words of George Costanza: I’m back, baby. I’ve made a commitment to write one essay a month in 2024 — a slimmed down version of the #26Essays2017 challenge I set for myself in the first year I was in Vietnam. I will be experimenting with structure and form, so you might see some weird stuff. Please stick with me. Some essays will be short, and others will be split into parts because they are long. Maybe I’ll end up publishing them into a collection. Who knows?


Image credit:SzaboJanos from Pixabay

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