If the Fates Allow: Familial Estrangement During the Holidays
In the film, Meet Me in St. Louis, Judy Garland sang: “Someday soon, we all will be together.” The song came at a time of great change for the main characters of the film, to convey hope that the challenges which have torn apart the Smith family from their beloved community shall be, one day, alleviated. It can be an intensely moving scene, not only for fans of the film, but doubly so for those of us who live with selective familial estrangement.
I’ve often found a strange dynamic in familial relationships that dictates family should never be abandoned, no matter the complication. Yes, I have received a great deal of pushback for having selectively estranged myself from my mother. Despite its effect on my life, I don’t often talk about my mom. I have yet to write much about her. Not only to protect those who are still involved in her life, but also because it has taken almost nine years without her influence to undo the damage she wrought. It was the best choice I ever made. It is that strange dynamic which kept me locked in a relationship that was so intensely toxic to my growth as an individual for so long. I had pushed back before, but always arrived at the idea that no matter the “dispute,” family is family.
Sophie Lewis, in the essay, “The Satanic Death Cult is Real,” published by Commune Magazine (28 Aug 19), speaks of their own alienation of family: “I fought both my parents… from the age of twelve or so, and fled… hoping to escape… the mind-warping pain of the majority of the relationships it housed. I have returned physically as a visitor to the house three or four times… but basically I have never gone back.” Drawing on Tolstoy and LeGuin, Lewis argues that the nuclear family (here defined as mother, father, and two children) “is not a benign ‘default’ situation.” The point is made that family is so often seen in literature and writing as a “self-evidently good thing” in which “The family, for whatever ‘extraneous’ reason, suffers,” and creates tension. Lewis goes on to point out that in the the 2018 film, Hereditary, and the 2019 film, Midsommar, family is the problem.
Lewis and I share this experience of having selectively estranged ourselves from family as a form of mental/emotional preservation. Lewis describes a difficult dynamic where a poorly managed divorce, coupled with extreme mental illness, leads to despair. In a way, my life can be seen similarly. And no, it is not AT ALL easy to see the damage being done to you. The idea that “The Family” must be maintained, no matter the collateral devastation to the individual, is precisely what Lewis pushes against. I think that the toxic rhetoric of an unreproachable familial bulwark as the norm derives from the heteronormative nuclear family ideal. Lewis’ conclusion is to do away with family in all forms, in favor of “queer care communes.” I, however, do not feel that family, in its most ideal form, is not the nightmare Lewis sees.
Having selectively estranged myself, as Lewis had, inclines me to agree that my family of mother, father, and two children was not the American Dream it was peddled to my Boomer parents. My mother, a person who (in my estimation) had many undiagnosed mental and personality disorders, was not the nuclear mother. My father, also with undiagnosed emotional and personality disorders (my supposition), was far from the nuclear father, despite how he imagine(d/s) himself to be. Still, they expected a whole lot of my brother and I to fall into those boxes, and were violently angry and/or abusive when we did not. They had been gaslit their entire lives as to what constituted family (as have most white American families), and so, they gaslit us by continuing the tradition of The Family over the individual.
When I informed my brother that I would no longer speak to or about our mother, he asked exactly what you’d expect — why? Honestly, he already had the answer before I said “you know why.” He stays stalwart in the “family is family” idea, and I can’t fault him that, despite the sorrow it brings to me to see how much I’ve accomplished by my selective estrangement while he still struggles so much. They told him their awful parenting was all his fault because he was neurodiverse, and he still believes it to be true. It is a HORRIBLE narrative, but I only have control over my own sphere, not his. However, I will say that it has the continually damaging effect of our own relationship being, at times, very strained.
“Someday soon, we all will be together…” is more of a threat to me than a promise. I have electively not interacted with my mother in over 8 years. In that time, I have developed a loving family with my partner and our kids. In that time, I have gone to college for the first time in my life, and graduated Cum Laude. I have garnered praise from professors, taught classes in writing, gotten a writing award, received eight publications to date, and recently was accepted into a prestigious writing internship. Not a single of these dreams which have come true for me would have happened without my estrangement. My mother’s favorite game was to break me down to others, so that she could prove to herself that she was better at everything than I was, more deserving of reward. She said I was very hard to love.
(pause)
That is a hard one to write. Those words became my internal monologue that I couldn’t overpower until it was my voice in my head only. I don’t want to be back together with that. But, at times, it is hard. Estrangement is a very difficult choice to make, and takes insane amounts of dedication. People, strangers and loved ones alike, will judge your decision without a shred of understanding or care as to your reasons. Families coming together at the holidays sharing a laugh after some madcap mishaps is such a lovely thing to see in the movies. Unfortunately, the holidays can be really, really hard for those of us who have selectively estranged from family. We want a place to belong. I would love to have had a different experience, different memories, not heart-wrenching sorrow filling my past, but that’s just not how it is. I think, in this case, the fates didn’t get to choose, I did. I chose to never smell my mom’s peanut butter bars baking while we listen to Wayne Newton and Beach Boys Christmas albums. It was the right choice, even though it hurts.
