It is a long story, a complicated story with many twists and turns and many heros and villains, and some who oscillate between both roles all the time, fluidly, almost as though they are choosing an outfit. It’s a life story, and everything is redacted to protect the guilty as much as the innocent.
I grew up in a family where discussing our feelings wasn’t the top of our list - where keeping social connections alive wasn’t built into the fiber of our DNA. Where grudges could be held for years, repeatedly and without remorse. Communication, as you might imagine, wasn’t our strong suit, and I would argue it still isn’t. But let me not get ahead of this story by jumping to the present.
I was young. I was stupid. And I made a decision which I regret deeply - to get married before I ever really knew even myself, let alone the other person enough to know they were right or wrong for me. I didn’t see the signs of what was to come - I just knew I wanted to go forward head first.
Time passed and mistakes were made all around. I pushed away my family, my friends, everyone in my life who wasn’t in some way deemed worthy. I allowed this to happen, even though it started out not being explicitly forbidden. Eventually, other friends started getting married too and a doubt crept into my mind about whether this choice had been the right one for me. When my daughter was born, I was thrilled. I tried my best to form a good relationship with her and between her and those I had been pushing away for years. Then finally u couldn’t take it anymore and made the decision that I should have years before - I got a divorce in order to move on from a situation that was completely not right for me in so many different ways.
I’m not here to point fingers and assign blame. I freely admit I held responsibility too for the situation but I found myself shattered and broken and with very little support system around me. I sought therapy seriously for the first time in my life (as opposed to having it thrust upon me years before). I wanted to identify the problems and solve them. That’s my nature and I knew I had to fix myself.
Through that therapy, I grew. I came to terms with my past, what had gone wrong and how, and knew I needed to work on fixing it all. Then the most miraculous thing happened. I met the girl of my dreams. All the while, relationships with my family required work. I tried, perhaps not hard enough, to heal those and to establish the new normal with my daughter in this context. As time went on, my daughter met my girlfriend, and my girlfriend moved in. I thought things were going well.
As time went on, I proposed to the woman of my dreams - and she said yes! I was over the moon. I also thought my daughter was, albeit less excited, still excited about it as well. And at first, things continued to seem ok overall. A lot of toxicity, presumably originating from the ex wife, kept creeping into the times I had my daughter over.
Then my daughter exploded. Her pent up emotions at her young age came out in a very hateful discussion with me. It was a breach of trust - trust that she was telling me the truth about how she feels, was open to talking to me, was happy, and so much more. And I felt I couldn’t trust her anymore - especially after this young child decided to act fake like a teenager someday might be able to. It all seemed like the toxic shit was coming in from the ex wife and that environment and there was nothing I could do about it.
So with all of this I made the decision to exclude my daughter from the wedding. It tore me to pieces inside and came at significant cost emotionally, and I knew the relationship was going to be damaged by it too but I hoped the damage would be less than having my daughter at an event she didn’t want to attend and couldn’t handle emotionally because - in her words - she didn’t want me to get married and it was all too much.
All the while, my familial relationships were still damaged. I had reached out a few times, perhaps not as many as I should have, and this entire thing added more strain and artificial drama to the situation. My estranged sister threw salt into the wound of the broken relationship I’ve had for years with her. And I second guessed a decision to exclude my daughter that I thought I had made peace with.
This is where I find myself today. In the midst of rebuilding and building some new things but feeling the pain and suffering I cannot shake away.
I will explore everything here.
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