Trigger warning: Everyone knows unaccountable and destructive people are everywhere, but far fewer want to believe those people are parents. This post is intended to drive that point home. I am not here to dredge up the past- I am here to seal it.
In February of 2023, I started writing ‘My Mother’s Shadow Sister‘. My dad knew about it, and verbally encouraged it. He said something to the effect of “it’s going to be uncomfortable, but do it.” This, after a few years of consistent contact again, working on my van and camping out in his driveway, Coors Lights around a front yard fire, praise over the mileage I’d trained myself to ride alone.
I told him days prior that the essay was about to be published so he could prepare himself.
“Be attentive to the repercussions that might cause for your future. The story you tell is from your perspective and not deemed the whole truth,” he texted me back.
And then it became the cornerstone of this blog’s themes on November 3rd, 2023.
He stopped responding to my texts or calls frequently. When he did, he’d abruptly end them instead of following the “Midwest goodbye” blueprint we were used to. In spring of 2024, my van’s fuel pump went out for the third time on record, and I called him three times in six hours to ask for guidance on fixing it in the parking lot at my job where I was stranded until further notice. I got no answer.
I remembered when this happened the first time; I broke down without warning an hour away from his house around 10:00 at night. I called him while I waited for my roadside assistance to find an available tow truck that took hours to come. He said, “I hope you can get it figured out.”
And then when the van had to be taken from Missouri to Kentucky for a full engine replacement, I asked if he could come get me to pick it up if I paid for gas and lunch. He said, “I don’t think I can do that because I don’t get anything out of it.”
Those moments, his uncharacteristic distance over the previous months, and other examples of “handle it yourself” rushed my system as I texted him. I confronted his silence, and he confessed.
“I don’t appreciate you saying mean things about your mother online. I have feelings too.”
After a back and forth, he blocked me.
I hadn’t heard from him in 15 months until yesterday, at my new number he had never been given.
There is information in the fact that when I saw his number on my screen, I started to shake.
Verizon was the carrier of my old number, but not this one.
_____
Mom and Dad,
The harbinger of endings is to strip decades of denial down to a “misunderstanding” after over a year of silence you imposed. And you say it’s not the whole truth- like you can lie to me about the source of information I intentionally withheld for my own wellbeing and still behave like you’re credible.
A week ago, I told someone else who knows you that at 30 years old I am finally on the threshold of going to college, something you made impossible for me at the traditional time. But it’s not just a degree I’m going for- it’s a pursuit of technical knowledge and credential for the field of psychology I already have studied from the inside out since I was a child.
To write and speak publicly for those who have shown me they do want to hear me.
And not for those who pretend to.
But through the pain of having to write this final ledger, I am grateful to you still. I still love you for the part of you that did show up for me. I deeply miss those nights around the fire when I thought you might actually be capable of owning all that I had to suffer. I noticed when you started to write your texts with more care and flair than you used to- for a moment I thought you’d sought to speak to me in my own language.
You and Mom both are to credit for how beautifully overwhelming real love is now that I’ve found it. Because of you, nobody is capable of lying to me for long anymore, and that stays on the list of the greatest things anyone has ever done for me.
You’ll receive a copy of this letter via certified mail as a reminder when you want to revisit who I really am, and so you can’t say you never received it.
And after that, you will only ever hear my voice from this platform. I will stay right here for you.
Sincerely,
-Genna
P.S. I told you after I wrote Papa’s eulogy, “Please don’t make me write yours too soon.”
You let me down, again.
_____
In my notes, I have this passage that I wrote for another piece and removed because it interrupted the hope I had in that post:
“But there was no room for connection and truth in that space. There was no compromise anymore, or ever. I would have had to buy a relationship by committing to silence, and I am just not wired for that. I would rather live with the absence of parents than the death of integrity, and so it’s been a year since I’ve tried to reach out. And without some serious shift, that even then I’d have to analyze, I will continue to count the years. My parents’ use silence to punish, distort truth, and erode self-trust. Any attempts at reconciliation after periods of no-contact have been on account of me stepping forward first, and that’s where I keep my power. Yet still, I grieve. I grieve that where there should be a primal bond, there is a void, lifelong and lightyears wide. I suffer more that my two siblings are still stuck in that house, mostly silent and unengaged with the world, and I wonder if it’s because they saw what happened to me when I wasn’t.“
But because I wasn’t, I am here. And I am so thankful to be here. Yesterday I realized I had done all that was required to stay here except one thing- say goodbye.
“Genna, we can’t come riding in on a white horse and save you,” the counselor said in the family session in the trashed living room when I was 16.
But I could.
And to my brother and sister, if you see this,
the door is always open for you. It isn’t your fault.
_____
I am going to take a brief hiatus from Sunday posts until I can finally finish ‘The Microcosm’. There is a lot to grieve right now, but thank you for showing me I don’t have to do that in silence anymore.
I will the machine. 