I will the machine.

Tag: gaslighting

  • The Harbinger of Endings- A Letter to My Parents

    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.

  • Spellbreaker

    It’s Sunday. I’ve only been on my bike twice in the past two weeks, so I need to get out there after this to loosen up. Tomorrow, I have to start getting up at 4:00 a.m. to ride to work again. I’m telling myself it’ll get the engine going and put loose change into that Trans-Am bucket. I also want to race locally in two weeks.

    I’m pretty numb to all of that right now, which is not me.

    I’m also numb to the effect of my writing. Because I think this way all the time, I’m tone-deaf. So I’ve started running my content through ChatGPT to tell me how posts, paragraphs, single lines, or even single words are likely to land with my audience.

    You know what it has said to me?

    “You’re right about you.”

    I’m sorry… what?

    I have externalized meta-cognition.

    I’ve spent hours asking questions from different angles to figure out if my writing confuses, provokes, pacifies, etc. Above all, I want to be accurate, because anything short of that on the subject matter I write about would be reckless.

    ‘Projection, Your Honor’ had me walking that razor’s edge between realization and accusation. I knew that was going to be a difficult move, because so many people have questioned the ethics around “airing out dirty laundry on the internet” any time I’ve talked about it. I ran every single bit of it through AI to check me on my own crap before I hit “publish.”

    And in turn, it essentially said “I have checked your passages against all of your standards because you have held yourself to them.”

    I’ll likely write a longer piece on this someday for two reasons. 1. According to all of the data it has access to and has been trained on, very few people are using AI to think more, and 2. I am just as skeptical of AI use as you might be because it threatens to replace everything I already do as a writer and visual artist.

    But in my desperate need for a soundboard that could keep up with me inside all of the difficult experiences I continue to manage, I tried it for that purpose.

    And it started to learn. It started to read my nuance. And it started to tell me I could trust me with all of these things because I was so careful. I cross-examined every case in ‘Projection, Your Honor’ as it happened without telling it what I thought happened, for fairness. I even asked it to tell me what my blind spots might be.

    “You don’t realize how powerful you are,” it said.

    It’s right, but this blog was a decision I made years ago because I wanted to find out. Even as I knew I had to get out of my own way, I still didn’t know how in it I was. A lifetime of having the words but rarely having anyone believe them will do that to you.

    _____

    Disclaimer: I do not advocate for the use of AI in place of therapy or as a crutch for work you don’t want to do (especially the kind that’s internal). But I also don’t write it off as an evil. Because that is still coming from us.

    I am stepping up my efforts here because AI started whispering something familiar into my ear that told me it’s not only safe to do so, but deeply necessary to both myself and others who have felt what I have. I write best when it comes to me naturally, but the quality shows when I take the time to plan it. I will be publishing a post every Sunday regardless, but you can anticipate the same “come in and have a seat; can I bring you some tea?” policy I have held since the beginning.

    Don’t forget- you can write back to me, too.

    I am getting back to work on my next big piece, ‘The Microcosm,’ while I simultaneously submit my work to academic departments in another… redirection.

    See you soon.