A post in which I have done it again

After worrying over it all morning, and fielding a call from Eve, I sent another 'nuclear email' today:

Mom and Dad,

This is not going to go well. I know that ahead of time. I had thought that maybe I could just ‘fade away’ a little, but of course you noticed, and that would be the coward’s way out anyway. Then too there is the fact that I feel that you deserve some explanation. You won’t agree with me. You may not even understand me. But hopefully you’ll know that I tried, and I’m being as honest as I can. I’m doing this by email because if I tried to do it in person, it would just end up another shouting match/fight, and I just can’t take another one.

I have really wrestled with myself over the right thing to do here. I’m sending this to both of you, because it is both of you involved. I don’t want one of you blaming the other.

On the one hand, I really want to be a good son. That is why I started coming over once a week. My friend Dana, whom you have met, actually inspired me. She is a really good person. She has a troubled relationship with her mother, and she lives with her mother. I figured if she could do that, I could at least see you guys once a week.

When I got sick, you were both absolutely wonderful. Dad, we had a talk that I wish we’d had 20 years ago. I do feel that we’ve moved forward, and I’m glad for that. I have thanked God for letting us both live long enough to get to this point in our lives and our relationship.

But things are difficult. They’ve always been difficult. We are fundamentally different people, on a very basic level. We look at the world completely differently.

I had a talk with Mom, years ago, about holding onto bad things. About how if you nursed every grudge and slight you’ve ever received that you wouldn’t have room for all the good things in your head. She looked at me as if I had lost my mind. She really had no idea what I was trying to say.

In that way, the two of you are very similar. You both hold onto grudges and hurts with great determination. You seem to relish conflict and confrontation. You seem to thrive on it.

Two specific instances are 1) the Donna incident. When I asked you not to call her, you didn’t seem capable of stopping yourself. That petty slight was more important to you than any other consideration. I still have the email you sent me justifying that in your mind, not to keep myself mad, but to look over when you confuse me and try to understand your viewpoint. 2) With Mom, the biggest example is this thing with Cindy and Brenden. Now the Donna incident was infinitely more trite than having your grandchild taken from you. That is a terrible thing. But listing incidents would just make you mad, and you would focus on the details of each incident rather than the overall message here. The similarity of these two examples is the way that you have chosen (yes chosen) to deal with them.

Mom, I am sorry for you. I know that you hurt. I have really tried to be sensitive to your pain. When it is your birthday, or Mother’s Day, or some time that I know you are hoping to hear from Cindy, I try to do a little something for you to make you feel special. I have no illusions that I can make up for her or take her place. I guess that you’ll be like BB. When we went to see her in hospice, she opened her eyes to look over my shoulder to see if Cindy was there. That is the saddest thing for me about the rift between them.

I don’t ask that you stop missing them. That would be stupid. I can’t convince you to stop wallowing in drama and misery. You seem to be holding onto that pain because in some unhealthy way you feel that is your last tie to Brenden. That is the only thing that makes any sense to me. That is your choice. I would really urge you to talk to a professional about that if you truly can’t lay it down, but I don’t guess you will.

What I can’t do is continue to go along with your making everyone else miserable. When you pitch a fit as you did last week, you drag us into the Cindy-hole with you. I won’t do that any longer. I can’t revel in misery the way that you do. It hurts me. I have an anal fissure (Dad, before you go there, it has nothing to do with my sex life). It bleeds when I am stressed. Last Wednesday I bled all day. Dad tells me you were fine the next day, but I was not.

Dad, to a certain extent, Mom was right. To maintain a relationship with you, I have to hold my tongue and let a lot of stuff go by. The flood of rage and invective whenever the word ‘Obama’ is mentioned is completely over the top. That’s just one example of the political extremism you embrace as unquestioned truth. You seem to thrive on rage. There is this huge pool of un-tapped anger that simmers inside of you. It doesn’t take much to set that off, to tap into it, and it seems almost like an addiction. Once you start, it builds and builds on itself. I’ve seen it with Paul. I saw it with that truck guy. It comes out in politics too.

I know that you do your share of swallowing as well. You have made concessions and I know that you try. You did a great job of avoiding a scene during the last election. I applaud that, because for so long you made no concessions at all, so it is a huge change for you. I can never explain the pain to you of knowing that someone who loves me so much still believes that I should be treated as a second-class citizen. Who would unhesitatingly vote against my right to marry my partner. Who believes that I would be fine if I would just shut up and take my place at the back of the bus. When I have tried to explain this to you, you have for some reason equated this with gun ownership, which is demeaning and condescending. So I stop trying to explain that to you. I have accepted the fact that you always have, and always will, see any relationship I form as ‘less-than’, or invalid.

Understand that I am not questioning your love for me. I never have. I’ve always known that you love me. But just saying ‘but I love you’ doesn’t cover all the hurt, doesn’t heal the pain, doesn’t make this any easier for me. Your love can be a ferocious thing to survive.

The negativity and rage doesn’t seem to affect the two of you, but it hurts me. I could blame this on my health, I guess, but I hate people who blame everything on their health. I am not as strong as I was, but I guess I’m strong enough to survive this. I just don’t want to. I hate going over and feeling as if I’m on eggshells during an entire visit. On one side there is this chasm of despair that I can be dragged into at the slightest mention of a name. On the other side there is this vast well of rage that I can open with a casual comment. It’s a tightrope walk that I just don’t want to make every week.

So I’m not going away. I don’t want to be labeled as another of your ungrateful children. You are my parents, and I do love you. I’m just going to move the visits to every other week. I took this week off because last week was so hard on me. And next week I have that place out and Mother will be here from Columbia.

I guess I’m not the person that Dana is. I just feel like I have to have more space, and that we get along better when we don’t see quite as much of each other.

So all that's left to do now is sit back and wait for the howling to start.  In a way, I feel better.  And of course in a way, I feel terrible.