Loss, Squared.

I'm struggling to process the loss of both parents; one to cancer and the other to end a cycle of emotional abuse.

My nerves feel utterly shot. The past year saw my relationship with my mum unravel through being built on unsteady ground. Whenever her expectations tested my boundaries, I still did my best to meet them. Some of my earliest memories are the lies she made me tell - to hide four affairs from my dad when I was a child, right up to her secretly getting married seven months before he died, yet refusing to tell him, and insisting I lie about that too. And though it wasn't fair to repeatedly put me in this position, I met her terms, because I loved her. 

I was a witness at the wedding to show forgiveness to the two people who'd made my childhood so traumatic, yet within months, I was accused of homophobia by a solicitor my mum refused to correct. And she walked off from my dad's burial, seconds after I'd lowered his ashes into the grave, disappearing across the cemetery at fast-pace to drive away and not speak to me for a fortnight. That's just two events I withstood because of mismatched rules in our relationship. And in the end, her unwillingness to decelerate her solicitor's aggressive stance over something she told my wife privately she didn't even agree with (which for me was the final straw) was enough reason to accept my ultimatum to break contact.

I feel robbed of so much time. Emotional abusers have no concept of the years they take from you. Every day, I navigate the depression and anxiety caused by the trauma I experienced as a child then as an adult. I'm on medication and have been through years of therapy to devise coping strategies healthier than the ones I've previously relied on that were formed when I was a frightened child. But as I tried to dissect how someone who loved me could put me at risk, I never dreamt it was because they never knew it was wrong in the first place; frankly, I could have done without that revelation.

The difficulty I face is not letting the impact of someone else's reluctance to take responsibility for their actions be the catalyst to blame myself. I know I do that instinctively. I can also accept I will have said or done the wrong thing at times and behaved selfishly myself. Everyone fucks up. But if someone's pathologically unable to hold their hand up and say sorry from the heart, it's not for everyone else to pick up the slack. And the standard-bearer for this is my dad. I remember him asking me once if I thought he'd abandoned me as a child. The fact he formed that question in the knowledge I might say yes was incredibly brave. That's the way to do it.

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