I am estranged from my father, my mother and my brother. All different times, different but connected reasons.
How did you tell them that was it?
I didn't say anyhting. Just avoided all contact.
And once you did how did you hold your resolve?
I focused on the lack of unexpected upsets I had no control over becuase they were sombpdy else's drama. It was noce to find my life didn't resemble a poor man's soapmopera once left to my own devices. I could enjoy my life, my family, my choices without worrying that if I let myself just be happy I'd be less prepared for the next "bomb".
Do you ever feel guilty?
No. I feel wierd. Like there must be something wrong with me to "lose" three out four members of my nuclear family. I sort ofmlie, I tell people when they ask "no, there's just me and my sister" or "I lost my mother/father/brother" They assume I mean lost or gone as in dead and it stops questions that leave me feeling almost ashamed of having to explain something so messy. It's daft, cos I'm sure most people would get it. But it wpuld mean revealing some distastful stuff that I don't feel comfortable spraying on other people's lives by talking about it to them.
Do you get the urge to contact them and if so how do you stop yourself?
I have a "box" I keep stuffed just behind my intestines. It is the feeling I used to feel when they did their thing. I grab it, crack it open a little and let myself feel it again, which reminds me how much better now feels, whatever the price, and then I slam it shut and shove it back in its dark corner so it doesn't do a Pandora on me.
Does it get easier with time?
Yes. Much. And then sometimes there's a blip. But a doable blip. Painfully maybe, but I look at it like a bookkeeper's ledger. As long as the blps and pain of estrangment are ahead of the known constant headaches and pain of not, then that's good enough. I needed a perfect solution less than I needed a workable and immediate solution. Most of the time now I forget. It's been not that much off 30 years with my dad and coming up for a decade ish with my mother and brother. So it's not like I think about it most days. Usually it only rears its head when I ill advisedly get on a debate here and crack open the box a bit to inform my posts and end up slighty more stung as a consequence than I would like. I'm much better at minimising the blips of somebody asking me about my family. I think there is part of my brian that sort of treats it like it is a seperate version of me, or somebody else entirely.
Perhaps not "healthy" as far as a shrink would see it. But it works for me and in lieu of a magic wand or a magic sticking plaster it's the best I can do. I don't regret my choices, I accpet it is not a perfect or cost free option, but it was the best tool I had on the table and I think the smartest move I have ever made in my whole life was picking it up and slicing the ties. Freedom isn't necessarily warm, fluffy or paradise shaped. But it is a damn sight better for me than a prison of other people's choices bombing my emotion's and life's constancy and predictability to bits.