The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines estrangement as : “having lost former closeness and affection : in a state of alienation from a previous close or familial relationship.” The key words for me in that definition are “close” and “familial.”
Most of us have some element of wonkiness in at least one familial relationship. We have a sister that always acted out, and made family time miserable. We have a father who doesn’t understand the career path we chose, or agree with our politics. Maybe we have a sibling who we feel picked on us when we were growing up.
Wonkiness doesn’t have to end a relationship. Sometimes, those rifts and rough edges make us stronger, more persistent, and more self-aware. Maybe they even make us better people, because we learn what we don’t want to be ourselves.
But sometimes simple wonkiness goes over a cliff. Sometimes, the actions of a family member cross too far over the line, and we find ourselves picking up a figurative hammer and a box of nails, and boarding up all the windows and doors to that person because it’s the only way we know that we can keep them from causing harm.
Merrimam-Webster defines a boundary as: “something that indicates or fixes a limit or extent.” The key word for me in that definition is “limit.”
We all have a pain tolerance level—the point at which stimuli pushes us beyond what we are able to withstand. It’s very much like a boundary—a boundary or limit to what we are willing or able to endure.
At times, people we dearly love push beyond our boundaries, limits and tolerance for emotional and psychological pain. Maybe they don’t mean to, but sometimes you can tell someone they are hurting you, and they don’t stop. It’s as if they know you’re on the edge, and they willingly push you over.
Estrangement is that cliff.
A friend of mine recently expressed some really deep pain and uncertainty about very important familial relationships that are fractured, and radiating pain to loved ones around them. I could really feel for her. She happens to have suffered a significant loss of a loved one, and that loss contributed to the fractures within her family.
 |
| Not every cliff is beautiful. |
We’re raised to respect our family relationships, and to try and retain them, but very seldom does anyone talk about the reality that retaining some relationships can come at too high a cost. We don’t talk about the reality that some relationships and even people we dearly love can create toxicity in our lives, and that line or boundary is so ignored, and so disrespected that there is no easy resolution.
People can change. Life experiences can teach us how to better adapt to situations and develop a thicker skin and better coping mechanisms. We can learn from our mistakes, and understand our role in causing pain to other people. But those things don’t happen if we cannot self-examine, and develop self-awareness.
This begs the question: If I don’t choose to stop hurting someone I love, do they still owe me their loyalty, forgiveness, and unconditional love? If you have experienced estrangement with a close family member, you know that there’s not always a simple answer to that question. And in some instances, the closeness of the familial link prompts others to wonder if your position is unreasonable.
In families where mental illness, trauma, abuse, or life altering events are intertwined with the relationships in which we develop our sense of self, it’s incredibly easy to get lost in the gray areas. We are conditioned to accept that someone we love doesn’t have the emotional skill set to have appropriate relationships with others. We allow their painful histories to justify their hurtful behaviors, and tell ourselves that they don’t mean to be that way, and they cannot help it. And we often allow the same patterns of transgressions and harm to repeat, in turn damaging our own development, our own growth and our own ability to create and maintain loving and successful relationships as well.
So what happens when someone we love crosses that invisible, but visceral line where there is no return?
You have to look yourself in the eye, and you have to make a choice. You can understand that if you go back to the relationship, everything that led that family member to push you past your limit will happen again, and the same scenario will play out over and over. You can distance yourself, limit contact, and try to establish boundaries, and limits. But if those approaches aren’t livable, and that person continues to ignore your limits, you sometimes choose to close the door and walk away.
From the outside of the situation, others may see your attempt to rescue yourself as rigidity, a failure on your part to be the bigger person, and a sign that you have forgotten the good about your relationship with that person.
Everyone’s situation is different. We’re often told that forgiveness is not for the person who hurt us, but for ourselves. I haven’t always understood that idea, or believed it. I haven’t understood how that applies to me, because I assumed forgiveness was a “one size fits all” idea. It has taken me at least half a lifetime to understand what forgiveness looks like for me, and I know it must look different for everyone.
Someone I should have been able to trust abused me and violated me. I don’t owe him anything, but I also don’t have to look back at every moment of my life and paint it with the brush of that pain. I can pick out the things that weren’t awful—the things and memories for which I am grateful—and I can live my life and my truth with love and dignity. Another loved one hurt me many times, and it took me forever to recognize that, and to feel strong enough to establish boundaries and limits. It was a very important relationship, and irreplaceable. I fought hard to retain it, and to honor it, but even while I sobbed and begged her to respect my limit, she pushed me over my cliff. She’s a part of everything I am—the music I love, the stories I read, the memories through her eyes of other people I have lost or never known.
No matter the distance I have placed between them and myself, these people will never be extracted from who am, and even who I still may become. My forgiveness is knowing that some relationships cause harm and end, but I don’t have to define their entire history by the most painful moments, and I don’t have to forget the good in order to honor my own boundaries, my own limits, and my own tolerance for pain.
I don’t know what happens when you cut ties with someone and you must face that severance down the road. Most of us who find ourselves estranged from a loved one never planned to be in that position. The answer to that uncertainty is like forgiveness—it’s different for everyone. Maybe some of us find our way back. Maybe the other person changes and the relationship can be rebuilt. But we don’t all get that. We don’t all bridge that distance, because in doing so in the past, we so often have found ourselves teetering on that cliff.
Everyone has a path, and we all have hurt someone along the way—even people we love. Just as we need to learn what forgiveness looks like for ourselves, we need to understand that it may look very different to someone we have hurt.
I don’t believe the universe sends us requests for forgiveness, acknowledgment and gratitude like recurring bills in the mailbox. I am not expecting some kind of eviction notice. We can give those things one time and honor our familial ties. But when those ties cut the circulation off between our dignity and attempts to establish reasonable boundaries, we can’t be expected to overlook what’s happening indefinitely.
We owe no one unlimited opportunities to push us over the cliff.
