scribblechic

So much of parenting is an illusion of control, boundaries we map around unpredictable chaos in an effort to guard against harm. Rules and decisions, values and expectations aligned to insure safety. Sometimes danger is costumed in a camouflage of our only experience of normal.

I’ve spoken gently over the years about the impossible heartache that accompanies parenting children in an abusive familial setting; mental illness and emotional abuse, alcoholism and narcissist manipulations. It is an experience that reads like fiction, a harm you cannot contrive to predict and a threat you cannot battle for the insidiousness of its destruction.

Day to day there is an uncertain hesitance under the burden of such illness. You clear safe places to relax your guard against small intrusions, while accepting the eventuality of harm. Years pass creating a legacy of disconnect; volumes of memories set to a soundtrack of unkindness.

When your children no longer ask for the complicated company of these relatives, you honor their happiness with space enough to guard against further harm. Then, as illness is oft to do, it appears in the midst of peace in search of something to consume; misery feeds greedily on the happiness of others. When it is not invited to the feast, it crafts paper dragons, extravagant gifts and cards lined with cash, to beg attention in place of emotion.

Except, empty endearments etched onto paper do little to outspeak the memory of unkind words. Bribes of indulgences cannot bridge the vastness of empty relationships. The dragons tumble into the space between old memories and new happiness, slayed by the hand that crafted them.

We are, finally, at peace.

Tagged: Family, Musings