I understand regret. DEEPLY. I have many of them.
Of course, it’s all just hindsight– of now knowing better through experience so I can do better. So regret is ultimately pointless.
But this? Regretting the act of estranging myself from my parents?
NOT AT ALL.
The way I went about it and some of what I said? Yeah. I’d change parts of it.
Especially since it fueled the fire for a two-year long smear campaign.
But hey, I was emotionally raw, feeling A LOT due to no longer numbing with food, drugs, or alcohol, and… well, it’s a whole story for another day.
But OMG, THE RELIEF.
Just accepting and feeling the truth! Like, “YES! That treatment was abusive as hell! No wonder why I always felt like shit around them! I’M FUCKING OUT.”
And they knew and KNOW why. They just thought they’d gotten away with at all. That I’d go on being the nice, numb little golden child forever.
To them, I may have been high all the time, but at least I wasn’t questioning all that much or talking all that much.
At least I kept on playing “family,” buying the gifts and the cards, planning the visits and bringing Christmas cheer.
So yeah, when I realized it was my right as an adult woman in America to stop talking to my parents FOREVER, and that I didn’t owe them ANYTHING - not even the opportunity to try and gaslight me into changing my mind – I was like “OH, THANK GOD.”
And then awesome things happened like my night terrors went away and my chronic pain stopped, and the list goes on and on.
Hard shit happened, too.
Because they didn’t like that I made such a life-altering decision on my own that would impact their reputations.
But the harder they tried to drag me back, the more I knew I’d made the BEST DECISION, EVER.
Which I ALWAYS knew. But as time went on, I was really like “Wow, I knew ya’ll crazy, but you’re like REALLY crazy,” and so nope… never regretted it for a second!
– Malana