Forgiveness³

I was six or seven years old when my older brother followed me around the house with his pants down aiming to pee on me. Whether or not my parents ever knew this I cannot say, because our nanny always cleaned up his urine and wiped my tears away- nothing to see here. This was my life. I was born and raised in a world of economic privilege in South America in the early 80s- but even though my family was well versed in etiquette and poise, it was most defective in every other way.

My father was a male chauvinist with anger issues who couldn’t control his drinking, and who kept women in their place by holding them to impossible standards of beauty. He and I weren’t close- after all, I was never really his type. 

My mother had been a victim of emotional and physical abuse since childhood, so she spent 20 years putting up with my father’s behavior, trying to impress the unimpressionable while teaching me to do the same. 

And, my older brother was nothing more than a sad little boy who mimicked what he saw around him. I think he bullied me and abused me past my breaking point to cement his power and self-worth in our family. 

Add all that together, and you have the quintessential dysfunctional household—home sweet home.

Sadly, I am just one amongst countless other individuals, born and raised in toxic families, whose lives are entangled in the rotten roots of others. Most of us want nothing more than to be free from our past but don’t know where to start.

At eighteen I turned goth and attended an art school in the United States. I believed it would be a world far away from the rigid do’s and dont’s of home, where damaged misfits like myself could finally feel at ease. But, trauma followed me, and my susceptibility to mental illness played a significant role in how I processed the cards I was dealt. So, rather than breaking free from my family, I spent my college years doing everything I could to feel accepted and welcomed by them.

I first followed in my mother's footsteps and developed an eating disorder with the goal of shrinking myself to fit the mold of the perfect pretty girl my family told me I should be. When that didn’t get me the acceptance a craved, I continued to starve, hoping to reduce myself to nothingness so that when I visited my family I wouldn’t feel like an embarrassment. That, again, didn’t work and the frustration of feeling like nothing I did was good enough led me to cutting. The self-harm was a means of release and quiet self-expression that delivered pain while making me feel strong. Then, with slit wrists and scars down my legs, I took after my father and added drugs, alcohol, and sex to the mix of vices in my pocket. I was miserable, willing to do whatever I could to numb myself from all pain and consequence.

All in all, I spent my four years of college battling depression, struggling to mend the wounds of my past while yearning to build a relationship with my family that wouldn't hurt. Meanwhile, my family seemed determined to teach me that life is hard, and real love is tough love. So, every interaction I had with them was riddled with miscommunication, mismanaged expectations, and an unrequited need for validation that left me feeling like an abandoned child, mangled and torn to shreds. Turns out tough love hurts.  

It took me almost a decade to realize that none of my efforts to please or to shock my family into change would ever work. So, in my late twenties, exhausted and bruised, I turned to therapy. I talked ad nauseam about my past with half a dozen doctors and rehashed my traumatic efforts to feel accepted by my family- while sitting on supposedly comfortable couches, for years. Ultimately- and thousands of dollars later, I learned that my broken family and I were like victims of a shipwreck trying to stay afloat in an ocean of toxic waters. We found comfort in our company and our shared demise. We stuck together because being together in a toxic ocean felt safer than being alone in uncharted waters. I lived my life that way for years. 

It wasn’t until I was married and had a daughter of my own that I decided I did not want to spend the rest of my life treading water surrounded by people who didn’t seem to want anything different. I wanted the opposite life for my baby girl, and thought maybe, just maybe, I had it in me to leave my toxic family behind, swim to shore, and save us. 

After that realization, I began to find emotional strength in physical exertion. I became addicted to the endorphin rush and the physicality of drive. By the time I was forty, I was running, biking and boxing regularly as a way to cope with the poisonous waters that surrounded my family and me. On the hard days, when my mental health declined and suicidal ideation slipped in, I would literally run for my life and fight to connect with the part of myself that was strong enough to keep me afloat.

I was certain I had found my footing and could see dry land because my marriage was strong and my daughter was being raised in a safe place. But even though I was inching my way closer to stability, there was still something about my past I couldn’t shake. The pressure to remain a victim so I could belong in my family was a sense of duty that exceeded all else. It was a weight so heavy my long-gone anorexia wasn’t able to do away with it. It was a load so stubborn that my current strength couldn't defeat it. Worst of all, this pressure to be a victim was holding me hostage. It defined who I was in my family’s presence and absence, and I wanted it gone.

I used to argue that the only way out of toxic relationships is to break ties and leave. Don’t look back, I used to think. Just move forward and build anew. However, now that the toxic relationship was with my family my sentiment was a lot easier said than done. The last thing I wanted was to break ties with them because I’d be leaving them to drown in their demise while turning myself into an orphan. Once again, I was stuck with needing to choose between staying a victim and belonging to my family (a feeling I yearned for) or leaving them behind to set myself free (a feeling that unnerved me.) It was an uncomfortable familiarity I had known for far too long.

By the time I was forty-one, I felt I had coped with generational toxic trauma in every way possible- and still, I was unable to find a moment in the company of family where I didn't feel damaged and exhausted. So, as a final attempt to free myself from the pressure that had been weighing me down for years, I sought guidance from a life coach and begged for a map to freedom. I had only briefly described my family dynamic to this woman when she stopped me from going further and casually said; you have to forgive them in order to move on and be free. Can you let go of your past? 

It was the simplest of questions and I knew the answer had to be yes. Therapy had taught me that my family was made up of a bunch of damaged people trying to keep their heads above water. In life, they gave me what they could, and faulting them for not doing what they were not capable of doing wouldn’t be fair. It would be like asking an infant to drive a car, then getting mad when they crash into a wall. But, even though the idea of forgiveness seemed so simple, putting it into practice was far from it. 

I had been trying to get my family to notice the damage they had done for years, and not once did they open their eyes. How was I supposed to forgive them now, knowing they would never take responsibility and never change?    

For days I told myself repeatedly that people are driven by either fear or love- something I read in a book somewhere. What if my father drank for fear of connecting with his reality? Maybe he treated women as less than because he feared losing his value if he were an equal, rather than a superior. And, what if my mother was taught that love is conditional and given only to those who measure up? Maybe that was why she spent her life as a victim, holding herself and others to impossibly high standards because otherwise, she risked not being loved at all. 

As for me, maybe I have spent my life drowning with my family in dysfunction for fear of what might happen if I swim away. Will I find what I am looking or will I drown alone, regret my choice to leave and sink while they point at me and say told you so?

As I grappled with these thoughts, I came to a realization that would change how I perceive my world. For the first time ever, I realized that not only was I holding my family accountable for my suffering; but I was holding myself responsible for theirs as well. I believed that if I was capable of change- so were they. But that was never the case. In fact, the reason none of my family members followed my lead when I tried to break away from the poisoned waters we swam in, was because they couldn’t. The self-awareness one needs to grow might be in me, but it is not in them- at least not yet. So, I’d swim away alone and instead of feeling free, I’d feel the weight of abandoning them on my shoulders and swim back to keep drowning by their side in the name of solidarity.

It was at that moment when I realized I held the key to my freedom, and I was denying myself the opportunity to use it, refusing to save myself just so that I could stay with my family and belong. That behavior and self-abuse were entirely on me. 

If I was to forgive anyone, I had to start with myself. I had to forgive myself for holding myself hostage for so long, for abusing my body as a means of expressing my emotions, and for abusing my mind by telling myself I didn’t deserve any better. I had to forgive myself and finally allow myself to swim away from the toxic waters I was choosing to live in. 

Once that thought settled in, everything in my life felt different. The feeling of being an eternal victim began to lift, and I began to feel empowered and emboldened to write my own story. 

After taking responsibility and forgiving myself for a life of victimhood, the idea of forgiving my family seemed much less daunting. I was finding great comfort in accepting that they were broken individuals. It was like accepting an illness or a handicap- something one learns to live with, does not try to control, and does not take personally.  I would no longer blame my family, because- in a way, they were victims of themselves. 

Once I accepted that I could not change my family, nor could I save them, their toxic behavior became irrelevant to how I lived my life. I swam away- without their approval and without their company- and this time, I made it to dry land. I understood that saving myself didn’t mean abandoning them. I could go back to them any time- on my own terms and from a safe place. I could offer them a non-toxic relationship and it would be up to them to take it or leave it. 

That was the last step in my process to let go and move on. I had forgiven myself, forgiven my family, and finally- silently, and internally, I asked them to forgive me for moving on without them and swimming towards the life I have long deserved. I learned that for me, freedom from my toxic roots came with forgiveness, and forgiveness came in three:

I forgive you for what you have done. I forgive myself for what I allowed you to do. And, I ask that you forgive me because I will no longer put myself in harm's way just to be by your side.