A White Flag Waving

Thank you all for the support and encouragement you offered on my last post. It is very, very much appreciated. I've been trying hard this week to get a handle on my emotions, to slow down and breathe, to think rationally, calmly, to nurture myself, to stay positive, to smile. I would be lying if I said that it wasn't challenging. I've been suppressing so many emotions and memories and ill feelings deep inside me now for last few months-- even the last few years-- and I guess they're all finally spilling out, whether I'm ready to cope with them or not.

I've written here before about the terrible rift in my family. I will spare you the details. What is important is that my brother and I almost never speak. My father is dead. My mother is remarried (as of last month) and she doesn't call me anymore. We don't speak unless I call her, which my pride won't let me as often as I want to. My mother and I grew very close after my father's passing. But now that she's remarried, it's like she's a totally different person. I've only met her new husband once. From what I have observed and from what she has told me, he is very controlling. I don't know if he simply won't let her contact me, or if she just doesn't want to. Either way, I feel brokenhearted, betrayed, abandoned, alone.

Maybe it's silly for me to feel that way. I'm not a little girl anymore. I'll be 27 in a few weeks. But I feel utterly abandoned. Orphaned.

A few days ago at work one of my coworkers asked me whether or not I missed living in Las Vegas (it's been almost a year since I moved from there). I told her yes, I missed it very much. She asked if I still had family there. I meant to tell her that I didn't have any family there. But the words that came from my mouth were, "I don't have any family." I didn't even realize what I'd said. She placed her hands on my arm and said, "Honey, what do you mean you don't have any family?" I felt tears rising up in me but I held them back. Talk about the Freudian slip of the century.

I know that I do have family. I know that they love me. And I love them very much. But our relationship is so wounded that none of us communicate with one another. We don't see each other. We don't call each other or speak to each other or e-mail each other or text each other.

I do have family. But we are no longer the family we once were.

All of these negative emotions have been fueling eating disordered thoughts. And I have been using them as an excuse not to eat, to lose weight, to funnel all of my energy into letting myself feel pain instead of forcing myself to fight against it. I know that's not okay. I've been praying very hard for God to mend our broken family, to soften our hearts, especially mine. I've been asking him to help me to not hold grudges, to not be bitter. And I realized that we don't have to stay broken. But we will stay broken until one of us takes the first step forward, a peace offering. A white flag waving.

I've never been one to surrender. I can hold a grudge longer than anyone. But so can my brother and so can my mother. I guess we're more alike than any of us realize.

Someone has to give in.

I don't know if I can do it, but I have to try.