By Her View From Home 
I am a cycle breaker. My maternal grandmother was abusive, and my mother carried the torch for the next generation. She was a narcissistic, bipolar, and abusive person. She left no chance unused to put me down, and my entire childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood were spent trying to appease her. Trying to make her love me. Hating myself for not being lovable. Trying to ally with my father instead, groveling for his love in those precious few hours he was not at “work.” I never found out what it was like to have parents who loved me.
With the rise of social media, so came the rise of knowledge from several experts being readily shared. Psychologists who took to social media to share their wisdom. I found out that the love I thought I had from my father was just as abusive (if not worse) than my mother’s manipulation, her emotional destruction, and her physical beatings.
He allowed her abuse. He encouraged me to just deal with it as “she is your mom, after all.” For the sake of his peace, he failed to protect me. He turned blind eye after blind eye knowing fully what was going on. Instead, he turned his attention to other things. Work, then women, then an entire other family he traded us in for when I turned 17.
I am a cycle breaker. I refuse to treat my children the way I was treated. I have successfully broken free from the generational curse. According to the experts, I should be proud. But nobody talks about how extremely lonely it is.
Don’t get me wrong, I choose peace over blood ties. I choose to cut off the toxicity of it all to save my children from the poison. That, I will never regret. I put my children first. But my goodness, it is a lonely place to be.
All her friends, who saw a different version of her than the carefully hidden one behind closed doors, harshly judged me. Her brothers and sisters, my aunts and uncles, cast me aside. Cousins followed their lead. My sibling, who also grew up with another version of this family, is more hostile towards me than the sun is to ice. In choosing to break free from the cycle of abuse, I am left alone in this world. Or so it feels.
I never had a mother to talk to when I needed advice, when I needed support, or when I lost my way. But once you break the chains completely, even the hope of what might be is lost forever. There is no turning back.
The only surviving relationship is with my father, who re-entered my life a few years ago. But it’s a painful relationship, one that will never grow into a healthy family tie. It’s more shallow than a stranger on the street, except for the feeling that I long to share my life, experiences, and feelings with this person. I long for my dad to be in my life, as a grandfather to my children and a beloved father to me. But I just hurt myself wishing for that because it will never happen. Conflict—even healthy conflict to resolve the pain—is avoided at all costs with a classic “but they’re still family . . . just let it go.”
And that, I did. I let it go, along with whatever glimmer of hope of a family relationship I may have had.
by Kara Gate 
