Estrangement is grieving people who are still alive
To grieve people who are still alive is a very strange thing. There’s no funeral, no compassionate leave, just an incomplete kind of emptiness, and much room left for doubt.
I chose to leave my parents a few months after I turned 18 and just before I started uni. And if I wanted to, I could take it back. There are no bodies six feet deep. I need only walk back into their lives. “She’s your mother. You should call her, she’ll forgive you”, they say.
It was me who left, but it isn’t easy to stay away. That’s the reason so many exes end up back together. It isn’t healthy, it’s just familiar.
My estrangement is something I’ve found difficult to keep a secret. Not that I am keeping it a secret. In the first weeks of uni, or whenever I met someone new, they’d ask about my parents, what they do.
“Well, as far as I know, my mother’s still doing whatever she was before, and so is my father.” It’s just an assumption; the information is outdated. To me, they’ve never moved on from that summer of 2018.
“Okay, well, where’s home for you?” they continue.
“It’s complicated. I don’t really have a home. I’m estranged.”
I’ve had to explain what the word means more than once. And even then, people find it difficult to understand. They can’t comprehend why I’d leave my family. And I’m almost always too tired to explain.
Mostly, I did it for my life. I’d have died if I’d have stayed (that’s something I tell myself). My boyfriend at the time told me to “get out as fast as you can and never go back.” It sounds so cliché. Maybe that’s why I've always remembered it, and why I’ve stuck to it so far.
When I left home, I was ill. Over-dosing, trying to jump from high buildings kind of ill. I was sleeping through the day, cleaning my first-year flat’s kitchen all night. It was a difficult time. I wasn’t turning up to class, so the uni didn’t like me. My peers didn’t either, and more than one lecturer was urging me to drop out. I stayed in bed. And with nowhere to go, I spent Christmas alone in halls. I scraped my way to a pass that year. (Who cares though, it didn’t even count.)
It took me a long time to come to terms with the fact I don’t have a home. It’s what my therapist calls “an anchor.” (I’ve left uni now, smashed a first, started my first ever full-time job and pay for my own therapy. I’m not as ill anymore, but I’ve still got stuff to figure out.) I’ve no sanctuary to return to in the case things go wrong. It means every move I make matters. There’s no room for error: it still feels like my life is on the line.
It'll be four years in August. I miss people I can’t even remember. Sometimes it still makes me cry. Grief isn’t linear – I hate that about it.
But it’s led me to build my own home (I’ve had no choice but to) within other people’s, with friends and new, chosen family. These are people that love me, and don’t hurt me.
And I’m saving. One day, after my master's, I’ll buy a house. I’ll nickname it home, paint the walls Autumn, host dinner parties. I’ll have children, bathe them carefully, teach them to be strong, to stand up for themselves – even if it means they end up alone.
I think about my children not having grandparents. It’s just like my mum. She was abused by her family too, as a child, and didn’t choose to keep in touch. I suppose it’s history repeating itself. My side of the family will be just me (as far as biology goes). My children will have no aunts or uncles. I lost my two siblings. Again, not to death but for the sake of my own life. People say that’s the saddest part. They’re sad for my little brother, and his being without me. I suppose my biological family is grieving for me too – an absent figure. I know that I’m estranged, but I forget sometimes that they’re all estranged too.
I don’t know what it’s like to deal with the death of a family member, and I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be a sibling or daughter. I remember my great-grandmother died. I was too young to care. But I do know what it is to grieve for family, even if they are still alive and breathing.
Cover image: James Hendy 2021
