My Family Abandoned Me Because of the Pandemic.

I am a little bit more over the shock of it now. It happened about three weeks before Christmas.

I received a call from my brother on a cloudy late Sunday afternoon. The call was strange anyway. I am not that close to my siblings where we call each other every other day. That is not us.

Put it down to the age gap between us, about four years. I have two sisters, one older and one younger. All married with children.

I have very little in common with my family. And the reasons I keep my distance.

When I saw the caller id, I knew something was about to go down. I could feel it in my stomach. My intuition was sounding an alarm.

Get ready, I thought, something is going to happen. I answered the phone, I uttered the “Hi, how are you? Good, How are you?” etc.

My voice reflected my mood. Short and impatient. Just get to the point, I thought, when I spoke to my brother.

Then the question came. My brother asked me what my status was.

Me playing dumb, asked, what do you mean?

“What is my status?” I knew what he had meant.

Oh, I responded, “well, no status” As in, I haven’t had any procedures.”

My brother’s response was; “I am hosting Christmas this year. We have elderly and very young children who are immune-compromised. Out of respect can’t ask you to come and be with us for Christmas lunch”

My response was, well, silence. What else could I say at this point?

I have always been the black sheep of the family, the rebel, and the rule breaker. More than that, I don’t like being told what to do. I speak my mind a lot.

I am the consciously awakened one.

Just a few weeks before, the thought crossed my mind that this could happen. But, I thought my family wouldn’t go through it. We were already having differences of opinions.

I had hopes that they would not allow circumstances to divide us. We were family. We had differences of opinion all the time. But, we didn’t exclude anyone. Or, so I thought.

Nevertheless, the blow was swift. My heart started to break into shards. The pain of it burning my throat. Words I wanted to say but I couldn’t because of the shock.

I thought maybe I misheard my brother. But I didn’t. He continued to talk about respect. He was really sorry blah blah, its what he had to do, blah blah blah.

The shock momentarily took a step back. The rage surfaced. A wave of emotions took over me. I felt a deep feeling of anger. It was hot, and I could feel it burning me from the inside. It bubbled up and fueled my following words.

I remember uttering something along the lines of, why are you all living in fear? Followed by “this was hardly respectful”. And,” Yes, agree to disagree” Why are you letting a pandemic come between our family and divide us?” I remember asking. The rage had made me defensive.

After the heated discussion, I hung up and let the pain of rejection from my family overtake me. I cried. I screamed. I was in disbelief.

I was most definitely in a state of shock. That shock stayed with me for the days and weeks following.

The nights I tried to sleep. Hours of somewhat rest were broken by waking up, still in shock. I still thought I had imagined it all. I hadn’t, and it was real. This pandemic had divided my family.

This rejection was more than just about a decision over a Christmas lunch and the pandemic. It was all the years I had felt like an outsider from my family that had finally come down to this moment.

Rejected by my own family.

It was clear that my family, their thought patterns, ideals, and decisions all had stemmed from fear. Whereas for me, I do and live from love. Because I know what it is like to be different, to be on the outside. To never follow the norm and live my life on my terms.

I am 44, and I felt like I was a child again, lost and abandoned on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. My face was wet with tears. The trauma my body felt tried to process but couldn’t. I could feel crumbs of my soul depart my body as a way to cope.

I shut down.

I disassociated from my feelings by feeling nothing.

Numb and wondered what was so wrong with me? I had been out-casted and ejected from my family. Because of a decision, I made that was right for me.

Maybe I should have known better than to have a mind of my own. I tried for so many years. I tried to bend myself to fit in, so I could feel accepted. It didn’t matter anyway.

Now, here I was, rejected from the life I had known all my life. To spend my first Christmas in 40+ years on my own, without my family.

Abandoned.

I always had the feeling growing up that I never belonged. It felt as if I was right all along. It took a pandemic to show me who my “family” really was.

Like when you think you were adopted into the family because you had always felt so different. But you weren’t adopted. You just decided for this incarnation to be part of the family and be the light in their darkness.

As an awakened soul, I see it for what it is and understand that my family has a different belief system.

They don’t question anything and play by the rules. I am the opposite. I have an awareness to know that their decisions come from fear. I can’t blame them. But it doesn’t soften the blow. It almost at times enrages me to think they are still consciously asleep.

By being awake, it is an example for those who are asleep. I have an inner light. The conscious love that I hope will wake them up one day.

This traumatic experience showed unhealthy co-dependency. It had traveled through generations. How much I still wanted to be accepted and fit in.

Through the heartache, the pain, the trauma, the anger, and the tears, I see the lessons. My heart trampled over with a mac truck. Over and over and over again.

It showed me where I was still living in my family’s shadow.

It showed me that I dared to stand on my own two feet even when I experienced abandonment by blood ties.

It showed me I was stronger than I thought. It showed me where I lacked boundaries in my life. Weak if not nonexistent boundaries between my parents and me.

It comes from a fear of never receiving the love I needed. I had desires to receive love like my siblings. Emotionally my needs were very different. And the people-pleasing. I had to unpack all of that.

It takes trauma to see how imperfect our families are. To see each person make decisions based on their belief systems. Knowing no one is right or wrong.

Now, I was to be even more resilient than I thought I was.

There are only two emotions I am in the depths of now, grief and anger. Lucky or unlucky, I only experienced it a few times in my life, both times when I was still very young. The difference now is that I am working through that grief, facing it, and not ignoring it.

Well, not all the time. I struggle most days. Who could think I would have to grieve for a family that is still alive?

The other emotion is anger. It has been incredible and hard to process.

The frustration is that I want my family to open their eyes to what is going on. I know I cant wake them up.

It is where they are in life.

The anger I feel has lengthy chords. These chords are not severed as yet. These are tied back to my childhood like ropes tied around your waist with a deadweight.

As an adult, I deal with my anger as best I can. But, even I am aware enough to know that I need professional help for the anger I feel and this entire experience.

Grief and anger have allowed me to have yet another spiritual death and rebirth. My old self wasted too many years denying who she was to fit in and be accepted.

To grieve the old soul who will choose now to step out. Come out from behind of her own shadow.

No longer afraid of her light. Who now stands in her truth.

To live true to her beliefs. Even if they are different from others and what she knows.

The trauma has shown her how to open her heart. To love her family from afar, no conditions or rules. An acceptance for what is right now, for tomorrow, may change.

Build new walls of healthy boundaries. Cut off toxic people, even if that is family.

End unhealthy patterns and cycles. No longer for the sake of quietening her fragile yet resilient soul.

Through the trauma, she realised she was enough.

Her path forward, all her own and had only just begun.