It’s true. Honestly I think if it were not for my nieces and nephews, I would’ve gone NC a long time ago because I am still hurt by a lot of things that happened. My family is not “bad” and this makes it easier for me to “forgive” them so to speak. Or at least not hold it against them. Although I suspect I come to this conclusion because I have blocked out a lot of things. Frankly a good chunk of my life was stolen from me because of my mom’s abuse. She didn’t abuse me with bad intentions, but was mentally ill and suffering from her own trauma, and I was the family scapegoat for awhile. Sometimes it’s just hard to be around them when I’m remembering all of this. It messes with me because of how different things are now.

But they love me and these days I can tell they do. If I needed something, they’d drop what they’re doing to help. We have all grown up and my parents no longer have as much pressure to actually be parents, so they’re in better moods. Makes things confusing. But when we are all together we can have a good time, a lot of fun. My siblings and I have some shared trauma and a silent understanding of it between us. Although they’ve never said anything, I think they feel guilty for how they’ve treated me. There is a feeling of respect from them and effort to know me as a person, and there are a lot of things I admire about them. I don’t want to dismiss that.