When I made the decision to walk away from my parents, I made the decision to be happy. Photo: Lambert/Getty Images This year for Father’s Day, my 9-year-old son and I will celebrate my husband with a backyard picnic of homemade pizza and chocolate ice cream at our house in Maine. But I won’t get together with my own dad, or call him, or even send a card. I haven’t spoken to my father, or anyone else in my family, for more than 17 years.
But we had a secret: my father’s temper. My brothers and I never knew when a regular day would take a dangerous turn. When my father turned mean, he lost control. He hit us and threw things. He cursed and called us names. I learned to fear his white V-neck undershirt and oldest paint-splattered jeans, the open can of beer, the smells of turpentine and grease as he worked around the house or under one of the family cars.
“My father hit me,” he said, as we drove. His declaration made me hold my breath. “He’d use his belt or sometimes plumbing pipe. Anything he could get his hands on.” Everything came to a head when I was 28. On a visit home, my father’s temper flared, and this time I stood up to him. We fought for hours, the three of us in the family room crying. That night they dropped me at a friend’s apartment in the city. On the sidewalk, I asked my parents for space. “Don’t call me,” I said, thinking I’d take a week or two off from them.
And then, unexpectedly, I started to feel better. Not having to constantly battle my parents meant that I was free to take a long look inward. Yes, my mother and father had done the laundry and signed the permission slips and praised my report card and given me a middle-class childhood. They’d sacrificed to send me to college. But along the way they’d managed to stain the first half of my life; to wound me. I resolved to not let them ruin the second half.
Was my choice extreme? Maybe, but I’m not alone in making it. There are no national statistics on family estrangement. Yet, since starting to speak openly about my experience, I’ve met many people with a similar story: the professor for whom coming out meant severing ties with his fundamentalist parents; the friend who escaped a childhood of sexual abuse; the neighbor who is barely on speaking terms with her extended family; even families torn apart by political differences.
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