Today, sadness is attempting to consume me as I try to fight it off. Tough love has never been something I could do for anyone I care about. Because of this, I have been an emotional doormat for everyone and bled my own emotions on anyone willing to listen to me, anyone willing to give me the space I needed. It permeates through every facet of my life, even my work. I choose roles that put me in a “motherly” position, caring for people and doing tasks that are well below my level of expertise. I am not challenged, and then I become bored.

I am shifting in a lot of areas of my life, and with that comes great grief. I had to tell my son that he needed to leave. That he could no longer live with us. The thought of my kids suffering has made me rescue them from everything, but in turn they learn nothing. My home is toxic right now, and as much as I try to shift it, it doesn’t move. I know we cannot have a healthy relationship and live together. It is just not possible. But this possibility of a relationship with him may never come. He hates me right now, and I don’t know that it will ever change. It is punching a hole straight through me.

It is also giving me insight into the pain of what cutting a parent out feels like from the parent’s side. It changes nothing in terms of me contacting my mother, but it gives me empathy and compassion as to what she is going through. It is a hard pill to swallow, that I have failed him. That for whatever reason, I am a villain in his life, when I have only ever tried to give him everything.

My sadness is immense this morning, and it is spilling over my entire life right now. I have healed my inner little girl — all the trauma she went through, all the pain, all the abuse. But that angry teenager, angry young mom, angry young adult is screaming at me now. Screaming to be heard, to be held, to be healed. I cannot push her away any longer. I need to face that pain.

My mother kicked me out of her house when I was 16. We were forced to live with our stepdad, a man with dark and harmful tendencies, who should never have been trusted around children – a pedophile who preferred little girls. It took me a long time to cut him out of my life, because he had, in some twisted way, rescued us from her. I often think about how deeply wrong that dynamic was. The place that was supposed to be safe wasn’t. But it was the safest place we had, and that is fucked up.

The thought of my son out in the world struggling, crying, in pain… breaks me in a way I can never be able to describe. And yet, I cannot take this toxic living anymore. How does one choose themselves over their children? I feel awful. I feel like a failure. And I feel like I will never see my son again once he is gone. For so many years it was him and I against the world, now our world is completely different. Changed. I know I could have been better, in a lot of ways, I have to live with that guilt. I just hope he knows how much I love him, even if he chooses to never speak to me again.

I am deeply, heartbreakingly sad today.