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Asha Sanaker's avatar

On December 7, 2020, my brother died of cirrhosis of the liver. He was 53 years old. You don't die of cirrhosis of the liver at 53 unless you've started using at a young age and then kept at it with a vengeance for decades. My brother actually had people around him that loved him when he died, but I wasn't one of them. He'd started to sexually and emotionally abuse me when I was three. He threatened to kill me when I was seventeen. I cut off all contact with him then and only ended up being in his physical presence less than a dozen times until his death; two of those being when our father died.

I came to understand the depth of the attachment issues that drove my brother to be so destructive to himself and to me. I found some compassion in my heart for that hurt little boy. But that didn't change the fact that the grown man he was was a vicious, hateful bastard literally every single time he got a chance to come for me.

When he died I felt the weirdest and most poignant sadness. There was no denying it; there was never going to be any redemption arc for us. He was only ever going to be exactly the one he was and I was only ever going to be able to do exactly what I did to wrest my life out of his hands and make it my own. And yet, I had loved him so long ago. And I had wished at various times that our story had been different. But it wasn't. It would not ever be. And at the same time, I felt released and defiant. The bogeyman of nearly my entire life was dead and I was still standing. And not just standing, but dancing and singing and living, well-loved and safe and fucking formidable.

It is okay, Estranged Daughter, even after all of these years, to feel love for your mom, or yearning for the mom you wished she had been, even as you stand in the midst of your life now and feel how good it is to be separated from her. But let whatever you do now be an expression of the love that you have found for yourself. Hold fast to that, even as all the other feelings wax and wane. It will carry you and protect you, always.

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Elissa's avatar

Oh, this letter frightened me, so very much. It felt like watching a horror movie, where the character running from the monster has escaped, finally found safety, and then you watch them decide to maybe go back into the house, really quick, to just grab that thing they forgot, and you shout NO DON'T DO IT but then they do it and the monster devours them after all. This brave woman finally freed herself of the monster. And I get why she wants to just go back into the house, really quick, and wish the monster a happy birthday. Because what every person wants and never ever stops wanting, is to be loved by their parent. No matter who that parent is or what they have done or how old we have grown, we want our parent to love us. So that card, it's that hope, that never-ending deep desire to say, Mom, do you love me?... But she should not go back into the house. The monster isn't going to say, thank you for the card. The monster will try to devour her.

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