The Weird Goodbyes

Photo by the author

Every morning lately, I play the same song at least once on my way to work. Some songs speak to you in ways that others don’t, and this one makes me feel a little less alone for the choices I have made to disconnect from my family. The National’s “Weird Goodbyes,” which also features Bon Iver, is a song about the second guessing that comes along with moving forward and the sadness that comes with knowing that going back is not possible. It is a sadness that you don’t fully grasp until you stop answering phone calls, deleting voice mails without listening to them, and only reading texts when you don’t feel like doing so will break you. It is a sadness that feels as if your leaving is actually an abandonment of those you love.

The disconnect did not happen overnight. I don’t think anyone who decides that their relationship with their family is not healthy comes to this decision easily. There have been years of starts and stops, of blurred boundaries that required more of me than I had to give at times. I am not the hero in their story just as they are not all the villains in mine, but the balance was so that they expected me to save them from themselves over and over with no end in sight. Their lives are a constant state of emergency, and the help they need cannot be met by just one person. I cannot save them.

“I don’t know why I don’t try harder
I’ve been going down some, some strange water

Move forward now, there’s nothing to do
Can’t turn around, I can’t follow you”

I hear these words and think of the longing I held for so many years to be the one who could save them. If only I threw out enough lifelines… The realization that I could no longer meet them where they are felt like a blow to the gut, as if I had failed them. Logically, I know better, but we are trained from birth to do all we can to protect the ones we love. But what happens when they no longer protect themselves AND they hurt you in the process?\

“It finally hits me, a mile’s drive
The sky is leaking, my windshield’s crying
I’m feeling sacred, my soul is stripped
Radio’s painful, the words are clipped
The grief, it gets me, and the weird goodbyes
My car is creepin’, I think it’s dying
I’m pullin’ over until it heals
I’m on a shoulder of lemon fields”

There is no redemption in this disconnect. There is a bitter taste to it all, a loneliness for what cannot be but what is so desperately wanted. If there is any healing to be done, it must be done alone. And that hurts.