Over the Chinese New Year, Year of the Boar, my mum made an expected but also unexpected visit to my house on Beach Street. Just before she arrived I had three panic attacks, and I didn’t even know that she was coming over. She had my address — but we have been estranged for about three or four years, or maybe longer.
Then there’s my dad. I think I have a closer relationship to him, or at least that’s what my therapist told me. So it’s harder, more difficult. It means that my relationship is more complicated– so at the same time as being okay with being estranged from him, too (yes, BOTH parents), I want to please him and at the same time the people in my life who remind me of them I am closer to, and want to be close to.
In other words, I don’t want to lose them as much, even though what he did to me is probably just as bad as what my mum did to me. So, who’s the parent that I’m closer to? My dad. But whose love do I crave more? Probably my mum, since I don’t feel like I ever had it.