Family Story

And carrying the Heavy Load

“There is no way around it: The family story is our story. Like it or not, it resides within us.”

~Mark Wollyn

It sure as fuck is. It sure as fuck does.

I feel that. Deep in my bones.

I spent a lot of years running from my family’s dysfunction. I ran away to college. Moved away as soon as I could. I got married (too) young. I ran away to the other side of the world and lived there for five years.

While it was hard to live that far from my mother, in some ways, it was also a relief. It was easier. She and I were co-dependent and I felt guilty for growing up and being autonomous because she couldn’t handle it and was so unwell.

But, the family story changed and was forevermore imprinted on me after my dad died.

I was not angry he killed himself, like my brother, that he was gone. I found it sad, but it was his prerogative and our relationship was not super close.

But if I felt anger at his death, it was because of/when I reflected on the residual wounds and work that I would have to do on myself, the long road ahead.

I was angry because I fought so hard to be a first gen college grad, then on to my MA/grad school, and was finally halfway through my course work of my PhD program, finally feeling that I would have a nice career, make a nice living—compared to where I came from—and achieve my goals to becoming a Dr/Professor, then—

Boom—

Now, my emotional well being and mental state had to absorb this shock.

And I am still working on doing so. I am still processing and healing from that, and from my mother becoming a shell of someone that I did not recognize, of her death, and my brother’s suicide.

I have struggled because as much as I feel sad and pity for them—the selfish and in the “let myself feel all the feels” moment thinks—

Fuck this!

I worked hard to rise above where I came from and what I was born into.

My volatile alcoholic father and mentally ill mother, and the household, rife with economic instability, and still, I finally made it out, I made it—

Only to feel like I was plummeted once again by the gift of being left behind to have to forever deal with and address the wounds of suicides…and all that it means to be a family suicide survivor.

I can’t run from my family’s story. They are my family. Their decisions have indelibly shaped me.

And my angry and bitterness is not at them. I feel sorry for them.

But I hate that truth, sometimes.

I have spent many hours thinking about how just not fair it is that the second part of my life was so shaped by their choices with the permanence of suicides. And all the emotions that reside in those left behind. When I thought I got away.

I was shaped by dysfunction in my childhood and then I felt like when I was finally an adult then there was a whole other onion to peal back, working those new compounded layers.

The work, the healing, never seems to come to a stand still.

And I feel that.

I also feel that I can’t run from how it has shaped me.

It is the truth of my life and I can/do/will work to make something good come from this—in how I treat others, how I educate on trauma and work to de-stigmatize mental illness, and use healing as an opportunity to grow within myself. And I write.

But, also.

Also—I’m tired. Emotionally, physically, mentally tired from healing, from trying to heal my heart and wounds and tend to my scarred psyche and traumatized body and brain.

I don’t often times stop to think about it.

But when my friends recount to me all that I’ve been through, even minor things that I have forgotten about that seem like lesser points of stressors, because of the big events that have shaped me—

When they replay them back to me, I grapple with these lessers: the three moves across country in five years, the stress of financial instability of my universities and job precariousness, betrayals and healing from narcissistic/emotional abuse, the therapies and somatic healing/body work,

And—they aren’t even the deaths, the grieving and the monumental losses.

It is a lot.

And sometimes I am tired of healing.

I see pictures of some of my former innocent college students with “yes to the dress” pictures and their families surrounding them and I can’t relate to their simple happiness. Having their first babies and living their simple, happy lives. And I am sad and envious, if I am to be honest.

I know pictures lie. I know ignorance is bliss. I know that they are young and naive.

But, also—

I carry my family’s story with me, everywhere, on my back, all the time. It’s like a heavy backpacker’s backpack. And while I have gotten used to the weight at points so I forget I’m carrying it, it’s also never not there.

I am reminded when people ask about my family.

I feel it then, the weight on my back.

I am reminded of it on the death versaries and birthdays and Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and Christmas and Thanksgiving.

I feel it then, the weight on my back.

I have learned to carry it. I have learned how to keep going.

But it is never not there.

And sometimes, when people replay back to me what the last 5-8 years of my life have been, I realize too—

It is never not heavy.

And that I am tired, A layered and complex, all-encompassing tired that I struggle to adequately put into words.

Tend to your own fatigue, dear ones. We all are carrying things.

We often forget just how heavy they are.