Real Life I cut my family out of my life

One woman explains how turning her back on her relatives was a change for the better

When something of significance happens in life, you naturally wish to tell your family. A few months ago, I had a cancer scare. My mother died of womb cancer at 62, in 2014, and I was showing all the symptoms. I had a biopsy and thankfully everything was OK. But in the space between having a biopsy and getting the results, I envisaged my death. I imagined dying at home, surrounded by friends and those who loved me. But my family were conspicuously absent. It wasn’t surprising that I didn’t imagine them around my death bed because two summers ago, I decided to cut them out of my life completely, and I can honestly say I’ve never looked back.

It’s said that when there’s a loss in a family, an already fragile family can weaken further. As soon as my mother died, all my family’s problems came to the forefront. My mother, the matriarch, was no longer here to paper over our problems. As she lay in hospital dying, my sister, who I’d always found to be difficult, became even more impossible. She took it upon herself to direct who could see my mother; forbidding relatives from visiting her, for what I believe to be no reason other than to control. At a time when love and care were most needed, my sister gave none. In fact, visiting my mum in hospital became even harder and my extended family and I found ourselves

‘THERE WAS NO UNITY IN OUR GRIEF’

walking on eggshells around my sister when, really, the focus should have been on my mum. We all act differently when under huge strain, but my sister seemed to lack any sort of compassion.

After my mother’s funeral, I kept in contact with my sister; I’d invite her over for dinner and tried to share my life with her. I was married and had good friends around me, I was being taken care of. My sister, three years my senior, had never had a long-term relationship or any authentic friendships. So I took it upon myself to look after her – and, as a result, we became quite close.

I was enjoying having an older sister, telling each other secrets and confiding in each other. But my friends and cousin warned me not to get too close – so well-documented was her erratic behaviour.

The years that followed my mother’s death were filled with a naive optimism. I tried to forge good relationships, not just with my sister but with my mother’s sisters, too. I needed to be close to people who were related to my mother, that way, my mother still felt close. But I found my aunts difficult to bond with. They’re conservative and judgemental; they’d criticise my lifestyle and choices.

Once an aunt called me to tell me that she thought I was a ‘plain Jane’ and that I should make more of an effort with my appearance; I don’t wear enough makeup and dress too casually. This was all said under the guise of her ‘looking out for me’ now that I was motherless. And in this naive optimism I had adopted, I put up with my aunt’s unwarranted personal digs, even believing I was lucky to have someone care for me.

Sudden silence

But then, after a while, my sister stopped answering my phone calls and texts.

I’d invite her over for dinner and she wouldn’t respond. We hadn’t had any cross words, there was no reason for her radio silence.

Then, one day, by a strange coincidence, she caught the same bus as me. She saw me sitting at the front of the bus, but ignored me and went straight upstairs.

An enormous amount of sadness came over me. Our mother was dead but there was no love and no unity in our grief. Flashbacks of my mother dying filled my

head, my childhood and memories that I could only share with my sister. And she was now acting like a stranger. How could someone who held so much significance become so estranged? It then occurred to me that I hadn’t had a reply from a text I had sent to my aunt a week before. So I texted her again only to get an abrupt and shocking reply: ‘I don’t want anything to do with a drug addict.’

I was not, and am not, a drug addict, but a few months earlier I’d written an article about some research into mind-altering drugs and their possible medical benefits.

I had shown my sister the article and we’d agreed that my pious and orthodox aunts would be outraged by it. It became clear to me that my sister, for whatever reason, was trying to discredit me.

In the following weeks, other family members told me she had betrayed me by disclosing things we had discussed in private, including my marital issues. Some members of my family stopped talking to me, siding with my sister, and I felt like a fool for having believed that my sister could’ve been anything other than what she had always been in my mind: troublesome and cruel. It was then that I made the decision that I was better off without my family in my life.

Looking back, I made excuses for my family’s abysmal treatment because I felt it was right that I should have them in my life. We’re always being told that family is everything, but not all families are benevolent. A distant family member recently said, ‘Families have disagreements – you’ll be sisters again before you know it.’ This angered me. Why should I be encouraged to enter back into an abusive relationship, just because we are ‘family’?

No regrets

Since making the decision to cut my sister and aunts out of my life, I feel happier. I’ve blocked them on my phone – I don’t want to see or speak to them ever again. I’m no longer involved in petty dramas nor do I have to put up with how their behaviour made me feel. I know my mother would approve of my decision – she would agree that I need to put my own mental well-being first. I only speak to family members who have shown me kindness, but my friends have taught me that family isn’t always everything.

I feel a deeper connection with some friends than I do with my family, which proves that blood isn’t necessarily thicker than water.

It took me a long time to accept that my relationship with my family was toxic and to get over the sense of guilt that I was betraying ‘family loyalty’. But, in the end, I had to choose between me and my family, and I certainly have no regrets at choosing myself.

‘I’D MADE EXCUSES FOR THEM’