Her voice was scathing, scornful. She hissed out her words, and then followed them up with an empty disclaimer – “not in a mean way,” as if that would diminish her vehemence. She wants to know what MY issues are. Why I’M behaving this way. More accurately, why I did not take her calls.

She said she had a dream last night. In her first message, she was almost nice, and said she wanted to tell me about her dream. I had a dream last night. I dreamt that she was saying mean things with the intention to hurt me. I dreamt that she was scowling as she spit her words at me, and in my dream, I was deeply wounded, my face frozen in a caricature of shock and pain.

Yes, at first she sounded like she wanted to talk, dangled something sweet over my phone in hopes that I would call back quickly to take her words. She didn’t wait for an entire hour before calling back and leaving the second message. Not one hour. She accused me of being distant, accused me of having issues and “holding a grudge” because she deleted my emails without reading them (so she says). I do not hold a grudge. Quite the contrary. I have let go.

The last time we spoke, she told me that we are “distant relatives, and not friends at all,” because I had made it that way. She told me I was a disappointment. This was last Wednesday. I certainly did not see it coming, because we had such a great time (I thought) over the weekend. When she showed me pictures and I helped her with her dead hamster. I thought things were okay, I was elated that we were on good terms.

And then she called. And it started all over again. You know, I wrote a poem about this exact cycle, in 1994. I’ll find it and post it. But my point is, I don’t care anymore about trying to be understood by her.

I let go. I give up. I’m done.

My friends don’t make me cry on a regular basis, so why should I allow my family to do just that? I don't. Not anymore.

-Barbarella

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