Disconnect

Taking into account the impact of losing both my sisters to traumatic deaths, one from suicide when she was 35, the other to cancer when she was 44, and the equally traumatic deaths of both my parents , my father taken by Alzheimer's and my mother by liver cancer, I am doing well. I am happy with my 26 year marriage, happy with our wonderful son, happy with our home, our sweet pets, our good neighbors and the friends that stuck around when all the family tragedy started. Compared to people who are victims of wars, or poverty, or other types of violence and destruction, I consider myself lucky. My astute therapist I saw for about a year and a half, made an observation one session that stayed with me, and that is helpful to remember on days that the old ghosts come calling. She told me it was true that I was not a survivor of a war, or poverty, but I was a survivor nevertheless. It is one thing to be betrayed by an enemy,but to be betrayed by those who are supposed to love and protect you, is very traumatic. A mother is not supposed to betray her daughters, to turn her children against their father, to dispose of her husband like a broken machine. So, there are those days when things feel askew, distorted, and a s a result, I feel disconnected. Over time, the disconnect hurts less and less, but it is still unnerving, and also paralyzing, because it makes me feel invisible. To lose your family is a very strange thing, it makes you question the validity of your existence, the relevance of your destiny. It can also make you indifferent not only to your own sadness about the loss, but indifferent to hope. Because my family got torn apart by my parents' horrible marriage, and things just spiraled out of control to take every one who got into the path and fury of the destruction. Even my brother and I who survived, were destroyed as siblings. We have not seen each other in 14 years. He has a 25 year old son whom I have not seen since he was 11. He has a 20 year old daughter I have never met. The fallout from the destruction from my parents 'Dance of Death also hurt my brother and I. Maybe we will never see each other again. All communication to him goes unanswered, it has been like that since our parents died 4 years ago, and it does not look like it will change. To have your roots cut off is a very strange sensation, you go on, you breathe, but some days you feel like an automaton, barely human. What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. Perhaps, or maybe it just leaves you with a partially amputated soul.