The Last Conversation

There I was, once again, straddling that hypervigilant state of consciousness, simultaneously holding full sensory awareness of the bustling environment around me, and neuroceptive awareness of the controlled chaos now pulsing through the veins of my internal world with every beat of my elevated heartrate. I breathe in deep and do a quick self-check-in.

I am grounded. My feet feel sturdy on the floor. My legs are strong. I feel my hands at rest beside me. They are calm, not tense or figity. I notice my breath, slow and calm. And beneath that my heart is notably elevated, but not racing. Breathe. I am aware of the different parts of my internal psyche, what Dick Schwartz would call my ‘internal family system’. They have rallied to engage with this moment.

“We got this”, says the internal voice of my true self. Clear-minded, calm and fully present to engage as the adult that I have grown to be.

“Bloody fucking oath, we got this”, replied one of my fiercest protector parts. She is like a Viking warrior who knows her worth and knows how to defend her own. I smile as I notice her presence and I am thankful that she is here to support me, not to fight on my behalf this time. I notice the younger versions of me not feeling the need to hide or peace-keep, but being present with a sense of curiosity about what might be about to unfold.

I exhale and exchange pleasantries with the other parents who had also come to watch their children perform at the concert. In this hyper-aroused state, I am able to engage in friendly conversation about music workshops and young composers, while also scanning the room to look for him and my daughter. I am strategising how I will manage to keep them separate. I do not want her to carry the burden of this pending interaction.

I was thankful that I had seen him entre the building prior to the concert and was therefore given some time to prepare for his inevitable ambush. I had already sent my youngest to the car with his father. It felt important to me that he not be exposed to whatever unfolds in this space. It was equally important that I be the person to engage with him this time. Me, as I am now. Unapologetically grown-up and unafraid.

I was also angry that I had spent the length of the concert readying myself for my conversation with him, rather than enjoying the gift of watching my daughter play her music. She really is remarkable. “Watch him give your mother credit for this musical event, once again. Watch him not even acknowledge your daughter’s performance at all”, I think to myself, while my inner parts give a collective eye-roll.

Then, mid conversation with a parent and mid-thought process, I feel his hand on my elbow. I turn to face him.

There he is. Suddenly the ambient noise of chattering parents, students packing away instruments and teachers packing up chairs from the auditorium is silenced. My full attention is on him now. All conscious awareness is now fully contained within the space surrounding me and my dad. 

He hugs me with the familiar tight squeeze that I have grown to resent since my youth. It feels as though he is trying to squeeze every ounce of autonomy and independent thought out of me, like a python squeezes its prey into total submission before devouring it. My skin crawled as I remembered the way he used to do this as I stood there in tears, or in silent rage, after another exchange where my vulnerability had been weaponised, or my emotional reaction had been exploited and I was left feeling despised, humiliated, and hurt. I contemplated hugging him back. I contemplated pushing him away. I did neither. I just stood there and gave him nothing in return. Nothing is all I have left to give him.

Before long he started into his familiar monolog with its predictable tone and cadence. “Gee, it’s so good to see you, darling.” The placating tone of voice made me want to vomit in my mouth, or punch him in the throat, or both. I searched his haunting blue eyes to see what was there for me to connect with. All I found was a familiar hollowness that left me feeling empty and invisible.

“Is it, though?”, I replied, my own haunting blue eyes locked onto him so he could be sure that I see him for who he is. In the past, I would have tried to be gentle and polite so that I could not be accused of being disrespectful, hateful and unforgiving. Not today. This would be his first time experiencing me talking with him on level ground. I was no longer his daughter, desperate to be accepted, desperate to be loved and desperate to be seen. I no longer needed that from him and I no longer wanted it from him either. I love the woman I have become, and that is enough for me now. The woman who met him today had grown-up and learned her worth. She was no longer going to shield him from the consequences of his own behaviour. I was not going to hold that for him anymore. I would insist that he hold onto the discomfort that he has spent a lifetime passing onto me.

I sensed that he was taken aback by my short reply. But he steadied himself and continued into the monolog that he had come prepared to deliver. “We’ve just missed you so much and we’d just love to have some kind of communication again.”

He went on to talk about how they (he and my mother) just cry and cry all the time and wish that things could be better. A montage of images played through my mind – myself at 4, 10, 12, 16, 21. My wedding, my son’s funeral, the birth of my youngest rainbow baby and how the shit hit fan the day I bought him home from hospital – which also happened to be my birthday. How much time had I spent weeping and humiliated, while he actively chose to exploit my vulnerability in order to protect himself from the woman he feared? How much energy have they invested in making themselves feel big by making me feel small? How many times had he spoken with me in private, offering condolences for the most recent cruelty my mother had unleashed on me and telling me that he understood why I was hurt, only to immediately reinforce the cruel words of my mother as soon as she was within ear-shot.

“You know we would just do anything for you darling”. The placating tone continues. He goes on to explain that we are going to continue to run into each other at music things because, “music is the heritage that your mother has worked so hard to pass on to you kids”. There it is – all credit to my ‘dear sweet mother’… Called it!

Unsuccessfully I try to swallow the smirk that had crept onto my face. “Is this the part where you go on to tell me once again how much time you spent going to ballet concerts when I did ballet for 8 months as a 4-year-old?” I ask him.

Again, he starts with the music speech – the monolog continues. “It’s such a beautiful thing that your mother passed music on to you all, and now you’re passing that onto your kids too. You know, that’s all from your mother, and it’s just so wonderful.”

I feel my eyes narrowing as I think about my experience of learning music as a child. Wonderful is not a word that fits. From the age of 4, I was told that music would be my life. I learned violin and piano, without question. The cruel words that got spoken if I didn’t practice enough, or perform as expected or play for their friends without complaint. The agony in my back and the knots in my shoulders from the hours upon hours of practice. The tears of pain from the RSI in my wrists that I was too afraid to mention for fear of being shamed about trying to get out of practice. The incessant guilt-trips about how unthankful I was about how much money they had spent on music lessons and that any success I had belonged to them. This was often brought up anytime I attempted to set a boundary or dared show any form of unpleasant emotion in response to their treatment of me or my husband.

I notice the absence of my daughter’s name while he again credits my mother for the generational gift of music – a woman who does not play any instrument or sing, ever. There we were, in the concert hall where my daughter had featured prominently through the recital, yet she is not mentioned once, only my ‘dear sweet mother’. I also recount the number of my own concerts he and my mother attended while I was at high school. One. They attended one concert out of the 100s I would have done. But you bet your ass that my ‘dear sweet mother’ still to this very day, gets the credit for each and every musical milestone I have ever reached. And now she gets the credit for my children’s musical achievements too.

I feel my eyes narrow further as I look at him and say, “Did you know that once I finished school, it would be 15 years before I’d pick that violin up again for myself because I was that traumatised by it growing up. Playing that thing was the only acceptable way for me to exist around you guys. It was the only thing that gave any sense of value or worth to me. And I resent that. I resented that instrument. It was an awful experience.”

His eyes widened slightly, but not wanting to waver from his monolog, he continued, “We just want to figure out a way to have some kind of communication again. We just need to leave the past in the past and move forward.”

Eyes still narrowed, “I don’t know what you expect from me. All I have known in my relationship with you, especially in the last 15 years or so, has been nothing but hurt. It has been so deeply hurtful to try and be in relationship with you.”

“Yes, but we just need to find a way to put that behind us and move on with some form of communication.”

“Again, I don’t know what you’re expecting from me. I have tried so hard to communicate with you, but it is only ever hurtful. I don’t even know what we would talk about.” I feel my right knee shaking and I shift my weight onto that leg to help it steady. It makes the shaking worse, so I do another check-in. I am okay, I am feeling calm, the shaking is just an outlet for the adrenalin now flooding my system. Breathe.

“Oh, we wouldn’t talk about anything stressful”, he says, almost as though that is a radical idea.

My mind wanders slightly with memories of significant events being sabotaged by their need to keep me in my proper place, beneath them. “But I can’t even share the good things in my life with you, because even the good things become a reason to point out what an ungratful bitch I am.”

“You’ve never heard that from me. I never said that to you, did I.” There was a spark of something in his eye – like he was hoping I would bring that up so that he could catch me out and vindicate himself on a technicality.

Immediately I am transported back in time to when I was 16-years-old. Huddled in the back corner of the darkest room of the house, my vision blurry, my head pounding with the migraine that had been triggered by my mother’s most recent explosive verbal onslaught. My tears and pleading with her to stop was like kerosine on a flame. My father had come to “make peace” and found me trying to rock the migraine out my system, my shirt drenched with tears and snot from the last hour or so of inconsolable weeping. The placating voice barely breaking through the pounding of my head, “You know, it’s a mother’s prerogative to call her daughter a bitch, darling. You’ll just have to find a way to accept it and move on.” When I told him that I was afraid of what her behaviour is going to mean for my relationship with her when I’m an adult, he told me not to worry about it, because “girls usually have a better relationship with their dad’s anyway”. That was the moment I lost all sense of respect for this man. He did not care about anything except his own peace. He was not interested in me having a meaningful relationship with my mother. He was not interested in his wife having a meaningful relationship with her daughter. He just wanted me to “accept it, and move on, so that he could have peace”. The irony is, I have done exactly that… yet here he is because it turns out that me accepting it and moving on has not in fact, given him any peace.

“No”, I reply, “but you certainly allowed your wife to call me that repeatedly, even knowing the hurt and the damage it was causing. But even that aside, I know the way I am spoken about behind closed doors. The grapevine continues to do its thing, and I know the things that are said about me in my absence.” As I speak, I recall being told how last year’s Christmas lunch table discussion revolved around how pitiful it is that I would still have my son’s ashes in an urn in my house. Why that is anyone’s business is well beyond me.

“I don’t know who would be telling you that. We haven’t spoken to anyone recently.” He says. This was new for me. I was anticipating the gaslighting to be more overt and that he would deny ever saying anything negative about me to anyone. But there was a hint of acknowledgement here. I was not going to give up my source though.

“I also know that you walk around with documents – multiple 20-page-long documents – about me and how I am the problem. And I know that you sit down with people and you show them these documents about why I am the problem. That is something that you have done. That is on you.”

“I’m so sorry”, he said. There was a notable shift in his energy at this point. I had not heard those words come from him before. At least not in a way that wasn’t laced with mockery. So, I pause to see if there is anything else. Could he be sincere? Or was he prepping to retreat? Could he be starting to see me and the wounds that I have been nursing since I was a little girl?

“So again”, I said, matching his lowered energy, “I don’t know what you expect from me. Because I have no reason to believe there will be anything different from either of you moving forward and I don’t have the bandwidth to continue in a relationship that functions like this.”

He met my eyes once again, “But you had such a happy childhood.”

I was stunned. It was like being hit with a bucket of iced water. He did not see me. His entire relationship with me has been built on neglect. He has no capacity to see the damage caused by 40 years of his wilful ignorance. “No, actually… I didn’t.” I kept my gaze on him and I allowed the silence between us to reverberate.

“Well, I guess I will just leave you alone then, if that is what you would like. I won’t bother you anymore.”

For a moment, the littlest girl in me stepped out from behind the internal protector parts of me, who were still recovering from their shock. “I’m open to a solution,” she said, almost pleading for her daddy to come back and hold her. “If you can figure out a way to make it work.” I caught myself, and the adult me picked up that sad little girl and held her close while I spoke to her father one last time. “But I won’t continue in a relationship like this one anymore.”

He nodded his head, “I will just leave you alone.” And with that, like so many other times, that little girl watched her father walk away, leaving her alone with the pain he had dumped in her lap. But this time, she was not alone. I had become the adult that little girl needed, and I was going to make sure she would be okay. This is the little girl who gave me the courage to be the woman I am today, and I will carry her on my hip with me every day for the rest my life. And I am cultivating a beautiful life for her and for me and for my children who come after me.