Wrote this in the parent group today:
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Coming up on the two-year anniversary of when I left my daughter’s house. She was insisting she was either non-binary or a boy and her father decided that was a fantastic time to start a new relationship (we weren’t together, just co-parenting, but he replicated his old pattern of sneaking around behind my back and he always zeroes in on a new situation and ignores everything else) and frankly, I was the odd one out. I knew even then that I would have no allies to back me up in trying to keep her from harming herself. Even her therapist had bought into it. And it’s horrible living in a place where you know you are no longer welcome.
The thing that sticks out to me is how they both went straight into silent treatment. I wasn’t allowed to talk about what was wrong with the situation anymore because they simply would not answer me. She probably wouldn’t have come up with that tactic herself, so I’m pretty sure her father suggested it. We all did communicate about some things for a while after I left but after he signed the car over, even that died away.
I ended up homeless earlier this year. They knew. Neither cared, apparently. I wouldn’t have asked for a rescue, but some expression of concern might have been nice.
I have to own up to my end, I’ve been angry and sweary. But I’ve also given them lots of openings to engage with the issues and asked questions and raised concerns and… nothing. It’s been we are both going to act crazy and/or unethically and we are going to completely destroy your life and you don’t get a say in it at all. I refuse to shut up and be polite when that is going on. The only reason I’ve gone pretty much silent from my end is because there isn’t any point. They’ve both made up their minds that her fantasy and his ego are more important than me.
He is on my permanent shit list. I had had this vague notion that when she was grown we’d come out of this as friends or at least cordial but he couldn’t even give me that. Nearly twenty years of “I love you” and “I’m glad you’re in my life” and then as soon as his long-ago ex decided she needed to get out of California he turned it right off like a switch. (She quit her job almost as soon as she got here and they got married at some point so yeah, don’t tell me that’s not what it was. He makes $130k a year at least and has home equity out the yinyang [the house has doubled or tripled in value since he bought it]. He can carry them. She knows it. I hope she dumps him at some point and if he thinks I’ll even entertain a conversation with him after that, well, buckle up Buttercup.)
Daughter, I don’t know. I come from a background of familial abuse and alcoholism and most of the physical abuse was from my brother and so I know what young people are capable of. I am not ready to make up my mind about her. If she’s too much like her father and what’s happened so far is a sign of things to come, though, there won’t be any hope there. First question she had when I told them I was leaving was “Are you taking the cats?” She’s told her therapists I’m a “conservative Catholic.” (Anyone who knows me in person would laugh themselves silly, and I am only Catholic by a technicality, which I already explained to her.) I complained to her when I lost my room in January that serial killers get treated better than I’ve been in this situation — free room and board! — and she remarked that if I was comparing myself to serial killers, that doesn’t look real great for me. I think that was the last time we talked. I’m not sure there will be another.
Meanwhile my best friend since age 8 or 9 has decided that my misery is all because I obsess too much about the trans thing. The fact that an 18yo young woman has been on testosterone for six months and has been using a binder and will probably opt for an elective mastectomy doesn’t faze her at all. The weird thing is she’s a social conservative but then, I’ve been telling people this is not a leftist movement. There’s room within conservatism to accept it for what it claims on the tin even if a lot of conservatives don’t. So I’m not wholly surprised. But it’s getting to the point that I could be talking about a completely different thing and she’ll start in on me with the “quit with the trans stuff” again. I am not sure how much longer she’s going to be in the picture, and I hate to say it, because in a lot of ways she’s been really supportive of my general situation. But she’s a social worker. If she has any sense of responsibility for people’s health and sanity whatsoever then she should be working harder to understand this issue than she is. She is very head-in-the-sand about a lot of things that matter: not only is she uninformed, she delights in being uninformed and considers it the morally superior position. Not even kidding. It’s one of the few areas where we clash. And now it’s gotten personal for me, she’s making it all about my feelings as if my brain is faulty instead of being concerned about my daughter’s welfare. Red flag. She has a 9yo daughter, too. I don’t even know.
Sorry to vent. August has been hard and September isn’t shaping up to be much better.