I have chosen to go No Contact with my daughter

[Izzy_*now*]

I have chosen to go No Contact with my daughter. As a lot of you know there is a history, but I will go to recently….. my being struck by that car (Mar 27/09)

First was her lack of concern about my injury, yet sent a lovely bouquet of flowers for my birthday, April 28, my second release from the hospital. It was from ”her but not the grandkids”. I sent an email of thanks and an update. No reply.

For May 12 And 13 I emailed Happy Birthday wishes to my Granddaughter (20 no response ever) and her (45th), and I had already ordered this to be delivered directly to her home.

http://www.greenngreen.com/original-kilburg-geochron-p-154.html

plus shipping to USA then more duty and brokerage back, about $2500.00. I knew she would love it, and she did.

Her email thanked me but said it was far too expensive. I said I knew she would like it and I just couldn’t go for anything else. No matter where I looked online (broken leg eh?) I kept going back to this. There was a long wait for a reply then she called it a “guilt gift”, as though she had been prompted. (Only my instinct from when she was with her ex-N) Finally another email saying it looked gorgeous and she would take a picture to send to me when it was installed in her office.

Two months later, and not a word.

For June 13 I emailed my youngest grandson his birthday greetings and he answered/ thanked me with a mess of details about himself. I was pleased.  He’s 17.

As I have known for a long time and trying to not have to deny it, we are just on a roller coaster of contradictions, and I am so much better off with NC with 2 sisters and my brother, too.

I will not beg for her attention, the picture she promised me, like her Dad made promises that were never kept i.e. LIES, and I am sure now that her fantasies about her father, whom she never knew made her hate me for taking us away from him. She loved an absent father and hated her ever-present mother.

She told me all these years later that she had planned to go visit her father in the summer after she turned 15, but said nothing to me at the time, as she had summer jobs.  He killed himself on April 28/79 before her 15th birthday on May13/79

After I was struck by the car, she said she had been planning to come out to see me, but since she broke her back (all okay now, out of brace and working away) the trip was foiled.

This No Contact has been in effect since my last mail to her on May 31/09, with her short response on June 3/09

I have forced myself to not email and ask for the picture of the World Map, or how she enjoyed the old photos,  or how her back is now without the brace, or what her daughter is up to education -wise etc.

(She wanted all the photograph albums, which I sent and she never even commented on any memories the pictures might have brought back, that she might have not remembered. Age 6 forward. and I don’t even know if she looked at them.)

I am SO disappointed in her, and her lack of compassion, her lack of interest, that I have begun to feel that her ex has, from 1983 unto the present, turned all of them into people who feel entitled to attention but do not give it.

I doubt there is one thing that anyone here can say to make me change my mind, or to make be feel guilty for settling on this decision.

Love
Izzy


http://www.slrkelowna.ca/never_knew.html

[Hopalong]

Oh Izz. I am so sorry.
Kids can be so cold. So selfish.
It's amazing what LITTLE love and respect does for us...

That must hurt even more than it ordinarily would, give all you've just been through.
Almost sounds as though it's hurting from the same place as the original accident, when you were so neglected.

I'm sorry she's touched on that bruise. I don't think she knows how much it hurts.

Be very kind to yourself, hon.

(((((((((((Izzzzzzz)))))))))))

love,
Hops

[Izzy_*now*]

Thanks you Hops

Actually all the kind attention, for the most part, from women my daughter's age, has made me see even more clearly, in the past three months. that they have the compassion that she lacks.

I think I have known for some tiime that this would come about, and I've  just experienced the impetus to bring it about.

I will just be silent and see what happens. She doesn't know about my decision.

xx
Iz

EDIT} I have an idea that she knows how it hurts from when she lost both her boys to their father. I would say that her hurt is as bad as mine, and I am not expert enough to call the similarity and end results.

[JustKathy]

Hi Izzy. I just wanted to tell you that I have also broken contact with my N (in this case my mother), so I sympathize with your situation and understand how difficult this must be for you. I finally cut contact with my N mother about 6 years ago. It was probably the hardest thing I've ever had to do, especially with other family members involved and them not understanding the "issues" (as they called it) that I had with M. My siblings, Aunts, Uncles, now view me as the "bad guy" who hurt my mother, and that has been extremely hard on me.

BUT, despite all of that, I have been much happier for having the N parent out of my life. It was not a decision that was made in haste or without a good deal of soul searching. I saw several psychiatrists who all told me that the only way to stop an N from hurting you is to cease contact. If other family members judge you harshly for your actions, try not to let it get to you. You've done what is best for your own own health and well being. No one but you and your N daughter will ever know the truth of what she has done to you, or understand the level of pain that she caused. Others aren't going to get it, because they can't. That's been the hardest part for me, but I got through it by telling myself that I have only one life, and I have the right to a few years of happiness in that life. I was tormented for over 40 years. There's nothing selfish about wanting to be happy in the years that I have left. Do what is best for YOU.

I tend to ramble, and in combination with the meds I'm taking for my migraines, well, this may not make a whole lot of sense. But I just wanted you to know that I've been there, and I understand the emotions and guilty feelings that can come with such a decision. But in my case, it was definitely the RIGHT decision. Go with your gut. Do what is right for you and be happy always.

Kathy

[lighter]

Oh Izz.....

I'm so sorry you feel this way right now.

No one can fault you for feeling the way you do......

it's human.

She should have/could have made an effort to be in touch after this accident.

Of course she could.

What I do want to say is.....

your daughter may reach out later on, and you can always change your mind.

It sounds to me more like you';re going to step back and not innitiate contact...... not refuse contact?

Not sure but you're free to do what you feel is best, Izzy dear.

Mo2

[Izzy_*now*]

Right , Mo2

I will not initiate contact, am so disappointed in her. If she emails, I’ll wait it out, because I wonder if she is an N (not as bad as her ex--but some form of one) and making this current decision makes me feel better. That last tells me something.

and Kathy

Yes you made sense. I have gone NC with Ns and people toxic to me. Maybe she is just toxic and not an N.
All I can see is that after meeting her N, and marrying so young, while I asked her to wait, and he treated me so bad from the beginning, that I was uncomfortable, (didn’t know N-ism) then spotted her discomfort and her weight gain, but said nothing, then he kicked me out of his family and she went along with it (I suspected she was in a trap and didn’t know what to do, but was always professing she loved him)

I asked her once how she would feel if a child of hers turned his back on her….and now the 2 boys have…she said it would never happen. Even after she wised up, left him, took the 3 children , divorced him and asked for my forgiveness, she still behaved strangely……………..

I suspect it was guilt and for me “once bitten, twice shy” (just as men who cheat, will cheat again)…a situation in which I could never become complacent about us.

LOve
Izzy