Sometimes it feels as though you are being offered table scraps from a place where you once expected a beautiful meal.
This may be how partial estrangement feels. Or perhaps it is the point when estrangement is no longer something you can explain away.
Once you realize what is happening, you convince yourself that the calls have become less frequent because life is busy. The visits have stopped because the timing is difficult. The interest, care, and concern have temporarily slipped away and will eventually return if you are patient.
Eventually, you come to understand that the distance is not accidental. This is a painful stage.
It often remains unspoken, but it is still painfully real.
There may still be contact on the occasions that are supposed to be about family. A holiday, a birthday, or a brief exchange when tradition requires some us to acknowledge the relationship in some way.
To me, this feels like a string that has not been completely released. It’s an open loop.
But occasional contact is not always connection.
Sometimes it is simply enough contact to keep the relationship technically alive without offering the care required to make it feel nourished.
You continue preparing the full meal. You bring love, concern, patience, effort, understanding, and a willingness to repair. In return, you receive a few scraps from the edge of the table.
For a while, you accept them because something feels better than nothing.
But the scraps never satisfy you. They only remind you of how hungry you are.
You start to ask yourself if this is what you deserve. That question alone can take years to answer honestly.
This is a stage of grief that is difficult to name. It is not exactly anger and it’s certainly not indifference (yet). It is the realization that you have been begging for nourishment in a place where no real meal is being prepared for you.
And eventually, something changes.
You are no longer willing to keep reaching for whatever is offered simply because of the person’s relationship to you.
Table scraps are no longer enough.
You begin to understand that protecting your peace may require refusing what repeatedly leaves you feeling emptier than before.
Sometimes receiving almost nothing is more painful than receiving nothing at all.
All love,
Sue
