My attorney had warned me.
“Once you deliver the documents, they may try to make you feel guilty.”
I had asked him, “What if they say I’m destroying the family?”
He had looked at me for several seconds before answering.
“Julia, sometimes people call it destroying the family when you finally stop allowing them to control it.”
I had never forgotten that.
But hearing those words didn’t make this easy.
Because no matter how cruel my mother had been, she was still my mother.
There were memories.
My mother teaching me to ride a bicycle.
My father carrying me on his shoulders.
Christmas mornings.
Birthday cakes.
Family vacations.
Old photographs.
There had been good years.
And that was what made the bad years so confusing.
People think you leave toxic families because you stop loving them.
Sometimes it’s the opposite.
Sometimes you leave because you love someone enough to finally accept that they are hurting you.
