You may have seen news today on Meghan Markle’s decision to tale action against a British newspaper and Prince Harry’s rush to defend her. I am not a fan of the royal family at all, but I dislike the way the press has treated her and I might also understand his response. No-one has any right to pass judgement on estrangement and the prurient interest in it here, plus a tabloid rush to pass judgement, seems to have led to what has happened. You simply do not know what someone’s actions have cost someone else and you do not know what that former relationship has effected in terms of psychological damage. I don’t know the ins and outs of what has happened here, but I certainly think it is a private matter in public people. And, more to the point, I know about estrangement and why we might choose to make decisions to sever ties. And I simply do not agree that blood is thicker than water though I have heard this all my life. Family is beautiful, but if elements of it hurt you badly, you should not feel you need to maintain contact with those elements. In my case, it was a calamitous nervous breakdown when my youngest was eight months old that clarified a decision and a better process; when things came to a head again shortly before I was discharged from long-term therapeutic support, I thought that my need to stay away and our need to keep our boys away would be fully understood, but it was not.
Let me tell you a bit about that.
I should like to write very freely in this post, but I can only do so to a certain point. This, in itself, speaks volumes. It’s because I grew up with a lie. And it wasn’t even entirely a lie. Some bits of it were true and beautiful and kind. And the bits that were not true and beautiful and kind spun me into dissociation, sent me mad or provided, latterly – and God knows why I didn’t see, hadn’t grasped it before – some dark materials for writing. And through that, I came to see that I might have made my way through some things with a pretty sturdy imagination, plus I had the utter blessing of reading – because it was my escape and how I found my way through a world I did not understand.
And the reason I can only write freely to a certain point is that the lie was and is upheld by others. Sometimes they should do better and have done better; not entirely fail to believe someone because they didn’t see it with their own eyes. But a lot of the time the lie is upheld because it’s only a lie to the person who was on the receiving end of it. All they saw were the bits that were beautiful and true and kind.
When a person or people are systematically cruel to you in such a way as you are short-circuited in some manner so that your brain doesn’t work properly; when you flick awake, posed and ready for action as others groggily come to; when you have repeated nightmares, dissociative episodes, panic attacks and when you develop severe depression and an OCD which is predicated on atoning in ritualistic ways for some terrible crimes you believe you have committed and to atone in some small way for the terrible person you think you are; when all this happens and you know in your bones, the taste in your mouth, what you hear and the very colours behind your eyes, what is behind it, then this is a response – and baby I get the multi-sensory version and very tiring it is too – that is not normal. And it didn’t come from nowhere. This is a sustained and complex trauma and it has informed everything that has come after it. My shaky decisions, perilous lack of self belief, running away from rather than to something – the opportunities I have missed and denied myself because I thought I was not good enough or, frankly because I was too crazy to cope.
And yet the sources of this trauma may have been good parents, friends, colleagues, siblings, members of the community and all those things because people don’t tend to be one thing. Unfortunately, as a young child, if you see those you are frightened of routinely praised, loved and respected by others, then you believe the problem must be you.
For me, the problems were upheld – I suppose it was like an accidental gaslighting really – through my adult life and it is only comparatively recently that I have distanced myself from those who still praised and upheld those I was scared of and who reduced me, in my head, to nothing. I found I simply couldn’t listen any more. From the person who decided it would be a good idea to tell me on my wedding day what a disappointment I was, to those who, again and again, urged me to allow my three sons to have relationships with certain people when I knew, Mr Bookworm and I knew, that they meant them no good. It should have been radically obvious and yet, somehow, it was not.
So, when you hear about those who choose to estrange themselves from people, don’t make assumptions as it’s not generally a decision borne lightly. I doubt very much that it will have been this way with Meghan Markle. A latter day intense privilege must not cauterise your nerve endings; surely it cannot remove troubling memory or pain. So treat someone who has chosen to estrange themselves with compassion and don’t intrude on their decision. And also, if it is something you need to do, and you go ahead, I wish you all the love in the world. Anna x
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Anna Vaught Writes 