Held Hostage By Hope

There is a strange kind of loneliness that comes with being an estranged parent.

You can be surrounded by people who love you, support you, defend you, and would do almost anything to take away your pain—and still feel completely alone in it.

I have those people.

Friends and family who have listened. People who have watched me hurt. People who have been angry on my behalf when I didn’t have the energy to be angry anymore.

I am grateful for them.

But sometimes the things they say to support me are the things that hurt the most.

“I’m done with him.”

“After what he’s done, I wouldn’t give him another chance.”

“As far as I’m concerned, he’s dead to me.”

I understand where those words come from.

They’re not meant to hurt me.

They’re usually meant as declarations of loyalty.

If someone hurts someone I love, then I’m against the person who hurt them.

There’s something beautiful about that instinct.

But there’s also something they can’t completely understand.

They can be done with him.

I can’t.

He’s my son.

And maybe that’s one of the hardest things to explain about estrangement.

There are people in our lives whom we can eventually decide to leave in the past. Friendships end. Relationships end. People hurt us badly enough that eventually we decide we’ve had enough.

We close the door.

Sometimes that’s healthy.

Sometimes it’s necessary.

But being a parent doesn’t seem to work that way.

At least it doesn’t for me.

I can be angry with my son.

I can be hurt by him.

I can disagree with decisions he’s made.

I can believe things have happened that should never have happened.

I can even reach a point where I understand that I cannot continue chasing a relationship that isn’t being offered to me.

But I cannot make him stop being my son.

And I don’t want to.

That’s why words like “done” hurt so much.

Done is permanent.

“Dead to me” is permanent.

“Never again” is permanent.

And permanence is exactly what I am fighting against.

Not because I’m pretending everything is okay.

It isn’t.

Not because I believe reconciliation would magically erase everything that happened.

It wouldn’t.

And not because I’m incapable of accepting the reality of the relationship as it exists today.

I’m trying very hard to do exactly that.

But accepting today is different from declaring forever.

That distinction means everything to me.

Maybe that’s difficult for someone outside of this to understand.

If you’re watching someone you love suffer, perhaps the natural response is to want the thing causing the suffering removed.

Cut it out.

Walk away.

Be done.

Protect yourself.

And if this were almost any other relationship in my life, maybe that’s exactly what I would do.

But this isn’t almost any other relationship.

This is my child.

There is no version of my future in which hearing that something terrible happened to him wouldn’t devastate me.

There is no amount of anger that makes me stop wondering how he’s doing.

There is no disagreement powerful enough to erase the memories of the little boy who once reached for my hand.

Those memories don’t disappear because the adult relationship became complicated.

Love doesn’t obey those kinds of boundaries.

And so when someone tells me they’re “done with him,” there’s a part of me that wants to say:

Please don’t be.

Be angry if you’re angry.

Think he’s wrong if you think he’s wrong.

You don’t have to excuse anything.

You don’t even have to understand why I still feel the way I do.

But please leave a little room.

Because if the day ever comes when my son walks back through that door, I don’t want him walking into a room full of people who decided years ago that he was no longer welcome.

I want there to be a path back.

Maybe that’s naive.

Maybe hope always contains a little naivety.

But I’ve realized that when people I love declare that they’re finished with my son, part of what hurts is that they’re declaring an ending I’m not ready to declare.

Maybe I never will be.

Because I’ve already lost the relationship as it exists today.

I don’t want to lose the possibility of tomorrow too.

So to the people who love an estranged parent:

Stand beside us.

Listen to us.

Get angry with us sometimes.

Remind us when we need to protect ourselves.

Tell us when you think we’re wrong.

But understand that you may be able to reach a place we cannot.

You may be able to be done.

We may never be.

And when you love us, perhaps one of the kindest things you can do is leave a little room in your heart for the person we’re still hoping comes home.

Because we’re trying to leave room too.

That’s what hope asks of us.

And some days, that’s what makes it so damn hard.