They Don't Get to Have the Rest of Me

I've decided to stop looking for the documents about my childhood. I've spent months trying to track down court records, abuse reports, and anything else that might explain what happened when I was four years old. I've contacted offices, followed leads, and tried to piece together information from more than thirty years ago. I wanted to know what was documented, what the adults involved knew, and whether the things I've been told throughout my life match what actually happened. I thought finding those records might finally give me some understanding of a part of my life I've never been able to make sense of.

My therapist asked me something recently that completely changed how I was looking at all of this. He wanted to know what I planned to do when I finally found whatever I was searching for. If the documents somehow came wrapped in flowers and a bow, containing the most favorable explanation imaginable, would I suddenly welcome either of my parents back into my life? Would anything written in those records change the reasons I've spent nearly five years without them? I told him no, and I didn't have to think about it.

I've been going over that conversation ever since because I realized I already knew the answer to the question I'd been avoiding. I wouldn't welcome them back, regardless of what the records contained. There might be information I don't know, and some of it might help explain things that have bothered me for years, but none of it would change what those relationships became or why I eventually ended them. I had convinced myself that finding the documents was necessary before I could move forward, when the decision about my parents had already been made. I was searching for something that might help me feel justified in a decision I didn't actually need anyone else's permission to make.

I've been without my parents for nearly five years. They aren't involved in our daily lives, they aren't helping raise my children, and they aren't people I call when something good or bad happens. I've built a life with my wife and boys during that time, and they've had no part in it. I haven't been struggling with whether to maintain those relationships because I made that decision years ago. What I've been struggling with is accepting what it means to have made it.

I still get incredibly angry about things that happened decades ago. I can be having an ordinary day and remember something that makes me feel like I'm right back in the middle of it. Sometimes a conversation about my childhood leaves me overwhelmed for days afterward, even when I thought I was doing reasonably well before it came up. I find myself imagining what I would say to my parents if I had the opportunity to confront them, or wondering what they would think if they knew about something I've accomplished. It's difficult to admit how much emotional space I've continued giving people who haven't been part of my life for years.

I think I've spent much of my adulthood trying to prove that I'm a better person than the people who raised me. I've wanted to be more dependable, more generous, more understanding, and more willing to help people who don't have anybody looking out for them. I want my children to grow up knowing they're loved, and I want them to have a father they can trust when things become difficult. Those are good things to want, but I'm beginning to recognize how much anger has been attached to my reasons for pursuing them. I've been measuring myself against people I don't even want in my life anymore.

I've been doing a lot behind the scenes to help people, and I genuinely enjoy knowing that something I've done might make somebody else's life easier. Sometimes it's giving my time, sometimes it's using a skill I have, and sometimes it's trying to solve a problem that somebody else doesn't have the resources to address. I don't expect anything in return, and most of the time I'd rather not receive much recognition for it. I know what it feels like to need help, and I want to be somebody who's willing to offer it when I can. But recently I've had to confront the possibility that some of my motivation comes from a place that isn't nearly as settled as I'd like it to be.

Scott pointed out that I'm doing something my parents never really demonstrated to me. I'm helping people without expecting them to owe me something afterward. My therapist made a similar observation when I explained that I keep trying to do good things while questioning whether I'm actually a good person. He pointed out that I was describing the actions of somebody who cares about other people, yet I was still looking for evidence that I deserved to think of myself that way. I had a difficult time accepting that because I've spent so many years feeling like I needed to prove something.

I think I've been trying to make the good things I do outweigh everything I've struggled with. I know I have problems with anger and irritation, and there have been times when I haven't handled things the way I wish I had. I can be impatient, overwhelmed, and harder on myself than I probably need to be. Instead of allowing those things to be problems I can work on, I've sometimes treated them as evidence that something is fundamentally wrong with me. Helping people became one of the ways I tried to convince myself that I wasn't the person I was afraid of becoming.

And sometimes, if I'm being fair about my own motives, I've wanted my parents to know how much more I've done for other people than they ever did for me. I've wanted to succeed in ways they couldn't ignore and become somebody whose accomplishments would make them reconsider whatever they thought about me. I've imagined what they might say if they saw the life I've built or understood how much effort I've put into helping people. There's something embarrassing about admitting that because I haven't spoken to them in years, yet I've continued behaving as though they're an audience I need to impress. I don't particularly like how much influence I've allowed that imaginary audience to have over me.

The people I'm helping have their own problems and reasons for needing support. They deserve to be treated as people rather than becoming part of some competition I'm having with my childhood. I want to be able to offer help because somebody needs it and because I have the ability to provide it. I don't want every generous act to become another opportunity to compare myself with my parents or reassure myself that I'm a better person than they were. The help I've given has been real, and I know it has mattered to people, but I want to change what I'm asking those experiences to accomplish for me.

I've also started recognizing how much of my idea of success has been influenced by wanting to prove them wrong. I have ambitions, interests, and things I genuinely enjoy building, but somewhere in the background there's often been a desire to show that I could become successful despite everything that happened. I've imagined reaching some point where my accomplishments were so obvious that nobody could question my worth. The problem is that there's no particular level of success that would guarantee the acknowledgment I've wanted. I could accomplish everything I've ever imagined and still be left wondering whether they knew or cared.

That realization hurts because I think there's still a part of me that wants my parents to be proud of me. I don't want them in my life, and I don't want them involved with my children, but I can still recognize that I wanted something from them that I never received in the way I needed. I wanted to feel protected, understood, and loved without having to accomplish anything first. I wanted parents who could acknowledge when they'd hurt me and who cared enough to try to make things right. Accepting that those relationships aren't going to become what I wanted is a different kind of loss from simply deciding not to speak to them.

I think I've been grieving the family I should have had for much longer than I've realized. There are people connected to me by blood who are alive somewhere in the world, but they aren't people I can turn to or people I want involved in the life I've built. I've known that for years, yet I still struggle with the finality of saying that I don't have those family relationships anymore. It feels unnatural to accept that the people who were supposed to be my foundation are people I need to live without. I can know that maintaining the distance is the right decision for me and still feel terribly sad that it became necessary.

For a long time, searching for the records gave me something to do with those feelings. I could make another phone call, contact another office, or try to understand another piece of information. There was always the possibility that the next attempt would uncover something important, and I could focus on that instead of confronting what I was actually feeling. I don't regret wanting to know the truth, and I still believe the details of what happened matter. But I can see now that I've been treating the search as though it might eventually resolve a relationship that ended years ago.

My therapist's question forced me to consider what would happen if I found everything. I might discover that somebody documented things differently from the way I remember them, or I might find information that confirms details I've wondered about for decades. There could be explanations I haven't considered or questions the records don't answer at all. I can't know what they contain without seeing them, and I'm not going to invent certainty about things I haven't been able to verify. What I do know is that none of those possibilities changes whether I want my parents in my life today.

There's something deeply painful about realizing I may never get the acknowledgment I've wanted from them. I can imagine an apology or an explanation, but I can't make either one happen, and I don't know whether hearing those words would actually bring the relief I've expected. I've spent years thinking about what I would say if they finally admitted how much damage was done. I can picture the conversation, but I've never been able to imagine an ending that gives me back what I needed when I was little. Even if they understood everything tomorrow, I'd still have the years I've spent trying to recover from it.

I'm beginning to think I've kept those imaginary conversations alive because accepting their absence completely feels like accepting that the family I wanted is never coming. As long as I was still looking for information, wondering what they thought, and imagining what might happen if they understood, there was something unfinished between us. I didn't have to face the finality of it because I could tell myself there was still something I needed to discover. Now I'm recognizing that the relationship can be over even if some of the questions remain unanswered. That's a difficult thing for me to accept because I generally want to understand a problem before I feel comfortable putting it down.

The last several weeks have also been complicated by changes in my mental health treatment. For four and a half years after becoming sober, I thought some of the agitation and instability I experienced might simply be what life without alcohol felt like for me. I'd been through years of medication changes and adjustments, and I didn't always have a clear understanding of what each medication was doing. Recently, genetic testing raised concerns about how I might process a medication I'd been prescribed, and I learned that the dose I had been taking was more than twice the FDA-approved maximum. That information made me question years of experiences I'd accepted as part of who I was.

I'm now several weeks into a different approach to treatment, and I'm beginning to experience periods of calm that feel unfamiliar after so many years. I'm still dealing with anxiety, irritation, and ADHD, and I know there's more work ahead. I'm taking the changes gradually because I want to understand what each medication is doing rather than changing several things at once and wondering which one made a difference. I can't say exactly how much of what I've experienced came from medication, my childhood, sobriety, or some combination of those things. But I know that feeling somewhat more stable has changed how I'm able to look at parts of my life that have been difficult to examine.

I've spent four and a half years sober, trying to understand why I still felt so unsettled. There were times when I genuinely wondered whether giving up alcohol had somehow left me unable to feel normal, even though I knew sobriety was the right decision for me. I kept moving forward, raising my children, working, and finding ways to build a life while dealing with things inside my head that I didn't always know how to explain. Now that I'm beginning to experience a different level of calm, I feel both relieved and angry about how long I spent believing that instability was simply something I had to live with. I don't know how much of that time could have been different, and I probably never will.

All of this has brought up emotions I haven't fully processed. Memories I thought I'd already dealt with have started feeling different, and questions I've carried for years have become harder to ignore. I've spent a long time trying to understand myself through research, problem-solving, and sheer determination, but I can't approach every emotional experience like something I can fix by gathering enough information. Therapy is helping me recognize things that I probably wouldn't have figured out on my own. It's uncomfortable, and sometimes I leave a conversation feeling worse before I understand why it was necessary.

I think the next part of this is going to require me to accept that I can be a good person while still having things about myself that need work. I've been so focused on overcoming what happened to me that I haven't always recognized how much I've already changed. I've stayed sober, sought help, built a family, and continued trying to become better even when I didn't feel particularly good about myself. None of that means I've reached some point where I no longer have problems. It means I can acknowledge the progress without requiring myself to be perfect before any of it counts.

I've been thinking about how to mark the end of something that's been over in practical terms for nearly five years, and I keep coming back to the image of a Viking funeral. I picture an old wooden coffin resting in a boat, pushed out from shore until the current begins carrying it away, with flames eventually taking hold as it moves farther into the water. I know that's more of a cinematic image than an accurate description of every historical funeral, but it captures something I haven't been able to explain very well. The people I'm trying to let go of have already been absent from my life for years. What hasn't happened is the emotional farewell.

I can imagine standing on the shoreline and watching the boat drift away, knowing there's nothing left for me to retrieve from it. I've spent so much time trying to understand what happened and why that I've continued behaving as though some final answer might still bring those relationships back into focus. In that image, the coffin isn't carrying my childhood memories or the experiences that made me who I am. It's carrying the approval I've been waiting for, the arguments I've rehearsed, and the hope that someday my parents might finally understand what I've been trying to tell them. I want to let those things go without feeling like I'm abandoning the child who needed them.

I think that's what has made this so difficult. When I imagine no longer being angry, part of me worries that I'm somehow minimizing what happened. When I think about stopping the search for documents, I wonder whether I'm giving up on finding the truth. And when I consider letting go of my parents emotionally, I feel the sadness of accepting that they may never become the people I wanted them to be. I've spent so long carrying those feelings that I don't know what it will be like when they aren't occupying the same amount of space in my life.

I don't want to erase my childhood or pretend it didn't affect me. There are experiences I remember, things I've been told, and details I still don't understand, and those distinctions matter to me. I want to continue working through the effects of those years in therapy because I know they influence how I react to things now. But I don't want to keep treating my parents as people whose opinions are necessary for me to understand whether I've become a decent adult. I need to separate the work of healing from the desire to make them finally recognize what happened.

For years, I've been comparing my behavior with theirs, particularly when it comes to being a father. I want my boys to feel safe coming to me with problems, and I want them to know that my love isn't dependent on their accomplishments or how well they behave on any particular day. I want them to be able to tell me when I've made a mistake without feeling responsible for protecting my feelings. Those are things I care deeply about, but I don't want every decision I make as a parent to become another comparison with my own childhood. My children deserve to have their lives centered on who they are rather than what happened to me before they were born.

I'm not always as patient as I want to be, and I know there are moments when my irritation becomes more intense than the situation deserves. That's something I'm actively working on because I don't like how it feels, and I don't want the people around me to have to manage it for me. But I've also been so afraid of becoming like my parents that I sometimes treat an ordinary mistake as evidence of something much worse. I can recognize that I handled something poorly and take responsibility for it without turning the experience into a judgment about my entire character. I want to become better at doing that, both for myself and for the people I love.

I think my children have also helped me understand how little responsibility a child should have for the behavior of the adults around them. I look at my boys and can't imagine expecting them to earn the right to feel loved or protected. They're children, and they need adults who are willing to handle adult responsibilities. They shouldn't have to understand every problem in the family or become responsible for making somebody else's emotions manageable. I can recognize those things clearly when I think about them, but I still struggle to extend the same understanding to the child I used to be.

I was four years old when some of the things I've been trying to investigate happened. Whatever the records eventually might have shown, I wasn't responsible for the decisions the adults made or the circumstances I was placed in. I didn't need to grow up and become exceptionally successful to demonstrate that I deserved better. I didn't need to spend decades helping other people to make up for something that happened to me. Those are things I can understand intellectually now, but accepting them emotionally has been much more difficult.

I think that's part of why my therapist's question affected me so much. I'd been approaching the records as though they were going to tell me whether I was justified in how I felt. I wanted something official, something written down, something that couldn't be dismissed or argued with. But I realized that even the most complete set of documents couldn't determine whether I wanted to maintain a relationship with my parents. That decision belongs to me, and I've already made it based on the life I've actually experienced.

I also have to accept that the absence of those relationships can still hurt without meaning I made the wrong decision. Sometimes I wish I had parents I could call, people who knew me when I was little and could share memories without making me question what was true. I wish my children had the kind of extended family relationships that would have been possible under different circumstances. I can feel sad about those things while recognizing that the relationships available to us aren't the relationships I wish existed. The family I wanted and the family I actually experienced are not the same.

I don't think I've allowed myself to grieve that distinction properly. I've spent years being angry, trying to understand the past, and focusing on what I could accomplish in the present. Anger has been easier for me to recognize because it gives me something to react to and something to do. Sadness is different, especially when there's no practical action that will change the situation. I can't solve the absence of the family I wanted by becoming more successful or finding another document.

That's difficult for somebody like me because I tend to respond to problems by trying to do something about them. If something isn't working, I want to understand why and figure out how to improve it. If somebody needs help, I start thinking about what I can offer. Those instincts have helped me accomplish things I'm proud of, but they haven't been particularly effective at resolving emotions that don't have a straightforward solution. Sometimes the only thing I can do is acknowledge that something hurts and continue working through it.

I don't know what emotional separation from my parents will feel like once I've made more progress. I imagine there will still be moments when a memory makes me angry or something reminds me of a relationship I wish I'd had. I don't expect to forget them or suddenly feel indifferent to everything that happened. What I'd like is to reach a point where those memories don't automatically become the center of my day. I want to be able to think about my childhood without feeling compelled to reopen the same questions every time.

I also want to stop imagining my parents' reactions to the things I accomplish. I know how much effort I've put into building a life, developing my abilities, and finding ways to help people. Those things matter because they're part of what I'm doing now, and because there are people who actually benefit from them. Whether my parents know about any of it shouldn't determine how I feel. I've spent years hoping that success might finally prove something to people whose approval I've already decided I don't need.

The same is true of the good things I try to do for other people. I don't want to stop helping anybody, and I don't want to lose the compassion that comes from understanding what it's like to need support. But I want to be more honest about the difference between helping because somebody needs something and helping because I'm trying to make myself feel worthy. I can care about people without making their circumstances part of my own emotional recovery. I can also recognize when I need rest or time with my family instead of feeling obligated to take on another responsibility.

I think I've sometimes made myself responsible for more than any one person can reasonably manage. There are always people who need help and situations that could be improved, and I can become so focused on those possibilities that I forget I'm allowed to have an ordinary day. I don't have to be working on something meaningful every minute to justify the life I have. I want to enjoy time with my wife and children without feeling like there's something more important I should be accomplishing. That shouldn't be a difficult thing to allow myself, but it has been.

There's another part of this that I find hard to admit, which is how much I want to feel normal. For years, I've been trying to manage anxiety, irritation, and a mind that often seemed to be working against me. I kept going because I had responsibilities and people I loved, but I didn't always feel comfortable inside my own head. Now that I'm beginning to experience some calm through changes in treatment, I find myself wondering what my life might feel like if that becomes more consistent. I don't expect perfection, but I'd like to know what it's like to go through an ordinary day without feeling like I'm constantly trying to control something inside myself.

That possibility is exciting and painful at the same time. I'm relieved to know that I may not have to live with the same level of distress forever, but I also think about how long I spent believing I had no other choice. I don't know what would have happened if I'd received different treatment earlier, and I can't responsibly assign every difficult year to one cause. But I can acknowledge how much I've struggled and how much effort it has taken to continue moving forward. I want to give myself some credit for that instead of immediately focusing on everything I still need to improve.

Therapy is going to remain an important part of this because I know medication alone isn't going to resolve the things I've carried from childhood. I'm beginning to feel different physically and emotionally, but that doesn't mean the old habits of thinking have disappeared. I still have a tendency to question my worth, compare myself with my parents, and become overwhelmed when the past comes up. Those are things I need to keep working through with somebody who can help me recognize patterns I haven't been able to see clearly on my own.

I think one of the hardest parts will be learning how to stop expecting a final answer to every question. There are details about my childhood that I may never know, and I don't like that. I can understand why I wanted the records and why the search became so important to me. But I don't want to spend another five years waiting for information that might never come, especially when I already know what I want my life to look like without those relationships. I need to become comfortable with the possibility that some parts of my history will remain unresolved.

That doesn't mean the search was pointless. It forced me to ask questions I'd avoided, helped me recognize how much uncertainty I'd been carrying, and eventually led to a conversation that changed my understanding of what I needed. I may not have found the documents I was looking for, but I've learned something about why I wanted them so badly. I was hoping they could provide the emotional certainty I'd never received from my parents. Now I have to work on finding that certainty somewhere other than their explanations or the records of what happened.

I keep returning to the image of that wooden boat because it gives me a way to picture something I can't physically do. I imagine the coffin resting inside, the wood catching fire, and the current gradually carrying it farther away. I don't picture myself celebrating or feeling relieved that the people are gone. I imagine feeling sad that the relationships became something I needed to end, and accepting that there isn't anything left I can do to make them different. I think a proper farewell should acknowledge the loss rather than pretend it was easy.

They've been gone for nearly five years, and I haven't really allowed myself to accept that the separation is permanent. I've continued looking for information, imagining conversations, and wondering what they might think about the life I've built. In a strange way, those habits have kept the relationships active even without any contact. I can see how much energy I've spent maintaining an emotional connection that doesn't give me anything I actually want. I don't want to keep doing that simply because it's become familiar.

I imagine pushing the boat away from the shore and watching it move into the water. The fire is already burning, and there's nothing left for me to do except allow it to drift farther away. I know I'll still remember the people and the things that happened, and I know the work of understanding those experiences won't end because I've decided to stop searching. But I want to mark the point when I finally stop waiting for my parents to become somebody else. I want to recognize that the relationship has ended and allow myself to grieve it without continuing to negotiate with it.

I don't know how long that will take emotionally. I expect there will be days when I feel like I've made progress and others when I find myself caught up in the same anger I've carried for years. I may still want to know what the records contain, and I may still imagine what my parents would think about something I've accomplished. I'm not going to treat those moments as proof that I haven't made progress. I want to notice them, understand why they're happening, and keep working toward a life where they don't have the same influence over me.

What I do know is that I have people in my life who deserve my attention now. My wife and children have been here through years of changes, and we've built something that doesn't depend on whether my parents approve of it. There are ordinary things I want to experience with them, conversations I want to have, and memories I want my children to carry into adulthood. I don't want to spend those years emotionally involved in relationships that have already ended. I want to be present enough to appreciate what we've built while we're actually living it.

I also want to continue helping people without treating it as a way to repair something about myself. I know how much it can mean when somebody offers support without expecting anything in return, and I want to remain somebody who's willing to do that. My experiences have influenced how I see people who are struggling, and I don't think there's anything wrong with allowing those experiences to make me more compassionate. But I want to help because I care about the person in front of me, not because I'm still trying to prove something to the people who raised me.

I have a difficult time accepting that I might already be a good person because I've spent so long focusing on the things I need to change. I know I'm imperfect, and I know there are moments when my emotions get the better of me. But I also know I've worked hard to improve my life, remained sober, sought help, and continued trying to make things better for other people. I want to recognize those choices without immediately comparing them with my parents or treating them as payments toward some imaginary debt.

I think the next part of my life needs to involve learning how to live without that comparison. I want to accomplish things because they interest me and because I enjoy the process of creating something useful. I want to raise my children according to what they need rather than what I wish I'd received. I want to help people because their lives matter, and I want to take care of myself because mine does, too. Those are reasons I can understand without bringing my parents into every decision.

I don't expect the pain of my childhood to disappear. There are things I experienced that will probably always make me sad or angry when I think about them, and I don't think there's anything wrong with acknowledging that. But I want to stop organizing my adult life around the possibility of receiving something from people who have never been able to give me what I needed. I want to be able to remember the past without continuing to ask it to become different. That's going to require time, patience, and more therapy than I can probably imagine right now.

The image of the Viking funeral isn't about pretending my parents are dead or wishing something terrible would happen to them. They're alive, and they can continue living whatever lives they choose. The funeral is for the relationships I've kept alive in my own mind and for the hope that those relationships might someday become something they never were. I need a way to acknowledge that they've been absent for years and that I'm finally ready to accept the absence emotionally. I can't make them participate in that decision, and I don't need them to.

I think about standing on that shoreline until the boat is too far away to see clearly. I imagine feeling the sadness of what should have been different, along with the uncertainty of what it will mean to stop carrying the same anger into every part of my life. There won't be any dramatic transformation waiting for me when I turn around, and I know I'll still have difficult days. But I can make a decision about where I want to put my attention, and I can keep returning to that decision when old habits bring me back to the past.

I've spent almost five years building a life without my parents while continuing to look for their approval in ways I didn't fully recognize. I think I'm finally ready to stop treating them as people who have a say in whether I'm successful, worthy, or good. I want to continue doing the work necessary to manage my emotions, understand my past, and become the kind of father and husband I want to be. I also want to enjoy the life I've already built without feeling like I need to accomplish something else before I deserve it.

I don't know whether I'll ever feel completely finished with what happened to me, and I don't think I need to make that promise to myself. I know there are memories that still hurt and questions that may never have answers. I know I'll need to keep working through those things rather than expecting one realization to resolve decades of pain. But I can stop waiting for my parents to provide the final explanation, acknowledgment, or approval that I've been hoping might make everything easier.

They've been gone from my life for nearly five years, and I've spent much of that time trying to understand how to live with what happened before they left. I have a family of my own now, people I care about, and things I want to experience that have nothing to do with proving I'm different from the people who raised me. I want to be able to help somebody, enjoy an accomplishment, or spend an ordinary afternoon with my children without my parents becoming part of the meaning I attach to it. I've already made the decision to live without them. Now I'm trying to make that decision emotionally, too.

I picture the boat disappearing into the distance, the flames getting smaller until I can't distinguish them from the horizon. I know I'll still have memories, anger, and questions when I leave that shoreline, and I know some of those things will take a long time to work through. But I don't want to spend another five years waiting there for something to come back. I have people waiting for me at home, and I'd like to be able to give them more of myself than I've been able to while carrying all of this.