Goodbye to my daughter.

It's been over 2.5 years since you left and nearly 2 years since we last communicated. I have  struggled all this time with the complexities of this issue.

I no longer want to know where you or how you doing, have asked others to stop telling me what they know, and have asked others to stop urging me to be "the adult" and attempt reconcile. You are an adult too and it's unfair that I bear this burden alone.

I can no longer "parent" you or be the "bigger person". I too am only human after all and clearly I have gravely failed somewhere along the way. I am sorry for that.

I had no parents. I was abandoned as a child and it's probably the strongest experience that I most wanted that you would never know for yourself. Somehow you knew this and this is where you chose to strike at me. I should have known better to let you in. It's not safe. Whenever you make yourself vulnerable, you will get stabbed in the heart- even from you own child, who knows you from the inside out.

I fear will never be able to forgive either your cruelty or your sudden and complete abandonment of me- the one person who loved and supported you the most in your life.

This period has been a rollercoaster of emotions for me to find a way to make sense of this- anger, denial, depression, enormous sadness, occasional hope, and frequent thinking of a way/ways to reconnect, etc. But it's now well over 2 years later and I still can't think about you without crying. Even a small, benign public comment to you over a year ago was received with a request to stop contacting you in any way- a request I have honored.

I hate everything about this situation but the damage you have done to me personally and to our relationship now feels permanent and irreparable to me. It is also disruptive to the family as a whole and steals a measure of happiness from everyone.

I can't help but note the irony of how I supported you completely when you did this very same thing to your dad for 5 years. Yet he still continued to pay your full tuition and did not demand anything from you in return. I recall telling you when you first left for school that when you return you will be an adult and I could only hope you have a better relationship with your dad as an adult than you did now.

But I don't know what to do with this deep well of grief but to try to describe it, define it, give it a name, something, I dunno. I hate everything about this. Perhaps one day it will hurt less. 

You were and are deeply loved, and the person I knew before this thing happened- whatever it was- is greatly missed by me. I wish and hope you miss me too.

I'm so sorry things turned out this way.

I wish I could fix it.

Still, I'm done with the uncertainty and the hope, and now know the "why" doesn't even matter any more. You chose your path and now I will learn how to live without you in my life. This is the greatest regret of my life but I am powerless to fix this. 

You are the only one who can bridge this gap. But now I fear that even if you wished to and/or chose to do so, I can't trust that the effort would be genuine or that you won't do it again.

For this I grieve: That I may not have the grace to forgive you for causing me so much pain.

My heart will remain broken forever.

I never- not one time- did anything to harm or inhibit you. You know this is true. And I know this is true. 

You are doing what you are doing for some reason. I don't know what the reason is but I can only hope you do or one day will.  I'll miss you forever.


All my love,

Your Mom