In a developing story coming out of the tangled vipers’ nest that is your life, your family –– who you “cut off” over two years ago –– has yet to realize that it’s estranged.
“I thought it was going to be this big triumph to finally cut off my toxic family,” you told reporters. “And while, yeah, it definitely has done wonders for my mental health, it would be even better if they fucking noticed.”
You said that your family will still text you from time to time, and when you don’t respond, they’ll just text you again later about something unrelated, apparently unmoved by whether or not you actually respond.
“I didn’t go home for Christmas last year, and my mom posted a group photo that said, ‘Gang’s all here! So blessed to have such a big, beautiful family,’” you said. “She even tagged me –– in the shadowy space next to the Christmas tree — except I have my family blocked on all social media, so she accidentally tagged the wrong person –– a complete stranger –– and they commented, ‘Cute :).’ It’s a waking nightmare.”
When asked how you even knew about this interaction if you had your family blocked, you admitted to having several burner accounts that you use specifically to stalk them.
“I just want to see their reactions when they realize I’ve gone no-contact with them,” you said, while scrolling through your dad’s Facebook posts. “Once they do, I’ll delete these accounts and finally be free of them for good!”
However, when reporters pointed out that cutting off toxic family members was supposed to stop giving them the power to impact your life and emotions and that constantly monitoring their social media to see if they’d noticed you’d cut ties with them seemed antithetical to that, you quickly changed your tune.
“I mean, it’s not like I’m always lurking on their social media pages!” you said sheepishly. “Besides, it doesn’t even matter, because for all they know, it’s ‘user04161997’ commenting passive-aggressive things on all of their posts. Do you think they noticed that the numbers in that username are actually my birthday? You know what, forget it, it doesn’t even matter!”
You then added a defensive, “Not all healing is linear!” in a way that suggested you’d been in therapy, but definitely not for long enough.
As of press time, you’d caved under the weight of the perceived “judgment” you’d convinced yourself you were experiencing from others, and deleted all of your burner accounts. Meanwhile, your family still had not realized their relationship had changed with you at all, and your mom had actually texted you a link to a faux-therapy page about “emotional labor” and said she was going to start setting boundaries in your relationship, as she felt you were taking more from her than she could offer.
“Not…going…to…respond…” you said, one eye visibly twitching.
