2 years complete NC with my parents.
I have them blocked everywhere, but every so often I will search their names and see if Google throws up anything interesting (this is how I found out they've sold my childhood home). I just can't help myself, I guess in a way I still want to know how they're doing.
I guess I hit on a good set of keywords today- not only was I rewarded with a bunch of insane anti-vax facebook comments from the height of the pandemic that reminded me of the moment I started seeing my parents in a new light, but I also got a search result for a comment my mum left on an instagram reel for some psychologist's video on parental estrangement.
Unfortunately I can't see the full comment as I have her blocked, but the search result caption says (I'm translating): "there's too many psychologists showing up who insist that parents are bad, didn't love their kids enough, didn't raise them properly..." . That's all I have, but it's enough to confirm to me that even two years on, she's fully convinced that someone has brainwashed me against her. She can't possibly have been a shit mother.
This is a lady who screamed at and beat me when I was 6 for daring to ask how to spell a word. Told me to not show bruises at school or I'd get taken away. Beat me again because I brought a friend home with me after school (didn't tell this friend she can't stay- no- let me have her over for an hour, then beat me when she went home). She abandoned her 8 & 13 year old kids for two years on the other side of the continent to carry on living alone without adults - we didn't even have relatives living with us during the week. She thought it was a genius plan to entrust a bank card to a 14 year old boy to buy groceries and was enraged when of course he spent the money on something else and I was left without food for weeks, relying on a neighbour's generosity to feed me.
She called me a little bitch and my brother an undercooked bastard to our faces if we disagreed with her. Wasn't opposed to dragging me around by my hair. Thought it was completely fine to leave her 10 year old home alone 9pm - 6 am 5 days a week after my brother ran away from home. Home alone, almost every single night for the next 9 years. Didn't attend a single parent-teacher meeting or award ceremony, never as much as looked at my school work despite being a former teacher. Shamed my having heavier periods than her, growing armpit hair, having a bigger chest, me not wearing make-up, me wearing make-up, having acne. Told teenage me to not bother having friends and made it a personal mission to poison my relationships with every single other member of my family by telling me distressing things about them from when I was 4. Had vile nicknames for everyone because using people's actual names was beneath her. Not even for her own husband or son.
Made it my task to book her doctor's appointments, call the police, fire brigade, the council, insurance companies, handymen because she couldn't be bothered to learn English. Yet didn't care a hoot when I had serious health issues as a teenager, or when I had a cancer scare in my mid twenties. Laughed when I told her that I had anxiety and depression, insisted that doctors are charlatans and my pills will make me kill myself. But would scream at me if I refused to write a sick note for her work, way into my 20ies. Demanded to be taken to the doctors for every ailment she had.
I'm a little sad I can't see her comment, as the rest of the comments on that post are very much pro estranged kids, pointing out that parents who rage about their kids estranging are generally missing the aspect of control, rather than genuinely mourning the relationship loss. That ultimately you reap what you sow.
I know it's ultimately self harm to keep googling the parents, but in a way it does help keep me on the path of no contact. Just two days ago I was sat pondering in the kitchen if I'm being too harsh and if I should ease up. Lol.