I really don't understand you, and I don't understand this family. 

Why bother leaving guilt trippy voicemails at the end of last year if that's all you intended to do? Why bother reaching out at all? 

Why did you never do or say anything during my entire shit childhood as you watched my mother berate and belittle me? 

The first person who ever told me that she was an abuser was my high school best friend's mother. If it was visible to a stranger, it must have been visible. 

If it was not visible to you, then you should answer for yourself why that was the case. I am not interested in your answer to this. 

Debra is a narcissist. She was raised to be one by Margaret, who was such an incredible narcissist that some of my earliest memories are of the way she spoke to me. My actual earliest memory is of my mom hitting Claire in the kitchen of the house where we lived when I was a toddler. 

Being raised by a narcissist is incredibly damaging, and I see in some of your choices and traits your own push against embodying narcissism. I cut you no slack for the burden this has represented to you, because I grew up in the same family a generation later, experiencing from Debra word-for-word the same abuse as Dana did from Margaret, and I made different choices. 

From my point of view, every adult in this family is either an abuser or an enabler. How many of you just watched as she lashed out at her kids? 

I imagine you all over the holidays just gently wringing your hands about my absence, if it was mentioned at all. 

I imagine you all thinking that your paltry gestures have been enough, even though those gestures are your stand-in for truth, honesty, principle, morality, and actually contending with your cultural and genetic heritage. 

I imagine how easily and instinctually my voice is brushed away from how any of you think about yourselves, even though I am the only one who consistently speaks truth in our entire family tree. 

Do not call me. Do not leave any other voicemails. None of you will ever be unblocked from my phone book. I am unable to leave quietly, from my family and from any other space that has ever deeply harmed me. I have contended with Christian Science, I have contended with the boundaries that I require in my adult life to be safe, I have contended with every single individual who has ever put their hands on me, and I cannot understand how my entire family failed so completely to keep me safe.