🫂 I'm sorry, hon, that's hard. My family of origin kind of weaponizes connection.

It was most painful during the pandemic, I had just come back home from Europe in March 2020 right before the lockdown so I didn't have a chance to establish other community. I reached out to family even just for walks in the park in their neighborhood, trying to make it as low effort as possible on their part and they wouldn't respond or would be too busy and I felt totally alone.

Now I purposefully don't live near them, I purposefully focus on building social connections elsewhere. I still reach out to them because I want to be the type of person who makes the effort. But it's always pretty disappointing, very similar in my feelings towards them as you describe here.

What I worked through with my therapist was that there are roles in family systems. My role growing up was the scapegoat. I was always talked about as if I was the problem, I was too angry, too drunk, too much of a failure to ever succeed and be deserving of... Whatever. But honestly? Even when I was at my worst I was an honor roll kid who was voted captain of my soccer team. I was a good kid, and I kind of went crazy because I was constantly being told I was bad. I now think it's because they needed me to be bad, so they could feel better about themselves. So long as they could frame me as a failure, they kept me around so they could feel superior.

Once I got my life together they started going long periods of time without responding to me at all. When I do see them now it's very obvious to me how over the top they go to belittle any accomplishments I have, even if I'm not even bringing it up. Idk man, it's hard being blood with toxic folks.

I hope you feel better soon 💖