When Love Requires Distance
Distance is rarely chosen because it’s easy. It’s chosen because staying costs too much. And sometimes, learning that cost means unlearning everything you were taught about keeping the peace – a lesson that makes choosing yourself feel wrong before it ever feels right. It feels wrong because you’ve spent your life explaining, giving, and extending yourself to keep relationships intact. When you stop that, it changes the way some people see you, and it makes the walls you build feel heavier than they look – harder to hold, harder to keep standing, especially when it’s your parent on the other side. The person your heart is tied to in ways logic can’t undo, no matter how much healing you do.
That connection doesn’t disappear just because you recognize it costs you too much. I know this because I’ve lived it.
The boundary I have set with my dad wasn’t set in anger. It wasn’t impulsive. It wasn’t made to punish anyone. It was set to protect me. Because unlimited access to my energy was destroying me. Because kindness without protection kept me stuck in the same cycle.
Protecting yourself from someone you love – especially someone who was meant to protect you – goes against everything your body knows. When I see my dad, I want to drop the walls. To say it’s okay. We can fix this. We can be a family. Things can be better. So I minimize my feelings. I tuck them away. I make myself smaller so he can stay. That has been the pattern my entire life. And then time passes. And he leaves again.
And in that moment, you realize – or maybe you already know – that you can want a parent with your whole heart and still not be able to want that version of them. It’s the moment when you need to be nurtured, but you’re the nurturer. When you realize you’ve become the most grown-up, grown-up you can rely on.
I can’t do that anymore, even though every part of me wants to – because the little girl in me still believes love can be saved if she tries harder, explains better, gives more, and there is still a part of me that wants to run to her daddy, forgive everything, and take the blame just to keep the connection intact.
But I can’t let her lead this anymore. Because I deserve more. And more than that – my children deserve more.
I may never understand how someone can be given another chance at a beautiful life with their family and still be pulled away by their demons – but I understand where it comes from. It rises out of pain that has nothing to do with my worth. We stir old wounds, old anger, old hurt simply by being close. Not because we want to, and not because we deserve it. It isn’t something we asked for. It isn’t something he wants. But it is the reality we live in.
I’m learning that healing doesn’t come from replaying what happened or searching for explanations I’ll never get. It starts the moment I stop needing his reasons to justify my truth. I’m not shutting anyone out. I’m protecting myself. I’m choosing stillness over chaos, even when the stillness aches.
And if my kids ever read this one day, I want you to know this wasn’t about punishment or anger. It was about love – the kind that protects, even when it hurts.
I want you to grow up knowing you never have to disappear to be loved. That peace is not something you earn by sacrificing yourself. That you are allowed to walk away from what wounds you, even when it’s complicated.
Every decision I made here was made with you in mind.
