The Strange Mercy of Being Pushed Away
June 08, 2025
Sometimes love doesn't look like holding on. Sometimes it looks like being pushed out — not because you weren't loved, but because they didn't know how else to keep you safe.
I’ve been carrying a quiet kind of grief lately.
Not loud.
Not overwhelming.
Just heavy.
It’s the grief that comes when you realize you’ll never get to speak to your father as an adult.
Not man-to-man.
Not heart-to-heart.
Not now that you finally have the language for the things you once only felt.
💔 The Unlived Relationship
I’ve accepted that my mum never loved me in the way I needed. That grief, strangely, has settled.
But my dad… he’s harder.
Because I felt something in him.
A gentleness he couldn’t quite show.
A love that got buried beneath coldness.
And something in me has always believed — he pushed me away on purpose.
Not to hurt me.
But to save me.
🔄 The Paradox That’s Hard to Hold
He treated me with disdain. Made home unbearable.
And yet, part of me believes he did that to force me to leave.
Because leaving was the only way I’d be safe.
The only way I’d get a real chance.
That kind of love — if that’s what it was — is hard to receive.
Harder still to forgive.
It wasn’t fair.
It hurt.
But maybe, in his own broken way, it was mercy.
🧩 Sorting Through the Emotional Debris
I don’t want to keep revisiting this to punish myself or romanticize him.
I just want to understand the scraps — to clear them from my nervous system so they don’t haunt future relationships.
Because being pushed away — even with good intentions — still leaves a scar.
It plants a seed of doubt: Am I loveable up close? Or only from afar?
I want to know that I can be chosen and kept.
🧒 To the Boy I Was
You didn’t deserve to be pushed out.
Even if it helped you grow.
Even if it led you somewhere safer.
You deserved to be guided, not cast aside.
You deserved softness, not confusion.
And you were never a burden.
💬 A Letter I’ll Never Send
Dad,
I wish we could have spoken now.
As I am. As you were.
I think I would have understood you more.
And maybe you would have seen I turned out okay.I don’t know if you pushed me away to save me.
But if you did — thank you.Still, I carry the ache of being sent away without explanation.
And I wish we’d found another way.I forgive you — not because it didn’t hurt,
but because holding it forever will only deepen the wound.You gave me life. Now I’m learning how to live it.
On my terms.
With softness.
With love.
Some days, I still feel the weight of what could’ve been.
But I also feel the strength of what I’ve made from it.
And maybe that’s the strange mercy after all.