The Grief of Loving Knife People
The holidays always carry a lot for so many of us. Hopes, fears, grief, love, connection and so much more. Growing up, I always loved the idea of big, traditional holidays. Turkey and all the fixins, decorating the whole house, lighting the tree, mugs of cocoa, the works. To me, without these things we couldn’t have a happy holiday.
What I came to learn later was that I was seeking out the makings of joy, thinking the love lay in the trappings. See, I knew it didn’t live anywhere in my house but I knew I had so much of it to give. Maybe, if we made Thanksgiving dinner at home and didn’t go to Golden Corral, I would feel the love I so longed for. Maybe, if we decorated as a family, and got through it happily instead of with arguments and ending up with me wandering around our neighborhood at 8:30pm on black Friday, maybe all the hurtful words and painful truths would somehow just stop.
The whole time I was fighting to make the holidays more traditional I was working so hard to ignore a reality that is all too common:
I was raised by Knife People
I came up with this term, Knife People, to describe people who are made of such sharp stuff that engaging with them at all can draw blood. I see it all the time, I don’t know many therapists who work with queer folks, with attachment trauma, with BPD who don’t see it All The Time. Knife People, as the name suggests, are still people. Still the loved ones we want nothing more than to feel their arms around us, accepted and loved at last. And yet, they are made of knives.
They became this way through their own shit. They might have even been raised by Knife People themselves, developing their own knives to try to protect themselves from getting shredded. Nobody asks to be a Knife Person.
I used to think my mother was better, that my step mother was the only Knife Person in the house. It’s taken a lot of therapy and time to realize my mother was her very own kind of knife and not just a whet stone.
*A brief aside: I wanted to put a picture here to break up the blog but I have genuinely no photos of myself with my step mother and none with my mother after the age of 7, maybe earlier (which was when she met my step mother).
I don’t really know what that means right now but it’s interesting. I’m going to put a picture of my cat here instead since I don’t want this to be empty and she’s given me so much comfort through the years.
I’ve been no contact with my step mother since I was 15 and sent to live with my uncle. I’ve been no contact with my mother since 2019. Since the day I sent the no contact email, I’ve been torn.
A part of me, the same part that loves a traditional holiday set up, has longed to find a way to “get over it”. I want very little more than to wake up and realize that I was wrong, I was seeing and understanding it all wrong and there is a salvageable relationship with this person who means so much to me. That I could follow through on the self abandonment that served to get me through my childhood and adolescence (just barely) and it would mean that I finally get a hug from my mom.
But alas, even if I found a way to do that, I would bleed out from the wounds she inflicted. She’s a Knife Person, she cannot actually hug me without her sharp edges catching on my self worth and tearing it to shreds. To love her is to betray myself, all my little parts that most need my big self to care for and protect them.
And it’s not fair!
It’s not fair that she made choices that affected the rest of my life, that she continues to chose her comfort over our relationship, over my emotional safety.
And yet, I love her. I love the idea of what she could have been, of what I could have had. It’s just the same as the big glowing tree, the full table spread. The idea is comforting, the idea is warm and safe and impossible. Y’all, I don’t even like cranberry sauce.
This ends up being one of the most painful contradictions. The thing that stumps the “Estranged Parent” league who blame adult kids for their boundaries. Of COURSE I want a relationship with my mother. She’s my fucking mother. I want to be able to call her and tell her about my day, to hear about hers. I want to cry to her when shit is hard and laugh with her about anything and everything. I love her so much it hurts. And that’s the problem, it’s not supposed to hurt. Not while she’s alive.
So I’m grieving someone who’s a phone call away. Someone who walks around, every day, made of knives. Someone who cannot tolerate my whole being and yet was supposed to love me unconditionally.
It’s a very hollow grief, made more cavernous by the disbelief of others.
“She’s your mother, of course she loves you” - she loves me in a way that hurts more than anything else I’ve ever felt.
“Won’t you regret it if you end on a bad note” - I always wonder why I’m the one who “should” feel regret, she’s the one who won’t do the work.
“She is doing the best she can, it’s hard to change!” - I do get that it’s hard to change, it’s effortful to drag yourself over the coals of accountability and growth for the sake of others. AND she is highly resourced and has been given clear, direct, and realistic steps to creating a relationship with me, if that’s her doing the best she can we have rounded the corner to hopeless.
Hey, Sabrina, WTF does this have to do with anything?
Right, right, so here’s the thing, if you love a Knife Person I just wanted you to know you’re not alone. You’re not wrong or defective, you don’t have to go in for another hug and you’re allowed to long for one all the way down to your bones. Grieving a relationship with someone so formative, someone who is functionally accessible is unique and very painful.
Some Things I’ve Found Helpful
In the short term, here are some immediate actions that I have found helpful:
Remembering that a desire for parental love is understandable
Remembering that hugging people made of knives hurts like hell
Engaging with media centered on found family (such movies, books, and tv shows)
Sharing grief with trusted and loving friends
Show and telling about items and photos from childhood with trusted and loving friends
Filling the need for physical comfort by cuddling pets or consenting friends
Extra therapy appointments as needed
What has worked for me long term is building several powerful and connective relationships with pillow people, with laughter people and song people, with dance people and action people. I’ve stopped trying to hug the knife people and instead, when I’m feeling deep grief about it I work hard to give myself the space to cry. I’ve stopped taking them being made as knives as a fault of mine, and even as a fault of theirs.
It’s how she was made, I imagine it hurts her too, and until she can figure out I’ll grieve.