I’ve been disowned…?
No…
I’ve been let go…?
That doesn’t feel right either…
Hurt. I’ve been hurt by unkind words I would never have thought I deserved.
Words that poured forth because I fell in love.
Words that would never have come if I hadn’t.
Does it hurt me?
Yes…
Forget this. You know what? It’s just me and you here, so I’m going to be completely open. This really sucks. A year ago, I was still writing. Or rather, I was finally getting back on track with writing. Now I’m dealing with shitty anxiety, heightened to the point where I feel like I need constant reassurances that I’m not totally sucking at life. Now, I’m dealing with ugly depression which makes me miserable and stashes even uglier thoughts in my mind like little landmines for me to stumble across and turn me into a batshit crazy, anti-social, hug the pillow kind of miserable.
Great descriptive, there, self. Clearly I must be winning at life.
But in better news, I’m making my attempt to cope with things. You know, like...medicine to regulate the something-somethings in my brain that need regulating, to keep me from acting on my mental crazies. I’m seeing a therapist who listens to me and is helping me work through this crappy, mental warzone. Hopefully we can, I don’t know… Neutralize these bombs. I think it’s going well.
But I don’t like it.
I’m hearing words like, “I really do still love you. But--I can’t come to your wedding reception, because it would upset your father.”
Are you being serious with me right now? Can you hear yourself speak, or is your mouth just flapping and words falling out without your knowledge? This is my happy occasion, and yet somehow I’m still managing to feel like I’ve done wrong. Like I’ve been a bad girl and need to be punished for it.
And I am being punished.
You know that moment in your life when someone else has decided what is right for you, and you can either please them and do it, or choose to take a different route and go with what you feel is right instead even knowing you’ll piss everyone off? Yeah, that moment came and went, without warning until suddenly when I tried to invite my parents to eat dinner with me and my then-fiancee, I received a very long email back that began, “Seriously?! This request should have come last February.”
So, you know, when I started dating, I should have taken my barely-known boyfriend to my parents and let them vet him. I guess I missed a lesson growing up by not having these dating experiences young. But that is par for the course, since my first date ever ended in my father threatening to kill said young boy who damn near pissed his pants and couldn’t leave fast enough.
I’m not to be trusted to vet my own significant others, because my own feelings are flawed.
The letter continues, “I no longer want to meet your sociopathic boyfriend or ever see either of you again.”
First of all, your use of sociopath is wrong. It doesn’t fit the character you’re trying to warp it around. A sociopath is a noun, defined as “a person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behavior and a lack of conscience.” He’s not at all antisocial. He’s the opposite. He’s not exactly a bar-hopping, man-whoring player, but he definitely displays the sort of attitude one has when they’ve got Jimeny Cricket on their shoulder and they’re listening to his little chirps about right and wrong behavior.
You can’t just stamp someone with the label of sociopath and expect it to stick, especially if it has completely incompatible glue on it. I get that you don’t want to see me, too, you’re upset and somehow I am behind your emotional turmoil. But you don’t stop your letter there, do you?
“Your entire relationship has been based on lies and manipulation. He is a vandal, a bully, and a liar. You may not be aware of everything he has said or done to me and my husband, but you confirmed that you knew about the cruel comments threatening that [your father] would never see his grandchild. You are actively participating in spreading lies and trying to hurt us.”
Um...what? Disregarding your allusions to what my relationship is based on--which you have no idea because you refuse to hear anything anyone but my father tells you--you called my significant other a vandal, bully, liar. I’ve been the one with him for long enough to sensibly witness his interactions with multiple people. Waitresses, my own friends, his friends, my grandparents, his parents, service workers...ME. Perhaps in all of that, he could have fooled me into believing he was good and righteous but actually not have been. But don’t mistake the major power of logic in witnessing how someone deals with the rest of the world. He was raised to be respectful and mindful of others. To understand that wait staff aren’t smiling at you because they want to, but rather because if they don’t, their finances will suffer. I do not suffer degradation in front of his friends. It is the opposite, in fact. I am treated respectfully, and as an equal, to his friends. He respects and honors my relationship with my friends too, even the male ones. He doesn’t feel like he has to be along any time I want to hang out with my male friends, because he respects me and he trusts me. The same goes for him from me. I trust him to go out into the world on his own, have hobbies and friends on his own, and not cheat on me or spend his entire paycheck binging on cigarettes and alcohol.
As for “cruel comments” about “grandchildren”... I was getting harrassed at work, told I was a fuck up because I failed at college all those years ago. Mistakes I had made were being thrown in my face left and right, leaving me in emotional distress at work and causing my job to suffer. You admitted to me that my father needed to let go of certain mistakes I had made. Now you turned a 180 and chose to ignore the way I was being treated by my own father. So, my boyfriend did say my father wouldn’t see his grandchildren if he kept up acting the way he was toward me. Not because my boyfriend didn’t want my father in my life. Instead it was because my father was being too bullheaded to realize that if he kept up the way he was going, I was going to push him away. It totally became a self-fullfilling prophecy. You both have pushed me away. And now I’m sitting here in my little mental basketcase mind, writing or ranting, I’m not sure which.
I also never spread lies or tried to hurt you. I don’t know what exactly made you think that, but telling lies gets you nowhere and I learned that lesson the hardest way possible many years ago during one of my “mistakes”. Now, I do my best to be truthful because the truth always comes out, doesn’t it? It also doesn’t make sense that I would ever bother trying to hurt you both when I just want you both well. Regardless of the circumstances, I wouldn’t wish pain on you.
Your letter goes on to state things that are incredibly backwards. Things like how I should have continued dating x-person because my father liked him and knew about his past so it was okay for me to date him. You wanted to vet my boyfriend now, but you haven’t properly vetted x-person if you think I could bring a registered sex offender into my life. I don’t care what that person did, if it was mutual or circumstantial or what, there’s no case in which I would have continued. I had a few texts with that person, and never actually went out with them. Due to my history of “mistakes” I do background checks on people, as fully as I can, before letting them into my life like that, and I asked x-person about his issues. I got the story and then things ended.
But my father came up to me with coworkers and my boss around to hear it and demanded to know who I was dating in his department and why I thought I could do so. So I snapped and said that who I see really isn’t his nevermind. It isn’t easy for me to stick up for myself like that, but damn it, I was quite old enough at 27 to make up my own mind. Everyone seems to know it, with you both as exceptions to the fact.
The further your letter goes, the more vulgar the suggestions become of what my boyfriend got up to. It illuminated my father as a hero, as honest (remember him lying to you as he cheated on you), and family oriented (family nights at the bar while he gets drunk). Do you see what I did there? I brought up dad’s mistakes, because you seem to hold heavy stock in them. Mistakes apparently can’t wash away, so explain to me why I should listen to my father’s cries of, “I tried my best.”
Trying your best shouldn’t involve ignoring your past, but instead, learning from it. Yes, I made mistakes. Almost failed highschool, got kicked out of my birth mother’s, started to fail college, ran away from home. I also learned from my mistakes and moulded myself into a stronger person.
You close the letter by stating you didn’t gain a son-in-law when I got married. You lost a daughter, and I lost a father, a mother, and a friend. You explicitly state I’m not to contact you again and that you won’t respond even if I do. You called me a master manipulator, just like my birth mother, and that I believe my own lies and suck the lives out of the people around me. You state you will never sit down to a meal with us.
“You have made your decision, and so have we.” You state.
You know, I was going to analyze the entire letter line-by-line, but it’s not necessary at this point. Somehow you have been led to believe the horrible things in the letter. But we both know that the truth comes out eventually, and when it does, I’ll still be here with my respectfully chosen life partner who has been holding me up through this depression since your letter. Who drives me to the therapist so I can understand my mental crazy. Who holds me when I’m too emotionally disturbed to hold myself.
I wish things were different, but there’s no going back to the way it was. There is only forward. You’re absolutely right. I made my decision.
I have chosen the family who lifts me up.
The friends who hold my hand in times of darkness to keep me from straying too far.
The man who has asked to be by my side, to wipe away pained tears, to kiss me every night, to tell me he loves me for me, and who accepts my love equally in return.
I’m holding my head up. I’m going to work through these issues. There is no shame for having anxiety and depression, but there is suffering. With help, I’ll overcome the burden of your letter, your feelings. I hope you seek help too, because it sounds like you both could use it.
I still love you…
Goodbye.
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