The Letter I Never Sent You

WARNING: This piece contains content not suited to some audiences. Please note this piece is about bullying, abuse, suicide, trauma, grief, pain, coping, and may contain other unmentioned warnings.  

Dear Loved One,

…And it should not be mistaken that I love you. Whatever has happened before this, whatever is happening now, or whatever happens in the future… I do still have room for you in my heart, for I have placed all manner of things there whether they are good or bad.

I don’t mean to place bad in my heart, but so many things linger behind long after they are gone. No, they don’t just linger… they sit there, festering in a cesspool of their own making, and the darkness they create blackens the part of my heart they have been residing in. Make no mistake either, as you are the bad that I have placed in my heart. Even if I still love you, and even if I do not, I am going to pride myself to at the very least be honest in the company of my own mind.

The darkness you create in my heart influences my mind every day, though I will tell everyone I am unconcerned. Though I will smile through my teeth… though my eyes will sparkle with a little less joy. I will say, “I do not think of such things. They’re not worth my time anyway.” Yet, deep in my mind, that darkness which you created in my heart has now blackened my mind with sadness, with pain.

Do you know my true thoughts? Do you want to know them? Things I think carefully, yet never, ever say to those around me? I will look at a child, and I will be afraid. I don’t mean to say I will feel a simple fear as though the child were a spider… That’s not the fear I feel when I look at a child, pitifully defenseless. When I held a baby, hardly days old, I looked at the child with wonder for just a moment because here was a person who knew no suffering. Here was a person who was in my arms, and this person did not need to place trust or faith in me. This person had no need for such things because this person, this child, had never suffered the broken trust or betrayed faith to know that there was evil in the world.

Then the crippling fear settled in my mind. This child, this baby who is untainted, would I be the one to damage them? It is so terrifying that I even have these questions of doubt toward my own character. Was I capable of hurting someone who had not deserved it? And I know that it is possible, and that strikes me straight to my soul. How do I know? Why have I no faith in myself?

Because, thanks to you, I know the darkness of humanity. Do you see the big circle you have created? My heart, my mind, and my soul—all of them are infected because of you. The pain I feel because of you, the fear I feel because of you… Yes, you are the reason for it. You are not my excuse for continuing the cycle on another human, because I have to find the strength every day to keep from being you. I don’t say it to hurt you. “I don’t want to be you.” I say it because I want to be me. I want to make different choices. Finding the strength to walk a road you ignored, you abandoned, or even the road you didn’t see and passed by… I do this every day.

Have I sat down to write this just to hurt you with careful words? No. Do you know why? Because these words could have only made a difference if you had read them long ago, before the first harsh words came out of your mouth.

It’s funny… Not in a good way… But rather, in a hysterical-cry-in-the-corner way… Funny that you either know you’ve done wrong, but won’t admit it, or that you think you did your best by me. Well, here I am, writing something you’ll never read and even if you did, would you know I was writing it about you? Or would you think this to be yet another fantasy I made up?

That’s what I do, you know… No, it isn’t just what I do. To be a good child, I was told not to tell the truth. I was taught to be dishonest, because it wasn’t your fault I had fallen down—even if I had your help. The bruises were just you exercising your right. You barely touched me.

Right?

I was misbehaving, and what I deserved, I received. But, “Shhh. Don’t tell anyone. They’ll take you away. Do you want that? To be taken away?”

You should have let me go. When I told those I trusted what was happening and when I explained why my arms were bruised, my eye blackened, feeling like I am forever cringing away from accidental brushes in the cafeteria line at school… I became a liar. So now I have learned that telling the truth is the same as telling a lie if it makes you look bad, and why would I want to tell the truth?

I could get taken away to a place even worse.

When I can’t trust you to defend my honesty, tell me why I should place any stock in telling the truth in my life? I’m already a liar, and I’m already hurting.

Remember when I was very small, you would spend long and precious moments of your time brushing my hair… You’d make sure there were no snarls and sometimes even now I can hear the sweet sound of your voice, soothing me as you told me a story you were making up, or sang me your favorite song from the radio that week.

And some days are bad days, as I think of the darkness you left welling inside me. I wouldn’t hear a soothing voice. I’d hear the sounds of a demon screaming terrifying things, and feel the ghostly pain of a hand grabbing me by the hair and dragging me back.

Is it any wonder why I hate people touching my hair now?

I gave up brushing my hair. I can’t stand to look at a brush. I feel every hit and scrape just looking at a hair brush. I walk around several aisles in the store just to avoid the hair accessories. Something is there. There’s always something on hand.

“Better to be prepared.”

Is that what you were thinking when you started carrying the paddle stick? Were you tired of hurting your hand on me as I grew and my body began toughening up? Or did you just want to inflict more pain on me? Were you sick of having to run to the kitchen for a spoon?

Did it take too long for me to run outside and cut a proper switch for you to teach me a lesson?

Oh, but there’s more. Now that I have begun writing, the tears and the memories won’t stop flowing. It’s not as if you’d ever read this. My faith in whether you’d understand it is even lower than my faith in you.

“If you want respect, you’d better start showing respect.” - you

The hysterics are back, as I sit here sobbing so hard my hand shakes on the pen and the words are hardly legible. What words I manage to write sensibly are getting blurred out by the hot, salty tears dripping from my eyes.

As I reflect on your words, I realize I am no longer myself. Instead, I am millions of people all at once. The suffering you gave me is suffering given to others too. I manage to clear my eyes long enough to see injury forming on skin that once was pristine. Burn marks, burst shaped scarring from broken bones, bruises, crooked fingers.

I get up and go to the bathroom. When I wash my face of the tears you cause, I wonder if you enjoy making me cry. Do you know you still do? I hide it of course, and I hide it well. Through smiles and silliness, through harsh words and witty retorts, I hide my pain because that’s what you taught me to do.

In the mirror, I begin to see a hundred faces and none of them are mine but we all have something in common. It’s in our eyes—green, blue, brown—we feel the same pain inside. Some of us have darker thoughts than others, and I can see that too.

“Is this life really worth living?”

Some of us are unable to continue our journeys to find out.

We’re unable to find the strength to do so.

Some of us find or lose our deity of choice.

We feel alone in the world, and we have a lingering burden on our shoulders. It’s a weight so heavy, we feel as if we are Atlas, struggling to keep the world up.

Some of us fail to hold it up, and everything collapses in on us. We can’t keep going, and soon we are nothing more than a memory to the as-yet-living.

I return to my desk to finish penning this letter you will never cherish, and your words on the page are the only ones I can read. Is it irony or coincidence that they are the only ones untouched by dropped tears and perfectly legible?

So many roads are two-way streets. But when you speak, I feel as though respect is a driveway, and mine is to be a car, parked there indefinitely because you have taken away the keys. I’m to get no respect in return. I am to show respect unconditionally.

Am I also then to love in such a manner? Now that I am an adult, is it okay if I live my life suffering more hits, more bruises, more broken bones, more falling, more lies? Did you know that when my special someone goes to touch me, I still sometimes cringe? I still expect the blow to land, and some days I just want it to land so I can stop worrying about when the first time will happen.

I tell myself if it happens, I’ll leave. I wouldn’t put up with it. But you and I both know that isn’t true, is it? You taught me to lie so well, didn’t you? You taught me that protecting someone else’s reputation is more important than protecting my health and body and dignity. You taught me to drag myself through the mud before I sully someone else’s image.

You taught me to see that I am the offender. I am the aggressor. I am the problem. If I didn’t do something wrong, I wouldn’t deserve it.

You have no idea, but now you have made me laugh. My sides are splitting. I guess it’s an inside joke, but I’ll try to explain it best.

“I will kill anyone who hurts you.” - you

So now I know I’m not the only liar here. You’re so busy lying that you came to believe your own words. You feel you did your best by me, and yet believing doesn’t make it true. You didn’t have to keep abusing me. Abuse wasn’t just the injury you did to my body.

But every time things got rough, you opened your mouth and things spilled out. Words do taint more than the physical. The blackness in my heart that corrupts my mind and slowly destroys my soul is darker still because of the things you said to me.

At any time, you could have held your fist, or bit your tongue. Choosing not to was your choice. It was a painful choice for me to receive. It didn’t have to be physical pain. Emotional pain can hurt, and it can cut deeper.

And here I sit at a desk, countless tries of this letter crumpled in and around the waste basket at my feet. Writing it on fancy stationery doesn’t make me write it better.

I have discovered that I can’t write this letter to you right now.

I get up and there I go again, moving through life on feet with automatic steps. I tell myself I am happy and I allow myself to believe it. I allow myself to slowly forget the moments I don’t want. I wear my headphones and listen to them too loud, to drown out the noise that clutters my mind. I escape into movies and books and the endlessness of the Internet.

There is a singular moment while brushing my teeth when my hand slows and stops. I stare at the reflection, and like ghosts, they appear. The others. The ones who suffered like I did. I keep my silence. It wouldn’t help us if I talked, would it? It wouldn’t.

I don’t know when it happened, but the mirror is shattered and my hands are bloodied. I can’t stand to see myself. I am the victim, but not really. I am the problem. I am the one at fault.

I am one person. I am just one, but I am many. As I sob, I feel them here. Their souls try to lift me, to comfort me, in the darkness that you’ve placed inside me. There is no light to see here. I can’t see my way out. I can only see another child at my feet, crying because now it is they who have been victimized. And my hands appear out of the blackness, because I am at fault.

I’m back at the table now, with a stack of paper. I will finish this letter, with bandaged hands and a bruised neck. They are here. The souls… the ones like me…

Dear you, I miss you but I don’t want you here. The darkness, the pain, the grief, the sorrow… Some may overcome what you have done to them. You forgot to teach me strength.

Behind me, a child cries. I can ignore it thanks to you. I can hear this child and turn the other way. But I’m not hearing the child anymore because there is a roaring in my ears. Worthlessness. I notice the trim around the closet door needs repair —

Letter to the Class of 'XX

It's been ten years since I graduated, and I decided I would write this.

Hello everyone.

We've all graduated, yea? We've made it to that mark in society that says we can now work at McDonald's more than eight hours a week, and stay out later than curfew because let's face it. Curfews suck...

After ten years, we have all moved on. Loved people, lost people, bought homes, lost homes, married, divorced, had families. Some of us have gone on to secondary schooling. Some became graduates again, and others transformed into perpetual students. Some of us succeeded and some of us failed. Some of us did all of that, and some of us did none.

And sometimes... we felt like the littlest piggy, crying, "Wee-wee-wee," all the way home - with tears, or joy attached. 

The class Valedictorian, or whoever makes a speech at our reunion - if there is a speech - will remind us of all the good times we had together as if they knew they'd need to give this speech one day so they kept a journal of every occasion. 

But I certainly am not the class Valedictorian. I wasn't even in the top 99.9% for grades. It wasn't because I was not smart. Quite the opposite. I didn't do the work, and when I did, I didn't turn it in consistently enough to make the grade. I don't claim perfection. I never have been and never will be. 

I was that kid who got laughs I never wanted. I was the child blamed for my own bullying. Being different made me special. Being different made me want to fade away, and when I faded away, no one noticed me as they bumped into me in the halls.

More than ten years ago, we walked those halls. Each of us bore witness to our individual pains and pleasures. Were any of us aware of the suffering of our fellow classmates? Some of us faced domestic violence or abuse. Some of us felt smothered in our lives. Some of us screamed from a place where we were trapped inside our flesh, "Let me out!" 

We listened to voices. Every one of us heard the voices. "Good job." they whispered when we were doing well. "I can't believe this," they said snobbishly when things went wrong. The white washed walls spoke of the torments of other students who ghosted through from class to class, but we didn't hear it. 

We tormented others, as we were tormented, because high school is a beauty pageant... a popularity contest. 

We forgot that those around us are just as pained by their suffering as we are by our own. 

My memories of high school - at least those that I do have - are tainted. I had books stolen, and pages of writing torn up. I suffered harsh words, and cried myself to sleep in the library stacks more than once. I developed a stammer and a phobia of public speech. I began to fear affection, presuming that affection only meant that someone wanted something from me and they'd drop me as soon as they had it. 

However, even I have some good memories... I watched some of my fellow students mature from what has become the acceptable normal student into young people of a higher class. 

Examples of those included a student standing up for what they believed to be right and defending me when I was bullied - and holding their ground when others disapproved. Another was when I was yet again last in finishing laps at the start of gym and instead of ridiculing me like the rest of the class, two students ran beside me and whispered encouragement until I finally finished my 1-mile run. 

We are older now, and what defines us is how we live our lives. How do we treat others? Do we stand up for what we believe is morally just and right? Do we label others with stereotypes and then dismiss them because they 'are different' than we are? Do we give everyone a fair chance? Do we care about how much we tip at a restaurant, or have we completely ignored the fact that they aren't just a hand to bring our breakfast - they're people too. When someone is being bullied, or harassed, or hazed, do we stand up for them or do we fall in with the massive crowd of blind eyes? 

It's important that we, as a new generation of Moms and Dads and Aunts and Uncles, set a new bar of intolerance so that our kids don't face the same harsh lives we did. It's important that we don't tell our sons to "man up" or excuse our daughter's behavior as "being over-emotional". When we do that, we essentially tell our children that they can't open up about the problems they're having. We teach them that the bullies are right. I've had councilors and therapists and relatives all tell me, "Ignore these bullies. They'll get bored and leave you alone." So essentially when we break down those words, we realize that it's okay for bullies to bully you until they get bored because you're like a toy and when they're done with you, they'll discard you and move on. 

A lot of people are being victimized for being different. Students are being expelled or suspended for homosexuality, or being a female in shorts, or being a boy who likes My Little Pony. As long as our society continues to shun our differences, we'll continue to raise our children in a tiny little box of unoriginality, and we'll continue to churn out a perpetual mass of little worker-drones. 

I guess what I really want to say with this letter is... for the next several years, let's try to teach people to accept what others will not accept. Let's try to see things from a viewpoint not our own. Let's teach our daughters to play in the dirt, and our sons to cook in the kitchen. Let's take the pink and purple Legos and throw them in the same box as the blue and black ones. Let's let our children watch My Little Pony and Justice League regardless of what gender they are. Let us not judge bi-sexuality, homosexual, transgendered, or gender atypical people.

Instead, let us respect these people, and teach our children to do so as well. Children are not pre-programmed to hate something; instead they are the way they are because they absorb everything around them. Teach respect, and this world can be a better place. 

I respect your lifestyle, however you choose to live it. 
Many warm regards, 
Another alumni

©2014 Jaimie Gross