by Soul & Spirit » Sun Nov 11, 2012 8:35 am
Dear mother,
I will not say that I hate you, although everyone assumes I do. I do not despise you, either, despite the pain you have caused me. You did abuse me for years, I have witnesses, somewhere in your heart you know. The mental, emotional, and physical pain you have caused me, the pain; the breaking down of my spirit until I felt as worthless as you told me I was; has led me to believe that the world would be better off without me. -removed- Please leave me alone.
-Sha-re
This is a letter I actually sent.
Dear Mom,
I would like to thank you for our time together at Hershey Park. It was quite a lot of fun to receive [my elder half-sister's] condescending attitude and to be the brunt of [her boyfriend's] animus behavior. I truly enjoyed myself. The first day was wonderful, the highlights being my stiffness during the car ride, my fretfulness at the buffet (so much so that I neglected to notice one of my closest friends who sat at a table quite near ours), and my waking nightmares that kept me from sleeping. The fears that it would start all over again. Start what over again, you may ask? For shame that you've brainwashed yourself into believing you were a perfect mother. Because, how could you be anything else? Even my brain, devoid of most memories due to what experts refer to as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, still remembers your screams. So loud, in fact, that even your dear friend [Witness a] could hear them in [a place across the road from our house]. Don’t even begin to believe that I haven’t forgotten what you said in those screams. I always felt wonderful afterwards, my spirit so lifted by your kind words. How I loved feeling like I was never good enough. How I loved being seen as lower than my very own sisters, even [my actual sister]; who I soothed through many nightmares and helped calm her to sleep after the terror had gone away.
And I could never forget the day you found out that I might have finally gained the nerve to leave. It was quite fun to have my clothing whipped out of my drawers and thrown at my face. I wasn't crying in the least when I saw your frustration being taken out on, oh, would you like to guess? Me. It’s always nice to have stability and certainty in one’s life, and I always knew I could count on you.
Let us go back to the day in Hershey Park, shall we? That day was very entertaining, especially after your haughty tone finally pierced through my armor of “everything will be fine”. And when I started crying for the first time that day, I was sure glad that none of you noticed it, because it would be quite embarrassing to be stared at for quaking with tears while one’s head was pressed against a wall. I was quite glad of your conscious nature by that point. And later, it was absolutely wonderful to hear those impeccably true stories on how my father treated Jennifer. Especially considering how enigmatic it is that he doesn't repeat the treatment to the rest of his children, or you. Wonderful, isn't it? How a leopard never changes his spots.
-removed-
Thanks to that experience, I am finally getting over those feelings. I will never make the mistake of believing you could change or take responsibility for what you have done to me. I will never again let that feeling let me feel guilty, guilty that through the many chances I had given you and seen you fail at, that I had somehow made a mistake. Guilty that I left when I believed you’d needed me, guilty that I stood up for myself for once in my life and stopped letting you beat me down into a mini-you, into someone who would do this to their own child someday. NO. I will not let this cycle continue; I will love my children the right way and love myself, too.
Sincerely,
Sha-re