At first, I wasn’t going to write this letter, or any letter. Mostly, because you don’t deserve any more of my energy but partly because I have some notion about there being dignity in silence. But in my festering silence, I’ve been doing some thinking…
As with most of life’s experiences, especially the painful, shameful ones, I’d shut them away with the rest of the dirty laundry. But that’s not right, is it? Again and again, when I’ve found the spine to say what’s on my mind, I found relief – recognition, help or just the lancing of a boil. Maybe all of them. And sometimes I’m not the only one to benefit…
You taught me well. Even at this distance, I fear your fury; I doubt my truth. But it’s my story too, it always has been, even when I couldn’t see it.
I no longer care what the reasons were or how heartfelt your conviction that you didn’t mean it. Doesn’t matter if it was manslaughter or murder, the victim’s just as cold on the slab.
You might not have asked for disease to visit, but you didn’t have to invite it in and make it quite so comfortable. I haven’t the slightest idea what you thought you were doing or why, although that’s not for want of trying. Hours and days of struggling to work it out and even more wasted looking for a cure squandered. There’s every possibility you, poor bewildered you, have convinced yourself you were simply doing your best. I’m not buying it any longer. The scales have truly fallen.
Every single time you told me a lie, shut me down, or raged and raged made a wound, maybe not drawing blood, but together it’s more than I could recover from. No chance to heal. You should have been my biggest supporter, not the person pulling the foundations from my confidence. Undermining to the point of collapse.
I was exhausted by changing, pathetically unable to please. I felt terrible – failure flowed where there should have been blood. It was our grubby secret – the woman who couldn’t had to pretend that she could. Do you know what this does to a person? Actually, it doesn’t matter whether you do or you don’t. What matters now is what I have learned – if someone who is supposed to be the heart of your inner circle is leaving you doubting and hollowed, then, chances are, it’s them, not you – no matter what they tell you.
