Mother,
I awoke this morning to find yet another email waiting in my inbox stating an unspoken apology. Trying to convince me that the words you wrote previously were uncalled for, not who you are and was wrong. You are right. You were wrong and always have been. But throughout this letter, still you are blaming me for the relationship that we don’t have and I don’t think that is fair in the least. You still blame my father for it too and no one told you to abandon your children.
Everyone is entitled to live their lives happily and in accordance to their vision and if you were unhappy with my father that is your right to divorce him. My issues do not lie there. My issues are from when I was a 14-year-old girl and you made me lie to my father about where you were, you left me in someone’s room while you hung around downstairs with strange, unfamiliar men, you threatened if I didn’t lie that I would be punished, you tried to pull me down a flight of stairs, you lunged at me in a fit of rage when I couldn’t lie and hurt my father anymore about what you had been doing and you screamed that I had betrayed you. I was 14 years old and afraid of what you would do to my life if I didn’t listen and you forced me to tag along on your ventures. I had to harbor in the guilt and pain of knowing that I was lying to my dad, telling him we were at the mall when we were not, I was hiding upstairs while you were entertained by people I did not know. I used to be anxious and afraid to come home after school, not knowing if you thought I may have slipped up and I couldn’t trust that I was safe around you anymore.
You seem to forget the first time you left for a few nights, you called the house finally, to say that you were okay. I begged and pleaded for you to come home. I will never forget that day. It was the last day I showed you vulnerability, the last time I wanted to have you as my mother and you said no. I shut down after that day. These are the days that you forget. You write me an email telling me that it is my fault that I don’t want a relationship with you but I never wanted you to put me under those circumstances as a child. I never wanted to lose my mother. I never did anything in my life to deserve the pain you inflicted on me. Yet, somehow you tell me that all that I have stated is my fault, that my father, myself and my brother are responsible for all of your actions. You write that you have given up and you will move on to live out the best of what’s left of your life. You want me to feel sorry for you but yet you have never apologized or admitted that your actions were terribly wrong. You have never taken responsibility and owned up to anything you have done thus far. I don’t believe you and I don’t trust you. I wish that I never had to remember you existed but it is a catch 22 because without your existence, I would not be here.
Please stay away this time. Mean what you say, when you wrote that you will give up and stop pretending that you’re a mother to two children you haven’t seen in almost 14 years. We are adults now, yet you haven’t progressed since the day you left and that is so very sad.
Lee
Words I Never Said 