Do you remember back when we were kids? Some days, I remember it like it was yesterday and some days I try really hard to forget. Life wasn’t so good back then, and yet, we both had it so much better than most, at least, most of the people we knew.

I know you never understood why I was so unhappy. You were the cheerful one, always with a smile and those blue eyes. Mom even said recently that you were one the boys always made comments about. See, they made comments about me too, but I guess she never saw that. You were tiny and cute and I was a big girl, tall for my age with big breasts and a full figure. I was never fat, but it sure seemed Mom thought I was. Oh, yeah, the men looked at me too. I guess Mom forgot that. Seems she forgets a lot of things, perhaps conveniently. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: family, letter, Letter to Sister, sibling rivalry, siblings, sisterhood, sisters

To the lady at the counter in the craft store yesterday,

You may not have realized I heard you as we stood next to each other at the craft store counter yesterday, though your words were obviously meant for me. As you were rolling your eyes and grumbling about how mothers should control their out-of-control, noisy children in stores, I was too busy reveling in the blessing that is my son to react to your words.

Contrary to your belief, my son was not making loud noises, dancing and jumping because he is an ill-behaved child. He was not a brat getting away with disrupting a checkout line under the nose of his tired mother, me.

My son is autistic.

You see, when my son makes odd noises or speaks gibberish words, he is not acting out. Those sounds burst forth from his spirit in his own special type of communication.

He can speak very few English words clearly, and how can you ask me to stop him from making up his own? Perhaps only a mother can understand them as they are passed through a filter of love on the way to her ears. I look in his eyes and listen to his ‘talk’ and swear I can hear what sounds like angels singing in a far off place.

When my son refuses to stand still and dances and jumps, he is not behaving badly. He is expressing joy, or contentment, or even frustration. My son cannot explain what he is feeling, so he must act it out. Society may dictate a dampened flow of raw emotion, but stifling emotions is not what motherhood should be about.

You grumbled about the three or four minutes my son’s actions affected your day, but I rejoiced in them. Some days my son makes no noise at all, or sits in his room and refuses to come out and join in the play, or has melt downs that involve kicking and screaming and tear at my heart. You saw my son on a good day, doing things that should have elicited questions rather than condemnation.

So, next time you notice the type of noises and actions my son displayed yesterday, still your judgmental tongue and take a moment to listen, watch and perhaps even learn. If another child like my son bothers you as you go about your business, do not make rude comments and gestures. Instead, simply move away quietly so you do not disrupt the mother’s enjoyment of her unique and wonderful child.

Sincerely,
The mother of an autistic son.

~~~~~
Melanie Marten is self-taught and self-employed. Besides freelance writing, she dabbles in website design and owns dozens of websites and blogs. Work is squeezed in between parenting two boys, homeschooling, feeding fish and, occasionally, sleep. You can read more of her writing by visiting her author’s site at: http://melaniemarten.com/

Tags: autism, autistic, autistic son, child, children, letter, melanie marten, misperceptions, son

When I came to you, scared, alone, young, pregnant, and you told me I might have cancer, I did not expect you to hug me or hold my hand or even to provide any emotional support whatsoever. I didn’t expect you to sit with me all day and answer all my questions. I wasn’t looking to be coddled.

I did, however, expect you to be human.

So when I asked you, “What about the baby?”

And you answered, “What are you doing having sex so young anyway?”

I was stunned.

You proceeded to preach to me about how teenagers shouldn’t be having sex without being prepared to deal with the consequences.

At the time, I said nothing, but the tears fell from my eyes.

You couldn’t even find your soul then and said, “There’s no reason to be crying. You got yourself into this.”

First, I know that teenagers shouldn’t have sex if they aren’t prepared to deal with the consequences. I was. I planned to have the baby. I did have the baby. She’s a healthy adult now, thank you very much.

And as for getting myself into it, I’m not sure how I caused myself to have cancer. It wasn’t cervical cancer caused by HPV that is being so advertised today, but rather a type of cancer I could not have caused myself to have at the age of 16.

So was it your belief that I had cancer because I had sex? Is that the message you tried to implant in my brain?

When the nurse came in after you had left and asked me what was wrong, I will never forget how she mumbled under her breath, “That bastard.”

If not for that nurse, I might have continued seeing you. I might have let you continue to berate me.

I’m grateful she was there, and she directed me to a new doctor.

Not that it matters to you, Dr. Pride, but I am now cancer free, and have been for years. My daughter, the child you didn’t want me to have, is a happy and healthy adult in college.

But when I came to you, I was scared, lonely, and had questions. You treated me like I was nothing, beneath you, not worthy of your time.

I remember something on an episode of the Golden Girls that Dorothy said that I think sums up how I feel perfectly: “One day [sic], you’re going to be sick and afraid, and when that day comes… as angry as I was, as angry as I am and as angry as I always will be, I still wish you a better doctor than you were to me.”

Signed,
Not A Kid Anymore

Tags: bad doctor, bad doctors, doctor, health, letter, pregnancy, teen, teen pregnancy

When I accidentally blew through a red light and you had to slam on your brakes to avoid hitting me, the gesture you gave me out the window and the curse words you threw my way–words that you deemed important enough to roll down your window to make sure I heard you scream at me–caused me to cry.

In fact, those actions sent tears streaming down my face from that red light all the way until I reached the next red light, though admittedly, I did manage to stop for that next one.

Sir, you might think that I’m angry with you, or that I’m writing you this letter so that I can complain about the unkindness of humanity or some other rant about what a horrible person you are.

I’m not.

You’re not a horrible person. In fact, I don’t know who you are beyond the fact you were driving a blue truck and wore a yellow shirt. I can’t even close my eyes and remember your face–just blue and yellow, and anger.

But I’m not mad at you.

In fact, I’m writing this letter to thank you. I know you’ll never read this and even if you did, your impromptu meeting with me was probably quite inconsequential to you. In fact, it’s likely once you got to work and cursed to your buddies or your boss about how some crazy redheaded woman in a red car ran a red light and how you were late coming back from lunch because of her, you probably promptly forgot all about me.

But I, sir, have been carrying you in my heart ever since that day.

I want to thank you, sir. I want to thank you for waking me up. I want to thank you for making me cry.

You probably think I’m crazy by now, don’t you? I’m not.

You see, that morning, my ‘friend’ was my ex, and we had just broken up, but he had promised me he would be there for me on this particular day for this particular reason. And I needed his support that morning, and I turned down the support of others so that I could spend that time with him. He promised me he would be there, but he never showed. I was heartbroken, but I had business to attend to, so I choked back tears I didn’t have time to cry.

You see, the place where my friend was supposed to meet me was my doctor’s office. Instead of the comfort of a friend’s hand to hold, when I got the bad news from the doctor, I sat alone, numb, staring at my empty hands, twisting my fingers around and around. When the doctor asked me if I was okay, I nodded and swallowed hard, and then I looked up at him and smiled.

“It’s what we expected, right? I was expecting this,” I said to him. “We expected this.”

He patted my hand and tried to comfort me, but I was too numb.

I stayed numb from there to the phone where I tried to call my friend who had stood me up. Then I tried to call another friend, but managed to get his voice mail instead. Still numb, I walked to a small cafeteria, where I tried to eat some lunch, but barely choked down a few bites. After lunch, I paid the water bill, and then I got into my car and began to drive back to my house.

On the drive home, that’s when, my mind so focused on painful things, I ran that red light that made you slam on your breaks. I probably shouldn’t have been driving, I know, but the fact is, I was, and your honking at me, your screams, woke me from the trance the doctor’s news had put me in. That’s when I started crying.

And I cried all the way to the next street light, then pulled into a parking lot and I gave myself permission to cry. I was able to get the emotion out and touch it, turn it, twist it in front of me. This made me stronger when I came home to face my children, knowing I was going to have to put on a brave front so they were not scared.

If not for you, sir, the man in the blue truck that day, I might not have found the courage, touched that emotion. I might not have stayed dazed and numb.

That was four years ago when we met, Blue Truck Man.

I bet I haven’t crossed your mind a single time in the past four years, but you still cross my mind often. Each time you do, I say a prayer for you. I suppose I could have become angry with you too, for yelling at me, honking the horn, screaming obscenities and throwing rude gestures my way. But then, you see, you didn’t know I had just come from my doctor. You didn’t know the news he had given me. You didn’t know me.

And though I don’t know you any better than you know me, I’m pretty certain that had you known, you might have even comforted me, offered condolences. At the very least, if you had known, I feel certain you would have excused my lapse in driving judgment.

But you didn’t know. How could you have known? So I don’t blame you. Many times in my life I’d honked my horn and cursed another driver, after all. I’m not blameless.

So when I think back on our impromptu meeting, sometimes my mind wonders what was going on in your world prior to us nearly crashing that day that made you so angry, because I’m pretty sure anger like that doesn’t come from some crazy woman running a red light. That’s when I say a prayer for you, one of gratitude and one of peace, hoping that whatever caused your anger that day was healed in you as much as my tears were emotionally healing for me.

Also, Mr. Yellow Shirt Man, I want to thank you for introducing me to Ms. Green Car.

You see, in my life, I’ve learned that the universe brings balance to everything.

Immediately after your angry tirade at my running the red light, when I cried my way to the next light and stopped, Ms. Green Car sat patiently, not even honking her horn while I cried through the green light change until it was red again.

She could not see me cry anymore than you could have seen what was inside my mind. She had no clue why I was sitting at a green light anymore than you knew why I ran that red one. She, though, unlike you, let me sit, silent. I thank her for that, and I thank you for introducing me to Ms. Green Car. In nearly the same moment in my life, the universe brought me balance in you and in her, showing me that no matter how bad things seemed for me, they could always get worse and they could always get better.

And that’s when I became grateful for the moment. Not any one particular moment, but each moment, every moment, in the moment.

You did that for me.

In turn, I tell the story of my meeting you, sir. I think it’s important for people to realize that you will likely never know the impact you’ve made on my life. I couldn’t find you if I wanted to so I could thank you or even tell you how much it’s meant to me. But I think in sharing the story with others, maybe, just maybe, people will look at others when they are out and about their day and stop judging people by their actions and instead offer a minor offense some grace.

You never know what’s going on in someone else’s heart, mind or soul. You may never know the impact you have on the universe, the world, the life of another.

If every human being stopped for a moment and asked, “If I knew XXX about this person, would I still respond this way?” I think the world would be a kinder, gentler place.

So Mr. Blue Truck Man, the woman at the grocery store who was obnoxiously rude, she owes you a debt of gratitude when, after three horribly rude customers, she looked at me and said, “What are you looking at?”

I responded by saying, “You have the most beautiful blue eyes, so very pretty.”

She teared up; I tear up now remembering. She went from snapping at me, to thanking me, and went out of her way to look up a coupon code for me on something that was on sale, without me even asking.

The little old lady at the bank who was counting her pennies and nickels from the jar when the man behind her was talking purposely loudly to his friend about how old people were slow and irritating, and her hands were shaking and she kept losing count… that little old lady has you to thank for me asking, “Do you mind if I help you roll those?”

I can tell countless stories like these over the past four years, where, when irritation and frustration is my first response, that I remember you, your upraised middle finger, your snarling voice as you rolled down the window to curse at me…. and I smile and offer a word of kindness instead.

I thank you and your finger and your blue truck and your foul mouth. The universe is just a little bit better now, because of you, sir.

Sincerely,
The “Fucking Woman Driver!”

Tags: Driver, letter, Man, Thank you, Truck, Women

Tags: falling in love, future, letter, Love, Love Letter

Dear David,

Fifteen years ago, you came into my life, and I had no idea I would one day look back on you as the biggest mistake I’d ever made. You see, I believe that everything in our lives strengthens us and prepares us for where we are now, and if we like where we are, we shouldn’t change anything.

And yet, I still would go back and wish I had never met you. That has to show you the distaste I have for you.

Worse than that, I still shudder and feel unclean, dirty, filthy when I think that I ever let you touch my body, and I feel guilty that I ever enjoyed it, relished in that touch. Worse yet, I feel ashamed that I ever thought I might have loved you.

The things you have done to me don’t even matter, though the lies, the using me to get what you wanted… they don’t matter. That doesn’t matter.

When our son… correction, MY son, told me what you had done to him, I felt as though a shard of ice and pierced through the center of my chest and the coldness began to spread through my body. I comforted my son, questioned him, carefully–after all, I’d been trained in victim advocacy. I knew what to do, right? Do you know what it’s like to have to do that with your own child?

The ice stayed in me, freezing my emotions enough to do what needed to be done. I called Child Protective Services, asked them what to do. They told me to call the police. I called the police. The officers who came to the house were nice, but they were obviously as uncomfortable as I was with the situation.

My son waited in his room while I talked to the officers on my front porch, so he could not hear, would not have to relive it. They arrange for him to meet a counselor at Harmony Home, an agency that helps children who have been sexually molested or abused. The appointment was set for 10am on Monday.

It was one of the longest weekends of my life.

Monday morning, we sat in the waiting room, my son, barely seven years old, was playing with a teddy bear they had given him to make him feel more comfortable, and was drinking a juice box. He was nervous and asked me what they were going to do to him.

I said, “Baby, they’re not going to do anything. They just want to ask you some tough questions about your… daddy.” I nearly choked on the word. Any man can be a father. A real daddy would never do what you did to a child, especially his own child.

How could you?

Then, they took me to that little room with the video monitors, where they were recording my son. I watched while they pulled out the dolls and questioned him. I watched him squirm in his seat, so uncomfortable. Then I watched him point to the penis on the male doll and heard his little voice say, “Daddy asked me to touch him there.”

But just when I’d heard what I thought was the worst of it, I watched him twist his little hands and say, “Then some white-ish gray stuff came out of it, and daddy told me to get some toilet paper. When I didn’t move, he yelled at me to hurry and made me cry.”

He was too young to know how a man’s penis works during ejaculation, David. He shouldn’t have known that for many years to come. But to yell at him for not moving fast enough to clean your cum off? How could you?

Then, the reason it had taken him four weeks after it happened to tell me came out. He said, “Daddy told me that if I told mama, he would get in trouble and wouldn’t get to see me anymore. He said if I told anyone at school that I would get in trouble and go to the principal’s office for swats. Am I gonna get spanked?”

Tears streamed down as I quietly sobbed in the dark observation room. When my son came back out, I was in the waiting room, drying my tears. He said to me, “Why you sad, mama?”

How could you?

The cops believed him. I believed him. My entire family believed him. But you, you said he lied. You denied every bit of it. You told your family I had made it up because I was jealous and angry that you had recently remarried. You told your church that I was using it to deny you the right to see your son, but still get your measly 200 bucks per month in child support.

You can keep your goddamned money, and I’d gladly pay that and a million times over if I could go back and erase what you did from my child’s heart and mind.

That was in November. By next June, the case had been filed with the DA, and we were waiting to go to court. I was driving back from an off-site job in a nearby city when my cell-phone rang.

It was you, David, calling me. I nearly drove the car right off the road in shock. I pulled over and sat and talked to you. You admitted everything. You said you’d signed a confession. You explained how you had lied to your congregation and how it was false prayers they were praying. You said you’d told your wife everything.

Then you asked me how my son was.

Then… you asked me to please have mercy on you, that you had talked to the DA and he was willing to drop the case, and all I had to do was sign an affidavit of non-prosecution.

My hands were shaking. My heart was racing. If you’d been standing in front of me, I might have punched you.

I might have killed you where you stood.

As it is now, I don’t remember what I said to you. I don’t remember anything else about that trip back to the office either. I don’t remember calling the DA to confirm, but they said I did. You did tell the truth, finally.

But I was still furious. The ice I had felt to get me through it all had started to crack and white hot flames filled me with a rage unlike any I’d ever felt.

I thought the worst was over, though.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Just when things were calming down in our life and getting back to normal, I made a flippant comment to someone in my household that my daughter overheard. The comment was, “Sometimes, when we can’t control someone else’s actions, we can change how they react to us by changing our actions.”

Simple statement, but it somehow triggered something in my daughter.

When I questioned her, she began to cry. She told me, through a tear stained face, that when she was 9 years old, you had done the same thing to her.

Her guilt?

She felt it was her fault that you had done it to her brother, because if she had told, you would never have been around her brother, and I could have stopped you.

My guilt?

I had failed to protect both of my children from a predator… why didn’t I see it? Why didn’t I know? I WORKED in this field. I’m not stupid. I’m not one of those woman who stay with a man and pretend not to see.

I truly did not see.

How did I miss it?

How could you?

But the truth is, we’re not the guilty ones, David. You are. You are the guilty one. You’re the one who signed the confession and admitted to me what you did to my daughter.

She’s over 18 now. She can chose to prosecute you now. She has until her 23rd birthday to fry your ass. I don’t know if she will, but know this, beyond any doubt: I will support her 200% plus if she chooses to prosecute against you.

My son… he’s not okay. I make it as okay as I can, but there are issues now, because of what you’ve done. He doesn’t call you dad or daddy anymore, hasn’t in a long time. Been years since he’s seen you, but I can still feel the pent up anger in him when he snarls your name, “David.”

He thinks it was his fault. He was 7 years old, and he thinks it was his fault because he didn’t say no. He thinks it was his fault because, “… but mama, I kinda wanted to touch it.” He thinks it’s his fault because he wanted to make you happy.

How sick do you have to be to twist the mind of a child like that, David?

Do you really think the two weeks you spent in the mental hospital and the pills you now take make up for anything you ever did to my son? To my daughter?

To me?

You can repent. Maybe your God will forgive you your sins, but I’m not divine and I do not forgive you.

And you want to know what makes me the angriest, David? Do you want to know what gets me, deep down in my very soul?

You asked me to show you mercy. You asked me not to prosecute. You asked me how my son was and expressed relief when I said he was fine. You admitted the truth. You signed a confession.

But the one thing you didn’t do…. The one that pisses me off the most… the one thing that still burns deep down in my gut, deep into my soul…

You never once said you were sorry for what you’d done.

I can only conclude, David, that you truly have no remorse. Your only guilt is that you got caught.

When I think of you working on an abused children’s ranch, my blood runs cold and wonders what you did to those kids. When I think that you worked as a youth counselor and coach at the Y, I shudder. When I think about your niece and nephew you used to babysit, I want to cry.

Predator. Pervert. Asshole.

You make me sick. The thought of you makes me physically ill as I sit here and write this to you, knowing I’ll never send it. No good would ever come out of it. I don’t want to open up a dialogue with you. I am happy you are out of our lives.

But part of me wants to know… why did you never say you were sorry for the pain you caused?

I heard a quote awhile back that said, “Hate is a poison that does more damage to the vessel in which it is stored than does to the object on which it is poured….” After reading that, I let go of my hatred, I let go of the hate.

But I keep the anger tucked safely away inside of me. It is my strength when I need it. When things get tough, when my son has a bad day, I pull that anger out and let it fuel me to be patient and understanding of him, for him.

To be both the mother and the father he doesn’t have.

The father, the daddy, you will never be again.

To him, you are David, his sperm donor. This is what he calls you.

To me, you are evil personified.

One day, when my son is grown and successful and happy again, in spite of what you did to him, when he has a healthy sexual relationship with someone he loves and I can see you did not destroy that for him… maybe, just maybe, I will forgive you. But if I do, it will be forgiveness for myself, not a gift I extend to you.

Goodbye,
A Real Parent

PS: And no, David, I did not change your name to protect your privacy. You don’t deserve it after what you did.

~~~

The writer of this letter has chosen not to include her name and bio. We respect privacy on Unsent Letters.

Tags: letter, Sexual Abuse, sperm donor

Interestingly enough, this letter was original written and not truly intended to be given to the recipient.As fate would have it, the universe intervened and these two friends were reunited, though it was never quite the same. After the reunion, this letter was shared, in part, with the recipient. After this letter was shared, a second letter was written.

The first letter is available here on the blog. The second part of this letter, the conclusion of the story of this friendship, will only be available in the print collection when it comes out.

We will update with more information about this story before the Unsent Letters Volume One book is released. Thank you, Lindsay, for sharing your heart with us all.

Dear Amisa,

A year ago, when there was still a gaping place in my heart where you once lived, I wrote this to you:

Dear Former Best Friend (for reasons I don‘t know),

Yep, I still exist. Try as you might to forget your former life and everyone in it, I’m still here. I still think about you far more often than I’d like. For the record, I’m not crazy psycho or anything. Little things, like last night when I sang karaoke to She’s In Love With the Boy by myself instead of a part of our little duet, make you pop into my mind again. Every time you come crawling back into my thoughts, it rips open the hole in my heart I thought had healed.

It has been three years since I last heard from you. Three years ago, you were my sister-in-law, but so much more than that. You were my best friend. My confidant. Someone who cried and laughed with me and always seemed to know the perfect thing to say to make me smile. I would never in a million… no, umpteen billion years have guessed you could turn your back on me and cut me out of your life forever, without so much as a warning or explanation as to why.

I had a dream about you the other night. In my dream, you came back, and you and Derek were still divorced. At first, I was overjoyed to have my best friend back, but it didn’t take long before realization flooded my body. You had hurt me.

“I hate you!” I spat into your face.

Ever the people-pleaser, even in my dreams, I took it back immediately and simply explained the pain you had caused me. In the end, I forgave you. That forgiveness felt freeing in my dream, like a weight had been released from my heart, and it persisted even after I awoke. This feeling of reconciliation with my own pain made me want to write you, but I knew better. Many times I tried to contact you in these past years. No matter how friendly my letter was, you never responded.

When are you going to break this silence? It destroys my soul to know you’re out there and I don’t know how you are, or what’s going on in your life. What hurts me more is that I care deeply for you, and I can only assume from your actions that you feel nothing for me. It boggles my mind how you could flip the switch between, “You’re like a sister to me, Lindsay,” and, “You’re dead to me,” with seemingly no remorse.

I am mad at myself for even thinking about you anymore, wasting my precious thoughts on someone who has caused me such pain. I don’t want to think about you. I don’t want to wonder how you’re doing or if I’ll ever see you again. I hate wondering what it would be like if we did bump into one another. I wonder if you would ignore me, or run up and hug me. In case you’re wondering, I would prefer the hug. I hate this, I hate this distance. I hate thinking that you’re out there somewhere, possibly mad at me for reasons I cannot comprehend.

Please forgive me for whatever I did to cause this silence. Please know that if I said anything that made you think I was anything but supportive of you, that I didn’t mean it. And I’m not talking about you and Derek. That’s done, it’s over, you guys have moved on and I have too. Derek is my brother-in-law and I love him, but I know as well as both of you, that it takes two people to ruin a marriage. What I’m talking about here is you and me.

I accept that we’re never going to be best friends again, but can we at least be on talking terms? I am not going to disappear simply because you don’t talk to me, Amisa. I am still here, and despite my best efforts to convince myself you don’t deserve my love, I still care about you and your happiness. I know it’s painful and weird that I’m a part of your ex-family, but we’re all still here. Your name pops up in conversations, and we get sad. It’s almost like you died, Mis, only you’re still walking around, safe and sound. But to us, to me, it’s like you don’t exist. We were used to talking to you all the time, especially Mom and me. Then all of the sudden, one day, *poof* it’s all gone, you’re gone, and you left us behind without even a goodbye.

I don’t do this. I don’t think about former friends this much. Most of my former friends were idiots anyway, not worth spending the extra time thinking about. But you are not in that category. I could tell you anything, Mis. You know stuff about me that most people don’t know. I trusted you with such personal information because I trusted you, and you let me down. The last letter I have from you was mean and hurtful. I held onto it until about a year ago and then decided I had harbored that upsetting memory long enough. But deleting the email didn’t delete you out of my mind.

Though sometimes I wish it had.

I don’t hate you. I’m not even mad at you. I’m completely over all of those feelings because life is too short to live it holding resentment for people you once loved. So here I am, I’m telling you I love you and I miss you and I want to be friends, or at least friendly acquaintances with you. I hope you can somehow feel the same.

I forgive you, Amisa. I forgive you for not giving me a reason why you decided to stop talking to me all of a sudden. I forgive you because you were hurting and maybe confused, and didn’t know who to trust. I forgive you because at one time I know you loved me like a sister. I know you did. And I felt the same way.

So here’s a letter I will never send to you. I’m not certain you deserve for me to send it to you. In fact, I don’t know if you deserve my friendship after all of the hurt and pain you’ve put me through. I guess I would merely like to know why, and it kills me that I will probably never have an answer to that question.

I hope you find happiness, Amisa. I hope you have figured out what was making you so incredibly unhappy. I hope you have done some intense soul searching, that you have been brought to your knees and gradually picked yourself up. I hope you’re stronger, I hope you’re happier.

I hope you truly did consider me as close to you as a sister. I hope that wasn’t a lie, because that’s how I felt about you. I will not send this letter to you, making me vulnerable yet again, pouring my heart out to you, only for you to ignore me once more. I can’t do that to myself anymore. You need to find me when you’re ready.

I pray someday, you will.

Love,
Lindsay

~~~

Lindsay Maddox is a freelance writer, humorist, and Mommy extraordinaire. She mainly produces nonfiction articles on parenting, but recently found her true love in fiction writing. Lindsay will be published in Elements of the Soul, a Short Story Anthology in 2009. Please visit her author’s website at: http://site.lindsaymaddox.com/

Tags: ex family member, ex friend, forgiveness, friend, friends, letter

To His Ex Wife,

Your biggest mistake was my greatest gain. I’m glad you were foolish enough to think there was something out there better than him. The grass wasn’t really greener though, was it?

Because of your lies, cheating and deception, he was free of you when I found him. He was completely free of you. He doesn’t hate you, did you know that? He doesn’t care enough to hate you. You are just something that was… past tense, nothing more. You are nothing more than a case of bad judgment. You are also a fool, and I’m glad.

When I found him, it was like finding a piece of me that I had been missing. He is what I have been searching for…and you made it all possible.

If you did any damage at all, it was souring his thoughts on marriage. But we’re okay with that… just so you know. Maybe he’s given up on marriage, but he hasn’t given up on love. And as much as I would love to be his wife, I don’t need that ring to know he loves me. He’s the one I want to be with, now and forever.

If he hurt at all when you left, I am sorry for that. But I am not sorry you left. What I can’t understand is why you left. What is it that you thought you had found? What was it that you thought was better than what you had? I wonder if you even realized how good a man he really is. I don’t think you did. If you had realized that, you wouldn’t have left. You couldn’t have left.
But now that you’re gone, he’s mine… and I’m not letting go.

Signed,
Loving Him Always

~~~

Susan Sosbe enjoys freelancing from her home in Indiana, which she shares with her significant other, her two children and her dog. She enjoys painting pictures with words and sharing those creations with her readers.

You can visit Ms. Sosbe’s author site by clicking this link: http://susansosbe.com/

Tags: Ex Wife, Girlfriend, Husband, letter, Love

I know we haven’t always gotten along well, but I have always loved you and wanted a better relationship with you. When you and Mama divorced, I thought for a short time that maybe we would have that better relationship. You confided in me, shared things with me, and even introduced me to the woman you had been seeing.

Then you married her. We weren’t even invited. You ran off to Vegas and came home and told me about it nearly a month after it happened. Maybe that’s why I did the same. I didn’t tell you about Ryan until I knew my sister had already told you about him.

But then you came home and you and your new wife moved into the home I had grown up in, and you moved her children into that home. When I came to visit, it didn’t even feel like home anymore.

Then you moved an hour away, and the only time we saw each other was on holidays or special occasions. I can’t say I missed you, since I don’t guess I ever really knew you. You were never an active part of my life.

Then you moved back, and that’s when you started talking to my sister. Oh, you and she were so close, sharing everything together. I was jealous, but I tried hard to hide it. I had lived all these years without having a real relationship with you, and I had done so because I had told myself that you just weren’t able to have relationships with your kids.

But there you were, having a relationship with my sister and your stepkids.

I wondered then, “Is it just me?”

I remember when I was in the hospital. I was so sick. Yes, you called me on the phone while I was there, but you never came to see me. I want to believe that the reason you didn’t come to see me was because you were scared, afraid to see me weak or frail.

Your wife came to see me though, but that’s not saying much since she worked at that hospital. She told me, “You know, we’re in the medical field, your father and I, and we know when something is serious or not. He would have come if it had been serious.”

I don’t know how serious it was to you, but to me, they poked a hole in my chest, had me completely immobilized and told me that if this medication didn’t work, I was probably going to die. Seemed pretty serious to me.

Then again, I’m not in the medical field. I mean, when they tell me that if this doesn’t work I could die, that sounds pretty serious to me.

I’m also not able to detach from my emotions like you so obviously try to do. I would have been there for you if you had been sick. I would have sat by your bed and waited on your hand and foot. I know even now, if you were sick, I’d be the first one to find a way to you, to take care of you, to be there for you.

You’re my Daddy. That’s what family does.

Where were you?

After I got out of the hospital, you called me a few times, and we talked. I got my hopes up again. I’m nearly forty years old and you’d think I’d know better by now. But still, I got my hopes up, thinking you would listen, understand, love me.

In reality, all you wanted was inside information to use against my sister, who had had a falling out with you guys for some reason. I don’t even remember why now. I don’t even care why anymore.

And then, one day, you just stopped calling. The conversations we’d had, the hope I had built up – shattered.

I still don’t know what I did wrong.

I called you on father’s day and got your voice mail. I left a message, but you never called me back.

I called you on your birthday and got your voice mail. I left a message, but you never called me back.

When Thanksgiving came around, I forwarded my home phone to a cell phone so that I wouldn’t miss your call, specifically wouldn’t miss YOUR call.

You never called.

Christmas came and went, and you never called. I called you Christmas Eve and left a message, and then waited all day long on Christmas Day.

And you never called.

I had presents for you and your wife. I was so proud of the things I’d picked out. I still have them, too. Still wrapped, on the top shelf of the closet in the hallway.

And I cried.

I felt like that little 15 year old girl again, desperately wanting her parent’s love and approval and getting nothing but ice, cold, silence. I felt like a wounded child.

And like a wounded child, that night, though it had been a wonderful and beautiful night with people who loved me all around me, I curled up in a ball and let him hold me while I cried.

I’m so glad he understands me enough to know that it’s not because he’s not enough.

It’s just… you’re my Daddy.

And I miss you.

I know that it’s hard for you to see me as anything but the daughter who disappointed you, left home, got pregnant and ruined her life.

But I have two beautiful children, a wonderful family, a home of my own now, and that baby I had as a kid graduated from high school with honors three years ago and is making As and Bs in college and has a great full-time job. My son is a loving and wonderful kid who is sharp as a tack and he’s going to really make something of himself when he finally figures out where he belongs.

I’m successful now. People respect me. They listen to my opinions. I do what I love, and I love what do, and I have people around me who love me and appreciate me.

I have books published, did you know that? Yeah. See, I changed my name for the books. I tell everyone it was because the name was too common, and while that’s true, sadly, it’s also because it removed my association from a family that has not been what I dreamed and believed a family could be. Should be.

I guess you could say I reinvented myself. One day I woke up and decided that I didn’t like who I was and what I’d become.

I finally broke away from my expectations of what I thought you wanted me to be, what Mama wanted me to be, what anyone else wanted me to be.

I finally became who *I* wanted me to be.

And I found out something in the process.

I like me.

I really, really like who I am, at the very core of me. For the first time in my life, I’m happy. I’m not talking about happy in the moment, but truly, deeply, soulfully happy.

I love my life now, my little chosen family, the people I wished into my life. It’s not perfect, but it’s getting better every day.

Still, I know you’ll never see me as who I am today. That makes me sad, because, you see, Daddy, I think that if you knew me, you’d really like me too.

I don’t need you anymore, Daddy. But my heart still wants you. I still sigh wistfully when I see a father and daughter of any age out together. I had always hoped that as an adult I could be somewhat of a contemporary with you, someone you respected, maybe even considered a friend as well as a daughter.

You haven’t been there for me when I needed you, when I wanted you. I know I haven’t been the perfect daughter, and I know that in so many ways I’ve let you down and failed to live up to your expectations.

But the one thing I want you to know the most is this. I forgive you. Even if you will never forgive me for failing in your eyes, I forgive you for failing in mine. And when you need me, it won’t matter if you’ve gone years without speaking to me, I’m going to be there. I’ll be the first one by your side when that call comes in that Daddy needs me.

Because, Daddy, that’s what family does.

Because, despite everything else, I still love you, and I still want you to be my Daddy.

Love,
Shelly

Tags: daddy, family, father, letter