For Sharon,

Sharon,

For once this isn’t going to be about things I am experiencing right now. I am writing you because I need to write, and I want to check you off the list. That’s it. The funny thing is this could end up a longer letter because I would just as soon get it all out at once.

I guess the good news is I am not sure you did much damage. I have a lot of memories that sting, and there are some things I need to forgive you for, but you didn’t change my life and, frankly, the shit you did was so fucked up and bizarre that I don’t worry about it happening again.

Maybe this will be faster:

• I forgive you for lying about your car being wrecked because your real car didn’t live up to the fantasy life you told everyone you had.
• I forgive you for lying about making your money running a company that didn’t even exist.
• I forgive you for lying about living with your mom.
• I forgive you for lying about your mother having cancer (Tat’s fucked up Sharon.)
• I forgive you for making up stories about going out with your brother in a tow truck at night as a cover for your real job.
• I forgive you for lying about being a dancer.
• I forgive you for embarrassing me by stealing from your friends and putting me in a position to deal with it.
• I forgive you for the shock when they told me you were a dancer.
• I forgive you for the painful experience of seeing you work, at your suggestion (I should have known better).
• I forgive your for lying about the club stealing money from you (still don’t get that one at all).
• I forgive you for stealing from me, my son and my parents (and that was a LOT of money Sharon! You literally pushed me in to bankruptcy. And emptying a small child’s piggy bank is one of the lamest things I have ever seen done.)
• I forgive you for going behind my back to the ex that put you in a hospital.
• I forgive you for leaving that demon possessed kitten that tore up my house.
• I forgive you for your crazy reaction when all your lies caught up with you.
• I forgive you for being dramatic and sleeping in the driveway.
• I forgive you for coming to pick up your stuff in the Corvette that dancer loaned you so you could pretend that somehow it was yours (Unless you bought it with my money in which case you owe me a car I guess.)
• I forgive you for pretending to be friends with my ex-wife so she’d friend you on Facebook so you could keep tabs on me.
• I forgive you for lying to her about our relationship.
• I forgive you for stalking my son and I through his mother (which was really fucking creepy).
• I forgive you for sneaking around the block to share condolences for my dad’s death (although talking like you cared so much when you literally stole from him was a bit much).
• I forgive you for lying and telling people I got you pregnant then kicked you out. (That was low).
• I forgive you for your heavy drinking and hiding it. (I actually hope you got or get help).
• I forgive you for the constant stream of pointless lies.

Sharon, I do not know what happened with you. I know there was some sort of distance from your father, but you were never honest about anything. I know your mother was exasperated by all you had done (she apologized for you and was very shocked to learn she had cancer.).

What I do know is that anyone who defaults to lying has some serious problems. I will never know what was and wasn’t true, and I really don’t care. It doesn’t affect me like other lies because it reached a level where it became unbelievable. I don’t have flashbacks with you. I never have a panic attack triggered because of you. In fact, I only think about you because of the money. But you did impact my life and I need to forgive you for it, and I do.

I hope whatever happened is something you have been able to heal from and you are doing better than you were then. But I do not want you in my life. I don’t want to know any details. I can’t be someone who can help you because I am not capable of it. I can only send you my best wishes for your health and future.

John

For My Father (again),

Father,

All day long I have needed to write. I wanted to write to Robin, but something is very much on her mind and this isn’t the time. I thought about other people, since I already wrote to you, but, after last night, I have to get this off my chest and I do not see my therapist for 3 weeks.

Last night we were watching Big Little Lies and they were rather graphically discussing how one of the children is the son, by rape, of the man killed in the first season. (I do not give a fuck about spoilers on here so if you didn’t know, tough shit.) He didn’t know who his father was, so he and I are different. And, at first, he didn’t know about the assault. But now he does.

As I watched it, and they kept going back to how this man would beat and rape his wife, and how he raped this woman, I kept thinking about you. Maybe it was because I had a therapy session and got to try to tell my life story in 45 minutes, and you certainly came up. But one word kept coming up in my mind that, even with everything you did, I have never used to describe you.

Rapist

Yeah, you’re a rapist. You know what you did to me but that’s a whole other letter. But what you did to my mother… You raped her. You forced her to do things she didn’t want to do. You were violent. You were abusive in every way. But, most relevant to right now, you raped her.

I started thinking about that kid, fictional as he may be, and wondering how it will be for him growing up knowing he was only born because his father was a rapist. How do you deal with that? Does it make you feel angry? Guilty? Confused?

Then I realized I will never know if my birth was because one night you raped my mother. You’d certainly never tell me. I doubt you even think of it as rape, and how could you know for sure (don’t answer that). I have tried confronting you about your actions and you insist you have no idea what I meant. Funny thing though is that while you insisted you didn’t know, you sure as hell didn’t try to pretend you didn’t do anything. You never protested your innocence. You didn’t spend much time trying to find out what you did but were adamant you hadn’t done it.

I have spent most of my life trying to figure out exactly what you did. I have bits of memory. I have fears that seem to provide an answer. I have hang-ups that sure seem indicative. I have doctors convinced they know. But I cannot be certain, and I was just coming to grips with the reality I will never be 100% sure, despite what I believe.

Now, I have this new mystery. And I will, again, never know for sure. Does it matter? I don’t know. I know the idea makes me feel different. It makes me more committed to never being like you. It makes me happier I cut you out of my life.

But before I was just a bastard; a man whose father disowned him. Now I realize I may be a bastard who is the product of a rape, and that is a lot to digest. I always have felt different, and people have told me that no matter what I do, what I accomplish or what I look like, I am different. And today I feel even more different. And, honestly, I can’t tell anyone. I am not dumping this on Robin like everything else. I can’t talk to Mom, and she’d lie anyway were it true. The rest of my family is Brian, who is not your son anyway, and Casey, who doesn’t need to think about it.

Yeah, I isolated myself, with some help. That’s my fault. But you being a rapist? That’s on you.

And the fucked-up thing is I am not even sure I can end this one forgiving you because I am not talking about what you did to me, but what you did to Mom.

But I guess I can try because who and what you are affects how I feel and see myself. I am responsible for handling the cards I was dealt, and you are one shady dealer. So, I will try my hardest to forgive you for this and to never think of it again.

John

Dear Aunt Judy

Aunt Judy,

This one won’t mean much to most people and will probably seem insignificant. But I want to say that your actions, as minor as I am sure they seemed to you and everyone else, had a lasting impact on me.

I want to say that I sympathize with you. I have no doubt that losing a baby was a very painful experience for you, I cannot even imagine what it feels like and I am sure it impacted you in many ways. But it seems one of those ways was anger at me for being born at the same time you were expecting a baby. I understand your anger, pain and jealousy. I feel horrible that it even happened.

The thing is, though, you were, for the lack of a better word, a bully my whole childhood. Some of my earliest memories are of you telling people how weird I was. I was a small child. All small children are weird in some way. But look at the things you made fun of.

I want to give you the benefit of the doubt for not realizing the influence you had, but I can’t. You pursued influence. You wanted to be the queen bee of the social world our family was on. You wanted to be the most popular woman not only at church but in the whole city. You wanted everyone to know who you were and to value your opinions. You were dismissive of anyone who didn’t consider you important. And you weren’t even satisfied doing it with adults. You did the same thing with the kids my whole life. You wanted to be their friend and you were the epitome of a “Mean Girl”. But you were an adult, not a child.

My parents divorced. My father rarely paid child support. Like most women my mom didn’t make much. No, we couldn’t afford nice, new, clothes the way you and Dick could for your girls. My jeans usually had patches and sometimes I had to wear things after they were worn out or didn’t really fit. I was a very anxious child and sometimes poked little holes in my shirt because it. In short, I dressed like shit.

I really appreciate you telling people how poorly I dressed, or how poorly my mother dressed me. It was great, at 5, understanding how clothing could dictate how you were treated, especially when an adult was telling children, and their parents, how bad you looked.

I want to thank you for being uncomfortable with the fact I was smarter than most kids my age and thinking it “weird” that I would say things kids my age normally wouldn’t say. It was fun having you mock me to my face and even more fun when I found out you were telling everyone at church. I mean, it was only about the biggest church in town and, since I was a child, I had no choice but to go. You all made sure that church was the center of all of our lives, so it was awesome having kids told by their parents how I was “weird”,

I want to thank you for sharing the story about the time my mother found a can of pineapple under my bed. That was a real knee slapper of a story, wasn’t it? Of course, it didn’t matter to you that there were lots of times we didn’t have much food and I was afraid I wouldn’t have enough to eat. I can’t imagine why a kid in that situation would hide food. In case you want some new stories, did you know that my lunch was usually either peanut butter on saltines or, if my mom had time and was healthy enough to do it, on thick slices of homemade bread that the other kids found hilarious. Maybe you’d even get a kick out of knowing we used to go hunt for glass bottles we could return for deposits and aluminum cans we could recycle because a few dollars might mean we ate better.

It was also awesome how, when you agreed to watch me when my mother was in the hospital or had to go out of town, you liked to make sure I knew how much of a burden it was. I really liked hearing how you couldn’t wait for her to come back or that you wished she’d taken me to grandma’s instead. It helps a kid develop independence and self esteem to know their family doesn’t want to deal with them.

And, finally, thanks for making it so much easier in puberty. It was great when Sherry broke up with me because you and your daughter told her she needed to stay away because I was “weird”. That was so much fun! Not only did I get to experience heartbreak for the first time, I got to keep revisiting it because she liked to keep me around, but not as a boyfriend since the “cool people” wouldn’t approve. I will say at least it’s not your fault she toyed with me or that I let her, so I don’t blame you for that.

I have a lot of reasons in life to feel different. Some are my own fault. Some are because of things that happened when I was just an innocent child and hadn’t even had a chance to discover who I was yet. It was words like yours that shaped my self-perception as much as it was actions by my abusers that shaped my self-worth.

Now that I have had my say, though, I want to say I forgive you. I know why it happened and while I don’t like it, I also cannot imagine what you went through. I know you also looked down on us because we never had the money you guys used to have, and I get that that’s hardly unique to you. You were mirroring what others were doing and playing a game that it seemed everyone was playing.

And the fact is, it wasn’t your job to protect me. It wasn’t your job to get me help when I needed it. And it is my fault for letting it stay internalized for so long. I am an adult and I have been seeking help for a while. With all there is to slog through maybe this just never seemed crucial. But right now, I am working through things and, honestly, focusing not on things from my relationships but the other experiences, and people, that hurt me.

You will never know the impact you had, and I think that’s best. If you are a kind soul it would hurt, you to know. And if you didn’t care it would hurt me.

John

For Whitney

Whitney,

This is going to be one of the first of the really hard letters I write. I started with things that haven’t had as much impact on my relationship because I know that my living in the past has added stress and she has had to pay the price, which is unfair.

But I also have felt how writing these has helped me get things to a point where they don’t affect me as bad. In this case it may take more work, but I want to make this start.

But this will be different. I am going to do is apologize.

I know you think I called your son’s school and said he was a threat and sexually abusing his sister. That didn’t happen. I don’t know specifically what they told you, but I have some ideas.

The truth is that I emailed and asked if there were resources available for both of your kids to receive counseling because of all the turmoil around your divorce. When you didn’t sign them up for insurance, they didn’t have access to counselors or medical help. You couldn’t afford it. Yes, I was and am very disappointed in you for neglecting their needs and only taking care of yourself, but that is not my cross to bear.

I was concerned about his actions, and I was not the only one. I wanted him to get help before it became a serious problem. I saw him hurt his sister many times. She cried out in pain. I saw him whisper to her and get her to lie and say nothing happened. I pointed it out to you, and you ignored it. Then he started acting out in school, and there was a very clear sexual and violent overtone to it. They suspended him for it so it’s not like it was nothing. And the specific imagery he used should have concerned you.

I could not ignore all that, even though they weren’t my kids. You had a young son, starting to act out sexually and violently at school, who was also hurting his little sister AND they shared a room. If that didn’t raise concerns for you then I think you need to think some things through.

But, and this is the truth, I never told them who he was, and I never said he was sexually abusive. They begged me to for weeks for his name and details, and I said no. I said I wanted resources, not to have them turn your life upside down. But they also told me they knew who it was and were trying to get confirmation so they could get him help. What I finally agreed to was giving them his first initial and I trusted them. That’s it. From there they went silent and your response made it clear whatever they did was causing pain.

But before you judge me too harshly, clearly, they did know who it was, which should give you some idea that I was not only not wrong, I was far from the only one seeing the problems. He’s got one of the most common first initials there is, and it’s a large school, but they knew.

Maybe I should have talked to you, but where we were at that point made that impossible. What you had done was possibly the cruelest thing anyone has ever done to me, and that says a lot. I could not talk to you. I do not regret trying to help the kids though. I discussed it in therapy before, during and after and she agreed I did the right thing. I am sorry for how I handled it though because I take it there were repercussions, but I will not apologize for trying to help your kids while you were so wrapped up in yourself, One of the reasons I did was that I had seen in your attitude towards the insurance that your mind was elsewhere.

I cannot deliver the apology personally right now because that is a door I am not willing to open. In fact, the point of this exercise is to close certain doors and hopefully lock them for good. Frankly I do not think it would help you or me to clear the air, and it could make things worse by reopening old wounds and reestablishing communication I do not want.

So, unlike the other letters, I am not forgiving you in this letter. There are a LOT of things that happened that were very wrong that I will have to deal with eventually. I am fighting the urge to just list some. But I don’t feel like I am ready to touch on them yet and I do not want to derail this letter. That pain is too fresh and frankly hits too close to home. I am also not ready because I am not going to touch things that could make me overly sensitive or emotional as I go through this process. My fiancee has dealt with too much of that already. Maybe the pain is a sign I am not ready to forgive, but I will get there.

Who I am forgiving is myself because I am a good person and I did the right thing for the right reasons, regardless of what you or your family may think. And maybe it did get them the help they deserved and needed, in which case I am grateful.

A letter to my mother

Mom,

I wasn’t going to write to you today. I wasn’t even sure who was going to be the subject today. But after getting your emails, I feel I should.

Yeah, I could write a very long letter about everything. I could start with before my childhood and just keep going. But I realize that the forgiveness process is best served when I look at specific events, say how I perceived them and explain how they affected me. And since you brought up the event that lead to our estrangement.

When Dad died, we were all hurt. I understand that he was your husband, but he was our father. And, in my case, that was a very complicated thing. Remember, I really didn’t know him when you got married. He was just another guy, and there were several. Him talking me to see you in the hospital, while we stayed with members of his family I had never met, was scary for a 7-year-old. My mother in a hospital for something serious I didn’t understand was hard. Being alone with a stranger was hard. Having nobody to talk to about what was happening or how I felt was hard.

Then suddenly he was my step-dad. I had 2 brothers I had never met. We moved and I was going to change schools. And I didn’t even know it was going to happen. I went to school on the day of the final awards ceremony (I won a couple) without a family member, and just knowing I was going to Aunt Judy’s. BTW, she said she didn’t even know I was spending a night, let alone a weekend. I don’t think they knew you were getting married either

So suddenly I have 2 brothers you don’t like and who don’t like you. There’s constant bickering. And it was an us against them mindset, even though I never wanted to take sides. They weren’t welcoming and you were all I had. I guess, to young kids, that seemed like taking sides. But what was I going to do? 4 other people in the house and I knew 1.

Then we go through a kidnapping of the boys. I had no idea what that meant. But what little attention Dad did pay to me dropped. Remember how we couldn’t go anywhere? Remember how he was even afraid to go outside in case they called? Remember him spending every second suffering over the loss and angry that they were gone?

Then, in the middle of all of that, you guys take me to Furrs in the middle of the week, which always meant bad news. This was a doozy.

So, my father called you guys and said he thought it would be better if Dad adopted me, and you not only agreed, you just did it. Think about what you just told a small child. His father didn’t want to be his father anymore. A man who didn’t seem that interested in the kid was now, somehow, his father. Nobody asked me what I thought in advance. Nobody had me talk to a counselor or social worker. No judge ever even met me.

When we got the boys back, they went to therapy. I guess getting straight A’s meant I was fine, right? I mean, I kept faking illness to get out of school because I was miserable. I had just had my whole life turned upside down. I had a new name I couldn’t even spell, angry brothers messed up by whatever their mother said and did, and one resentful of Dad for bringing him back. My whole life had been on hold. I was smart, but how was I supposed to process all that?

I spent the next 25 years trying to come to terms with my childhood, which included some really fucked up events if you recall and trying to understand my relationship with Dad. Did he really love me? Did he see me as a son or a step-son? Why didn’t he believe I was abused? Did you guilt him in to adopting me? Why did he call me his step-son for so long?

I didn’t have all of that processed when he died. The closest we came was when he said he wanted you taken care of because you couldn’t do it yourself and didn’t really have any friends.

But when he died you seemed happy. You seemed to relish the attention of being a widow. Even the obituary you wrote wasn’t to celebrate him but to show off your writing. And when you moved you immediately tried to replace him with me. You wanted me to live with you. You wanted to buy a house you could only afford if I was covering a lot of the bills. You wanted to trap me to be the next guy to take care of you and I wouldn’t bite.

What I didn’t know is that you were on dating sites mere months after dad’s death. We all grieve differently but… And then, just like the dinner at Furrs I get a call. So, some guy, supposedly from Denmark, with a business in Oregon, building schools in Africa, wants to marry you. You’ve never met. He’s much younger with a daughter younger than Casey. And you just happened to have the cash from the sale of your house. Even better, I was the last to know. Extended family knew before me.

Obviously, it looked shady. A guy from Africa on the internet who suddenly wants to marry a recent widow with what would be a fortune in Africa? Of course, Brian and I looked in to it. The guy had no business or property in Oregon (a lie). He hadn’t worked for the companies he claimed (a lie). His accent wasn’t Dutch (very questionable). No record that he ever lived in the UK as claimed (very questionable). In fact, other than whatever site you found him on, this guy had zero digital footprint. A businessman with history in 4 countries, doing business overseas, was a ghost.

And you kept saying the magic words you’d said about Dad and so many men before him “He wants to take care of me”.

So, Brian and I raised our concerns. Brian talked to the guy and was certain he was African and pulling a scam. He caught him in several lies. I was really good at finding business and personal records, and he didn’t exist. And you just got mad. You accused us of just not wanting you to be happy. You said it was because we didn’t want you to remarry. We were supposedly just wanted you to live your life alone.

Meanwhile, we were afraid you would lose what little money you had. We were scared you would be broke. Honestly, neither of us wanted to replace Dad as the one “taking care of you” because we had seen what that entailed. We love you, but we needed our own lives too.

You wouldn’t listen.

Brian and I decided maybe you would listen to Joanne. After all, you told her before either of us and she’s your older sister. And, lo and behold, she, and the other people you told she had talked to, all agreed with us with even less information. She agreed to talk to you to share all of our concerns.

Naturally you then called and chewed me out. You said I violated your privacy by telling Joanne something you’d already told her. You again said we were being selfish and wanted you to die alone. You told me how we were terrible children. Then you said the one thing you will never be able to take back.

You told me that Brian and I were a constant embarrassment. We had done horrible things that brought shame to the family. I had disappointed you at every turn and had no right to “judge” your relationship given my history. Everything I did was wrong and embarrassing. The whole town knew how fucked up I was and always had.

In short, you made it clear you did not love or respect me, and I had made your life hell.

Well, rather than detail all of the ways I could turn that argument on you, I gave you a gift.

If I make your life hell, I’ll stay out of it.

If I embarrass you, you can join the chorus condemning my actions.

Most of all, I gave you the greatest gift of all: I made you a martyr. After all, I was a terrible person who abandoned his mother and wanted her to be miserable and alone. I probably trumped the widow story for you.

I gave you the thing you spent your whole life fighting to get: pity.

As I wrote this, I felt some of the pain again, but it subsided as I went on. I recognize that, yeah, I made bad decisions. Of course, the only way the whole town knew about them was if you told them so, and embarrassment is on you. But you are right that I made mistakes.

But I am not angry with you. I am glad you remarried and hope he treats you well. I hope your health improves. You are forgiven. But I am not ready to return to what we had before. I wish I could tell you a sincere apology was enough, but I am not ready to have someone in my life who expects to be taken care of. It’s not that I am not caring and generous. I have a woman in my life that I am committed to taking care of. But I do that not because she expects it but because I want to, and she appreciates it. We have a mutually supportive relationship and that is healthy.

I am just not looking to have another unhealthy relationship. As you mentioned, I’ve done that too much.

A letter to my father

Father,

Yeah, I can’t call you dad. You gave that up when you decided I wasn’t your son. Make no mistake about this; that is what you did. I do not know what to believe from Mom, but I know this: You chose to let another man take your role. This wasn’t a man you knew really, and neither did I. I barely knew him when they married. I remember one trip and that was because he took me down to the hospital in Albuquerque when mom was there. I thought he was weird and still feel like it was scary to send a kid to a different city with a man he didn’t know to see his mother in a hospital for things I couldn’t be expected to understand.

(I’m not going to talk about the stuff before this. Not today.)

I have made up so many reasons why you did it.

Doreen was always rude to me. I get that she was your wife, but did you not notice that she always made plans for you two on the weekends I was supposed to be with you? Did you never notice there were 2 sets of rules in the house; one for me and one for her kids? Didn’t you notice how she kept you busy, so we didn’t have time together?

Why did she do it? Did she hate me? Was she jealous? Did she know what you had done and wanted to keep me safe? (I doubt that since you were with her sons a lot.)

What I do know is this:

• You rarely paid child support, even when we couldn’t afford food.
• You let her do everything she did.
• You moved to San Diego to be near her sons’ parents.
• Then you moved again, but to Phoenix.

Somewhere in there you decided not to be my father, and you never had the balls to tell me why. I was told you asked Robert to take the job. Just so you know, he never seemed to want to do it. He acted like he was guilted in to it. For years he called me his step-son, even though my birth certificate said father.

Want to know how I found out? You never told me a thing. They never told me a thing. Lawyers never talked to me about it. Counselors never talked to me about it. No judge ever talked to me. I was literally just brought in to a meeting about custody of his kids and asked if I wanted brothers. I had no idea what that meant.

One night they came home and said we were going to Furr’s for dinner. I got my chicken fried steak, sat down and they sat across from me and told me:

• You didn’t want to be my father anymore.
• You asked Robert to be my father.
• He agreed.
• I had a new last name I couldn’t spell or pronounce.

The next day I went to school and they told my teacher I had a new last name. Then I had 2 new brothers who didn’t see me as a sibling.

It hurt like hell when I got older and realized what had happened, and I still struggle with fears of abandonment.

But I don’t hate you anymore. I guess I forgive you. I don’t know why, and I realize I don’t even care. You’re not going to give me a reason now that will make it OK and nothing will take away the pain. You can’t fix the damage, only I can, and I am doing that.

You have done the only thing you can do: leave me alone. I do not need you and you can’t give me closure. I thought I had closed that door when I cut you out of my life, but that’s not how closure works. That just kept you from doing more damage. Unfortunately, I only now realized there were some open wounds that needed tending, and, with the help of an amazing woman, I am doing that.

But as of today, this chapter of my life is closed. I am no longer hurt because you abandoned me. The scars are healing, and the pain will subside and one day it won’t even come to mind.

And I’ll have done that without you.

J