I M Perfect lady

Tag: letters

  • When She Writes It.

    I am at work, with a racking cough, aching bones and going through piles of mail, and come across my name and my mother's handwriting.  

    I put it in my slot. 

    What now, I wonder, what now…?  The added weight of the letter works on me as I continue to toss the mail.

    As I am bundling the mail to take on the route, I put mine in my purse, in case I decide I need to know what she has to say somewhere along my route.  I don't.  I feel the weight without even reading the words.

    I listen to a novel, moving along box to box, road to road, package to package….time passes, and she comes and goes along the route and I don't read it until I turn on my road.

    These words are spread out on stationary sheet, blue snowflakes around the border…plain white middle.

    Birthday/Christmas 2011

    Dearest Beth,

    You have been a great help and joy for many years.  You are my daughter and I have always loved you from Day 1.

    May God bless us all and give peace in 2012.

    A Mother's Love,

    Always and Forever,

    Mom

    I wonder what she is trying to accomplish by this letter.  What prompts her to send out these words?

    Stating a mother's love? Trying again to make me believe…

     A mother's love???  A mother who blessed her husband when he raped me.  Really, you loved me since day one.  I would beg to differ.  No matter how many times you write it, it still sounds hollow to me.  I don't feel the love.  Too many little girls lives were changed by how you loved me.

    She says I have been a great help and joy….And I certainly had been to abuse. She mentions nothing about my actions today, the present Beth, just the Beth of old.  She sees only her….refusing to acknowledge my changes, the new me.

    "May God Bless us all and give peace in 2012."  

    What is peace to her?  Would peace return to her life, If I would turn back into being a help and a joy for abuse?  Would peace then return, is that the Blessing she wants from her God?  

    Peace in dysfunction…an oxymoron for sure.

    Taken at a glance and just reading the words, it sounds like a lovely letter from a mother to her daughter; but the background experiences taint the words.

    Even the little girl in me feels the absence of her understanding as to where I am at.  I don't know if she can even fathom my path…our differences are so vast.

    While these notes may be comforting or helpful to her, they are not to me.  They come in blindly seeing only how she feels and what I brought….they fail to see how I felt or what I got back then.

    I asked myself, "what did I get from her…?"

    What is my response to her.  

    As a daughter of hers what can I possibly say?

    "Mommy Dearest…"  

    It seems when the hurt gets toughened up and put aside, she comes back in to peck at the cut.  I told her the kindest thing I have to offer her is silence.  No words.  Nothing.  Empty of retorts.

    As soon as I ponder what I would respond, it gets my blood pressure pumping.  I feel all the rage and wounds and resentment, hurt and pain.  Not only for me, but so many little girls, I get swallowed in the dark…I have no kind words to send back to her.

    I stop mentally writing a response…

    I just want her to remain silent.  To let it be.  To stop writing how much she loves me and how she will be my mother forever and always.

    Don't I know it.  Haven't I felt her brand of Love?  Was I not given another dose even today?  How can a mother who allowed such atrocities go on, write this letter to a Me?

    All she sees is how she loved me, not HOW she loved me.

    She misses all the places she wasn't aware…and I was abused.

    She misses all the things she overlooked that caused me pain.

    She misses all the mothering things she failed to accomplish when abuse walked through her door into her life, into her marriage and into her daughter.  She misses that.

    She only wants to see the joy and help.  She doesn't want to see the gaping wound of dysfunction.

    The wound that steered my life into flowing backwards and crooked.

    Seeing my Helping her and Joy for many years IS NOT what I need her to see. She doesn't need to see me that way.

    She needs to see me, a little child being hurt by her father. She needs to see that and then write letter about how she loved me so.

    Without mentioning my pain, her love stays golden.

    And without mentioning my pain… I would dissolve back into a land of dysfunction again.

    She keeps sending me letters expounding on her love…when a letter explaining how she couldn't have loved me would be more true to the nature of my experience.

    I don't want a love letter… I want a letter telling me how she abused me.  Isn't that odd.  We don't want our abusive parents to tell us how much they loved us for we carry scars of abuse…we want them to acknowledge what they did to us was not love.

    I could puke on the words of love she writes.

    Trying to give me her love…in words, when she failed in deeds.

    Once again, she didn't write the letter that will break my silence…

    She continues to hide behind a loving mother…when reality has shown me the opposite.  

     It is good for me to know what letter I am waiting for.  I always felt no need to respond, and now I know what words I am seeking…my truth, I will recognize it when she writes it.

     ‎"Truth can be Unrecognized, but it can't be changed." 

    David Hawkins  

     

     

  • “With Love always mom”

    As I began my workday yesterday morning, I am in high spirits using all my efforts to stay positive with the large volume of mail, willing myself not to get weighed down by the load.

    I am happy to start sorting letters, the tray is filled with colorful envelopes, and a gold one sits in front.

    As I pick it up, my eyes focus in on the familiar name, mine, and the handwriting is hers.

    My high spirits escape in one breath.

    The restraining letter meant nothing to her.

    The weight of the mail meant nothing compared to the heavy heart of disappointment.

    She did not honor me.

    I tossed it into my home slot, and continued on for a minute or two, and then the not knowing was too much of a distraction, so I stopped, opened it up and read.

    “Noel” is printed in fancy letters on the front, and inside the card’s message, “Wishing you peace, love and joy this Holiday Season,” and her added line, “With love always, Mom and Gramma.”

    It is ironic that what I need for peace, love and joy is for her to honor me, and yet she stomps down upon the restraining letter I sent and sends her usual card.

    Her love always is one that disregards my needs, my wishes, and me.

    I am not seen at all, as she continues on, her stride unbroken by my restraining letter to her.

    My last written words to her, my first in 6 years, was a plea for space, for her to honor and respect our silence…

    My last line was, “If you fail to honor our separation as it is, you are deliberately seeking to disrespect and hurt me; I will take it as such.”

    Her love comes in with disrespect and hurt.

    I felt it as I stood there in a mountain of mail holding a card that yet again doesn’t see me.

    Feeling abused on the inside, my feelings tore up, I tossed it back in my slot, and tried to gather myself back together to continue on.

    Her failure of honoring my words should not be a surprise, yet I guess I am the ultimate believer.

    Believing that one day she will see me, even as sit behind a wall of restraining words, that she will hear them and see me.

    See me telling her, you hurt and disrespect me.

    My words to her fall upon deaf ears.

    It’s like my needs were never written.

    Like a bad energizer bunny she keeps going and going and going.

    Her blind bullheadedness is abuse.

    She is bullying me.

    With words of love.

    Love that knows no boundaries.

    Love that doesn’t hear.

    Love of a bully.

    A one-sided affair.

    Being bullied by words of peace, love and joy.

    The juxtaposition, a card of noel, a Christmas song…carrying the tune she has always sung.

    Actions of hurt and disrespect signed, “with love always mom.

  • Die in peace.

    A horrifying thought flittered across my mind, “ I need to write a letter to my father,” and it is like a thorn that won’t leave me alone, a bug, a thought I can’t swipe away, or flick back to where it came.

    It arrived like an unwanted guest and refuses to leave until I entertain the idea.

    I am not sure I will send the letter or if I can write it, but it seems that just as I silently left my mother, I also stopped cold any interactions with my father on December 4, 2004.

    My letter to my mother had to inspire this thought.

    My body trembled in terror back then and I haven’t addressed this man in any way, other than honoring the feelings of wanting to remain far far away.

    I haven’t explored in writing the dynamics between him and I, instead letting the words abuse and rape gloss over and suffice.

    Just not sitting down in the middle of what that feels like to a little girl.

    What will I say?
    What needs to be said?
    What thread needs to be followed through to its completion?

    What is odd to me, is that I have never once thought of writing a letter to him, yet in the past I had a few letters started to my mother, but never ever have I begun one to him or even considered one, until today.

    And I even thought to the point of sending it and finding the address to my sister’s house where he lives.

    I am sure this is the natural progression that follows the one I sent my mother, although perhaps this could be one to both of them, the final good-bye, a swan song to my parents.

    Part of me is afraid to write this.
    There is a part of me that is afraid not to write it as well, for a gift may get left there unopened.

    Many years ago I began a letter but it so enraged me I had to
    stop.

    Is there something I feel needs to be said to give me peace?

    I wonder if the swan sings to die in peace?