The Letter

It sits here day after day, staring at me accusingly, unopened. I'm still too afraid or fragile to open it. It's like Pandora's Box. You'd think after nearly two years the pain would dull, and thinking about it would no longer bring tears to my eyes. But it hasn't gotten any easier. The memories of her sit in the back of my mind like a tumor waiting to be discovered, acknowledged, accepted.

She is a part of me, my mother, but she is more a stranger than anyone could ever imagine. The only thing I felt I could do was to let go, give up, run away. I've done this before, it's my method, my safety net. This method has worked of course, but it's left me alone, disjointed, and I am not sure how to make it back to where I first came from.

My life is much safer, calmer, and happier all around. But there is this empty tiny pocket, as though a tooth has been pulled and my tongue keeps going back to find it, but all that is left is space, where a part of me used to be. I tell everyone I'm alright, it's what I needed to do. It was, I had no choice, I am not a fool, I know that was what I had to do. But there is always, what if.

I am not sure anyone can quite understand what it is like to feel this alone, by choice no less. I have my loving husband, beautiful children, incredible friends, but no access to my history. It is like I started my life completely over and left behind everything that had formed me. I've never been all that close to my family, my brothers, have virtually faded away, and my sister and I just can't seem to maintain anything that resembles a connection for any length of time. How can one share so much with their own family; a bed, a home, and secrets, but never really know them?

It's lonely, it's isolating. Even when you have a full, rich life, there is always something missing. I've spent my life feeling this. Growing up without my father was isolation in itself. Imagining what it would be like to have a real, grown man, love and care for you, was something I had always longed for, but rarely admitted. It made me feel weak.

Now I sit, two years after my momentous decision to cut all ties with my mother, the woman whose body I shared for nine months, and wait. I wait for something, a sign, I don't know. But nothing comes. I tell myself, "I'll think about it tomorrow", and the days come and go. It's as if I can't admit to what I've done. I've severed a part of myself by leaving her. If I avoid it, can it be true, can the pain eventually go away? I am starting to think, no.

I am pretty certain I know what the letter will contain, and that is the part I fear the most. Hearing the pain, the loneliness in her written words, is almost too much to bare. I am not strong enough yet, and I am not so sure I will ever be.

So sits the letter, under a pile of bills and papers, waiting to be given life.