A Letter Never Sent

I was asked to write you a letter. It's challenging to initiate such conversations because of the depth of the topics involved. While I am typically able to discuss my childhood and our family dynamics in general, addressing you directly is a different matter. Recounting stories, your behaviors, my childhood mindset, specific events, and their impact on my life is a daunting task.

I think now I have more questions than anything. There is so much I don’t understand. Sure, there are things I would like to say to you. Certain points and feelings, experiences that I would like for you to understand, but I would express them to what end? You have never been open to, or capable of hearing how you’ve impacted even your own children’s lives. To the point of delusion. It’s sad. For the most part, that’s how I feel. Sad. There’s also anger, confusion, resentment, pain. Even empathy, but for the most part I feel a great deal of sadness.

I empathize with you because I believe that it is highly unlikely that you’ve navigated the world as both a mother and a woman without experiencing a significant amount of trauma yourself. I’m sorry for that.

You were 33 when I was born, which means you were 31 when Shayna was born. I'm now 36, and as women in our thirties, I can envision us sitting across from each other, engaging in an unbiased conversation. A logical and reasonable one. With the sole objective to gain information and insight. I feel like that would be helpful to me. If I gave you a questionnaire, one on paper, would you fill it out? I have no doubt that you would not be receptive to sharing those answers, but I struggle believing that you would be able to complete it even if you were the only one who would see it. I wonder if you would even be able to get through it. Be able to sit with it. Sit with yourself. That’s a hard thing to do and I wonder if you ever have truly sat with yourself at all. What the outcome of those moments were. Would you be silent, cry, have anxiety, or would you shake your head really fast to block out the reality of it all? I do that. Sometimes when something painful pops up, I’ll close my eyes and shake my head. I’ll wince. Almost like an etcha-sketch. Shake it until it’s all gone. I wonder what you do when painful events and feelings come up for you. They must. Right? I’ve never seen you experience pain. Not authentically, at least.

Edele, you did so much damage. So much, in fact, that a great deal of my behaviors have reflected my need to have the love, care, and stability that I never received. These behaviors have, for the most part, been maladaptive and overall dangerous. I’ve lived a challenging life as a result, and while I'm not blaming you for my choices, a stable and loving home environment would have made a significant difference. Stability was a profound longing. I would even venture to say it was the one thing I wanted most of all, even though I couldn't express it at a young age. Looking back, I see how hard I worked and how much I did in pursuit of that stability.

Something was pointed out to me recently that I had never really thought of. That in the name of stability, I would have even accepted a consistent stream of your abusive behaviors. At least then, I would know what I was getting when it came to you. It's startling to think that stability meant more to me than my own well-being. I would have chosen predictability over your occasional affection just to have some certainty. Unfortunately, I never had that certainty. I never knew what I was getting. Who would walk through the door, what I would face each time I interacted with you. Whether I would deal with screaming, physical violence, insults, being ignored, dancing in the kitchen, or an overabundance of physical affection. That uncertainty and instability turned out to have a worse effect on me than if you had simply always been a monster.

Unfortunately for us, you were a monster more often than not, and while I would like to fault you for it, can you really blame someone for something that they may not have been able to help or control themselves? I mean, did you have the ability to control yourself? Perhaps to a degree you did. You weren’t as split from reality back then. You knew what you were doing. You beat the shit out of us with complete awareness and when it came to your behaviors, you were devoid of wrongdoing. That was a pattern with you. You never did anything that warranted an apology or remorse.

I ask myself how it was so natural for you to consistently present as this magnetic, charming, loving, and put together woman in public and yet have a complete inability to remain stable and consistent in private. That must be a lot of work for you. You must expend a lot of energy always having to present as someone you’re not. That also must have played a role in you being so unstable behind closed doors. When you were alone with us, you no longer needed to expend that energy. You could just let loose.

What was your motivation for your abuse, though? Was it a dopamine hit for you to see Shayna and I scrambling around begging for your love? Did you feel powerful seeing us in physical pain after you hurt us? Did you get off on laughing at our pain? You had so much power over the both of us and you kept that power going by ensuring that neither of us ever felt secure enough to have any degree of autonomy at all. Our mental state depended solely on you. You were in control. Everything was contingent upon our standing with you at any given time.

I should stop saying ‘our’ and ‘us’. As much as I would like to speak for Shayna, it’s best that I don’t. This is my letter to you so I’ll shift that.

The word “introspection” comes to mind when I think about you. I wonder if you are capable of it. Being introspective. I’m sitting here trying to find the words to explain the amount of confusion that I have regarding that. I don’t know how someone is capable of being so heinous and not reflecting on it at all. How deep must the rabbit hole run for introspection to be non-existent? You terrorized us to the point of physical violence. Black and white evidence. Blood. Not an ounce of remorse. How?

Do you enjoy life, or have you figured out a way to get through it and perform as best you can in order to render the best possible outcomes for yourself? I’m tempted to say the latter. Establishing the best performative persona you could in order to manipulate the world around you to squeeze all that you can out of everyone and everything.

Do you ever cry? Like genuinely cry. I can’t remember a time that I saw you cry. At least, not a time that it wasn’t used as a manipulation tactic. Man, you were good at that. Manipulation. A master.

You’re also really good at dropping people like they never existed in the first place. Never mentioning them again. Over the years, I have watched you cycle through an endless amount of people. Friends, family, lovers, your own fucking children, with so much delusion and little to no emotion at all. Always ensuring that they have been labeled as evil or unwell. That was always a part of it.

I don’t have children by choice. One of the reasons I've chosen not to have children is because I never want to subject them to the experiences you put me through. Even adopting a fraction of your parenting choices would be something I could never forgive myself for. Additionally, I have reservations about passing down the genetics shared by both you and Dad. Especially those aspects that neither of you can control. This leads to a fundamental question: Do you have any control over your behaviors? I’m sure to some degree you do, but I am curious about the relationship between your awareness of your behaviors in conjunction with your control of said behaviors.

My need for self-control is quite unhealthy. I’ve developed an extraordinary ability to consciously "stop" certain behaviors and habits that negatively impact my life. While to some this may seem like an advantage, my hyper-awareness and fear of losing control can also be quite restricting. I do, however recognize that control has its limits. One can only control the world around them so much. You did that. You controlled things. I remember how stringent you were with food. You ate like a bird and very rarely. Having a history of eating disorders, myself, I recognize that it was likely that you had a bit of that, too. Maybe that made you feel safe.

When you made the decision to have children, did you consider what kind of mother you wanted to be? Did you have an idea of how you wanted to raise your children? I wonder if you lost yourself along the way. Maybe you did. Maybe your illness took over your psyche as you got older. Or perhaps your untreated trauma is what made you the woman you are now. Either way, I know that at present, you are no longer capable of hiding.

A few years ago, you sent me both Shayna’s and my baby teeth both in their own respective envelopes and you spelled Shayna’s name wrong. You spelled it with an I. “Shaina” It was undeniable. Your own child. How is that even possible? At the time, my therapist noted that it was because your illness has started to “degenerate your brain.” That made sense, especially taking into account your behavior several years prior when I visited you in 2017. You were no longer able to perform as you always had in public. You spoke to yourself in multiple voices and personas. Your mania had turned into incoherence. You lacked the ability to converse. I would ask you questions, and your answers were not really answers at all. They were just words. I believe it’s called ‘word salad’. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was so scary, so triggering, so alarming, that I left 2 days early. I had to take the following week off of work just so I could sleep. I don’t know how I did that for 16 years. Moreover, I don’t know how you do it every day.

I also remember when you shipped upwards of 30 boxes of photos to me. It was a couple of years ago. Massive Fed Ex boxes. Thousands of photos. Where did you even get that many pictures? I remember how much space those boxes took up in my living room. It took me weeks to get through all of them. Why did you do that? Maybe to get a reaction out of me? Were you still trying to control me? Was it to purge yourself of us? To symbolically get rid of us? If so, then why do you have a picture of you and I up on your Facebook profile? I would imagine, if I had to wager, that it’s all for show.

Do you tell people that we are close? That façade of yours is so important to you. Again, speaking to your outward facing behaviors in order to achieve the best possible outcome. Adaptive for your own survival. An impressive skill. Baffling how you are able to gain control of yourself in that way.

I have a desperate fear that deep down, I have your illnesses. The overall ability to completely fake who I am with such genius that even I don’t have a grasp of myself. That maybe one day, behind closed doors, I will “lose it” on my cat and hurt him. Maybe even kill him. Despite reassurances from mental health professionals, partners, and friends that I'm not like you, I still carry a deep-seeded fear that I could suddenly "switch" into a dangerous persona, much like you did frequently. I question a lot of my behaviors. I question them every day. I take constant stock of myself to a point of hyper fixation. I do so because I want to have a sense of who I am. I wish I could ask everyone I know how they see me. Not with the objective of being liked or having my ego stroked, but rather so I can gain a global understanding of how I impact others. For reassurance that I am not you. I cannot become you. I won’t.

When it comes to those days, I can’t say I remember a lot of it. Although I don’t remember much, I do have snippets. Though, what I do remember, I hold on to very tightly. I frantically grasp onto the memories I do have. Examples of your violence. Despite how validating those memories can be, I often question them. Crazy to think that even my own memories are up for debate. I do remember the intensity though. I remember how you made me feel. Vividly.

God, the intensity of what you put me through was brutal. You broke me down to the point of complete nothingness. Constant and unrelenting. The trigger words, the ones you used to use with me regularly... I wonder if you remember them. Stupid, Lazy, Sneaky, Liar, Dirty, Bitch. Those were the biggies. You called me those names daily. You were resolute. What a mindfuck. It was well known that regardless of my momentary standing with you, regardless of how happy you were with me at the moment, I was always those things. Lazy, stupid, a bitch, sneaky, dirty, a liar. Those never went away, even in the best of times.

Up until very recently, I have believed those ideologies about myself. The ones you put in my head. It isn’t until I speak them out loud that I either realize within myself or receive feedback that those belief systems aren’t true. I’m not lazy or dirty. I’m not a bitch. Shit, what child is a bitch really? Hardly an appropriate word to use for a child. Children can be careless, thoughtless, sometimes without direction, sure. But a bitch? That doesn’t fit. I wasn’t a bitch. I was a child. I was a fucking child. Where did you even come up with those labels?

Lazy. Maybe you chose that one because I had such little direction. Such little grasp on the world around me, that my desperate need to survive clouded my ability to engage in normal self-care and associated behaviors.

I tried, though.

I wonder how old I was the first time you spoke those words. Called me those names. How old would a child have to be in order for you to see them as stupid? Lazy? A liar? I remember being called those names in the old house, so I was at least 8 if not younger. Imagine calling an 8-year-old stupid. 8. I was probably younger when you started. Either way, I was a child. Your child.

You used to say things like “I’ll clothe and feed you, but that’s all”, “I don’t want to look at you anymore”, “You want to act like a lying bitch, I’ll treat you like one”

“I love you, but I don’t like you.”

That one is interesting, because even though it includes the word ‘love’, there was absolutely none of it present. It was a blanket statement existing on top of a series of events so painful that I to this day don’t remember them. I remember some things, though. Those snippets I referenced earlier. You would hit me. Slap me right across the face. Sometimes you would do so frantically. You would slam me over and over again and tell me that ‘I did this to myself’. You didn’t care where your hands landed, it was just chaotic hitting with no direction or purpose. When I think about it though, the physical pain isn’t what resonates. The terror. Your intense hatred is what I remember most. You would clench your teeth together and speak the most cutting words you could contrive. So painful that I would feel it in my whole body. It would get hot and tight. Things would go fuzzy. I still get that sensation sometimes. When there are intense events that occur suddenly without warning. That feeling when you get into a car accident. Ears ringing, things going fuzzy, disorientation. I have only recently learned how to identify it and take space so I don’t respond in kind. I still feel it, though, in my whole body.

You were smart. I’ll give you that. You knew what to do to keep me on the hook and you did so without remorse. You would laugh at me. Embarrass me. The uncertainty of it all was a mindfuck. Still is. Sometimes I have difficulties even believing that I was abused. I tell myself that it wasn’t that bad. That I’m being dramatic. But then I remember things like you making fun of my smile. You used to kick me out of the house and lock the door. You would push me up against the wall and pick at my face until I cried. I was so ashamed of being myself. You shamed me. You hurt me with intent. Yes, much of who you were and are is, perhaps, out of your control, but those acts of violence were undoubtedly your conscious doing.

I remember how my heart would race whenever I heard you unlock the door to come inside from wherever you were. I still have anxiety whenever a doorknob turns. Regardless of who is coming in, I always have that single moment of fear.

I remember you ignoring me for weeks on end. It was like I didn’t exist at all. You would literally walk through me. You would bump into me if I stood in your way, as if I was a ghost.

I remember you telling me I was no longer your daughter. You pulled that one out randomly.

The most fucked up part of all of this is that I never knew what I did wrong. It was always a surprise to me. If only I had a rulebook back then. A list of rules that I could have followed to be in your good graces, I would have followed every single one of them. I never knew, though. I still don’t know. Even in my present relationships, I struggle with that concept. If I know what parameters to stay within, I will abide. That’s not how life works, though. That’s not how relationships work. As a result of that, there’s always a consistent hum of anxiety present with my partners and friends. I seldom know if I’m doing the right or wrong thing. If they will be angry with me, leave me, or not care at all.

I remember you dragging Shayna and I to California to stay with a man you met online. I have memories of you walking around naked and you having sex loudly with the door open in a one-bedroom apartment. I remember how terrible everything smelled. Shayna and I were put on the living room floor with two blankets and one pillow each. I remember Shayna asking me if I wanted to switch because mine smelled so rancid. I remember how you allowed him to scream at us with a smile on your face. It was because we didn’t put peaches in a brown bag. He lost his fucking mind and you loved every minute of it.

Do you remember those things? Do you remember any of it? Do you remember how I used to compulsively slide notes under your door at night? Apologizing for God knows what. Existing. I have one of those apology notes. It’s devastating. In it, I literally wrote that I ‘realized the error of my ways’ I was 12. About what, I don’t know. Interesting though, because no situation was referenced in that letter. It was just me desperately apologizing for who I was as a person. As a child. I apologized for being such a terrible human being. Disgusting and burdensome. I have a few of my diaries from back then, as well. They’re disturbing and so painful to revisit.

I hurt for little Rachel. She didn’t deserve that reality, and that reality was all she knew. For 16 years, that’s all I knew. Pure devastation, terror, so much pain, and an insurmountable amount of fear.

It was impossible to be a child. I had to worry about surviving. There was just so much, I’m still unpacking it. Trying to make sense of the senseless. Would it have been so hard for you to just love me? Even to pretend to love me? Did you ever try?

Did you ever feel bad or remorseful at the end of the day? What about now? Do you ever visit those times and wonder what went so wrong that your own children can’t stomach you, or is it all our fault in your head?

To this day, I have no idea how Shayna and I got out alive, let alone became the women that we are now. Between the genetics, and our environment back then, we were set up to fail. While we have no relationship, I do know that Shayna is a successful professional, a mother, and a wife. Incredible that we have both completely redefined what it is to be functioning women in the world in complete opposition of what we were taught. I made that choice at the age of 16. I distinctly remember moving in with Dad with the clear intention of using you as an example of who I didn’t want to be. I even have a letter. Another one that I wrote but never sent. In it, I expressed that sentiment with such fervor and determination that much of what I wrote down about the woman I was determined to be came true. When I read that letter a couple of months ago, I gave myself a pat on the back. I managed to pull myself out of your grasp. I and I alone did that.

That having been said, I contradict myself by expressing my gratitude to you. While this letter is filled with so many criticisms and so much animosity, you did teach me some things. You taught me how to be a lady. You taught me how to be charming. Polite. Overall, the behaviors that you performed in public were the ones that I picked up and still emulate to this day. I think that the difference is authenticity, though. I am genuine. At least, I try to be. I think I am.

You fed me, clothed me, and made sure that I had basic necessities. I ask again, was it as bad as I’m making it out to be? Was my childhood what I remember it to be? Was it abuse, and if so, how do I balance my feelings of pain and anger with my gratitude? I know logically that those can co-exist, but it’s still strange.

I also have to acknowledge Dad’s role in all of this. And while he was one of my abusers as well, he took me in during a really vulnerable time. I’m not sure if I would have all that I do, and be where I am if it weren’t for him. In a backhanded way, his abuse gave me no choice but to form a great deal of resilience, self-reliance, responsibility, and maturity. His rage was off the charts, and the damage he did was undeniable, but that’s another letter for another time, I suppose.

You always loved yourself so much. I remember you would speak in the third person. “Your mother is so wonderful” and “Your mother is so loved”. “He loves your mother very much” you would say about men that were courting you. That coupled with your various personalities, literal character changes. Lucille Ball, Tigger… you would hop around our apartment. You would emulate those characters. Was it playful to you, or were they splits with reality? I don’t remember enough of those occurrences to speak to them, but I do remember them existing.

I remember how you would manically run around with no reprieve. You never stopped. Never sat down. You were never depressed. You never showed any signs of being sad, hurt, real. You did have those routines that you followed stringently, and I wonder if those gave you some semblance of comfort. All about stability, right? I created that stability for myself only very recently. That world that I so badly wanted to live in, I currently do. I have stability, love, care, thoughtfulness, kindness, and safety. I wonder how that knowledge would make you feel. If my safety equates to your loss of control. Every time I allude to your feelings, though, I am reminded that you probably don’t feel anything. I mean, I can’t imagine that you genuinely have feelings towards anything or anyone. Even yourself.

It’s interesting because I didn’t think this exercise would elicit these feelings. Throughout this exercise, I have experienced moments of sadness, anxiety, apprehension, fear, shame, confusion. It took me two weeks to finish this letter. Very unlike me. Typically, I complete tasks in one to two sittings. Not this, though. This took a toll on me. Far more than I had anticipated.

At present, my chest is tight, my throat is tingly. I am not clear. Not clear on what it is that I want to have conveyed to you. Not clear on what I want to come from this. If I have a desire to send this and if so, whether or not I would want you to respond. I don’t think I want to send it. For what? To what end?

Edele, I hope that you find peace before it’s too late. That’s all anyone can ask for, really. Finding a semblance of peace and purpose. I wish that for you. Truly.

More than anything else though, I hope that you can let go of all of this. Whatever that means.

I hope I can, too.