Please note: For what they are worth, these comments represent Debbie’s opinions and perceptions based upon her own experiences and must be understood as such. Thank you.
Dear Reader:
You’ve heard of making amends. Sometimes in person, sometimes long-distance. Here is an example.
Dear C:
I am writing this letter to you, in absentia, as a part of my therapy and as part of my AA step work. I have no intention of actually sending it. I do not know where you are now, or even if you are still alive. And I do not know if it would harm you if you received it. But I must write it for my own healing and to find some closure for old wounds. My purpose is to lay this whole thing to rest.
I started another letter about 2 weeks ago, but I got stuck in the process. I realized, while writing, that that letter brought a bunch of unforeseen things to the surface, issues I hadn’t even considered. It is my hope that these old things might bring me to a place of acceptance and peace.
I remember that you and I met in Mrs. J’s first grade class in 1964. We went all through the first 8 grades together as best friends. The last day of the 8th grade we parted company. It was 1972. I had just turned 14 and knew that I was going off to an expensive and exclusive boarding school in the fall. I had just begun to understand that many local people had a deeply negative attitude toward that fancy private school and the people who went there. It had a 100-year history and generations of resentments for its exclusivity. But I remember that you and I vowed to stick together forever after. We didn’t.
I think the exact time of our “break-up” was that summer, shortly after our 8th grade year. You and your friend, S, road your ponies over to my house to spend the night that Friday night, and play the next day. But that Saturday morning Daddy put all three of us to work repairing a fence out back behind the barn where we fed the cattle.
I remember that you and S were perturbed at being commanded to do that work, and shortly you and S got on your ponies and road back to your home. You never came back. I never saw you again.
David L. Avery, M3D Photography
I still feel the pain over losing you from my life. I am pretty sure Daddy engineered the whole thing to sabotage our friendship. And it seems to have worked. At this point I have not seen you, my dearest friend, in 46 years. The old wound has not gone away. Daddy was good at anything he chose to do, and sabotage was one of his areas of expertise.
For some time, I felt resentment toward you for abandoning me. I thought for a while that it was my fault. Then the memory surfaced: that Saturday morning Daddy was trying to take advantage of free labor. It all began to make sense. He ran you off and out of my life. Daddy was the one who killed our friendship.
Daddy was a master of manipulating others in painful and punitive ways. I was not the only victim; Mama frequently caught the brunt of his maneuvers. It was how he controlled people. C, I have long wanted to apologize for my father and what he did. I am so sorry! And I still love you to this day in a way I’ve never loved anyone else.
I had begun to realize just how different my family was from every other family I knew. I was unusually fearful of the parents of other kids, especially their fathers. I began to discover that my family was somehow really warped in comparison. I didn’t know it at the time, but I think my father was holding my mother, my sisters and me hostage.
I know you did not particularly like your own step-father, but I think you must have realized that my father was something entirely different. As I think about it now, I think my mother ran interference so you and I could have time together. Daddy was usually off running some kind of errand for one of his many projects.
I suspect that your parents probably had a hand in ending our friendship. I could hardly blame them. I would want to keep my son out of harm’s way too.
By then, my family’s relationships in the community had begun to unravel. We no longer went to church. There were no more gatherings or dinner parties. I suppose the festering isolation was fueled by Daddy’s alcoholism, but I am convinced that Daddy had mental health issues that preceded his decline into alcoholic madness.
Back in those days none of us had any idea of what alcohol does to a family, and we certainly had no idea about what we could do about it. We all sort of went into a kind of bunker to ride out the unpredictable storms.
My world included life at the boarding school and life on the farm. You had gone into the world of the public high school. Our worlds were completely separate. It was as if you had died, or perhaps you had erased me from your life. At lease that was the way I interpreted it at the time.
After I learned to drive, I rarely went anywhere but school. For a long time, I was afraid to leave home. When I was at home, Daddy had me with him nearly all the time. It felt like he wanted to keep his eye on me. Going places on my own was discouraged and I also felt that I had to stay close to home for the next unpredictable crisis—to save Mama and the girls. Come to think of it, I have lived most of my life close to home and in fear.
There are patterns here. There is so much more below the surface. I can hardly articulate what I want to say. I am shaking as I write this. Fortunately, I have two avenues of help, so I don’t have to do this alone. I have an understanding therapist and I have the fellowship of AA to help me on my journey through the darkness.
I guess this is a good place to end this letter for now. I still love you and I am sorry for what happened. There is so much shame! I have begun to see how many relationships were poisoned and destroyed during those years. I have only now begun to revisit all the feelings of shame I felt because of my family. I am looking for better ways of dealing with that. I would like to move on to a healthier life now.
Today must begin another day of letting go and healing.
Thank you, C., for hearing me.
