I’m not sure why I’m writing you this letter after you clearly let me go.
Fine, I do. My therapist suggested I tell you “things,” and since I can never say this to you out loud, a letter could be a compromise.
You get to enjoy my beautiful writing. Not many people have had the pleasure to see it. You’re welcome, I guess.
I’ve started this for the fifth time, by the way. I might have had a mini panic attack while scribbling the others before I ripped them up.
It’s because my brain is fighting me. He does that all the time, you know—fighting, sabotaging, and driving me insane. I just pretend to be in control because I have to. If I don’t, I’ll need to admit I’ve lost.
And if I lose, I’ll do what my brain has always wanted—follow my mom over the cliff.
But, eh, I guess you’d want me to start from the beginning.
Fuck.
I’m kind of hyperventilating, and the words are blurry, and I want to quit and rip this piece of paper to shreds.
But that would mean leaving you alone, and I’m just too much of a selfish son of a bitch to do that. So here goes.
If I bore you to tears, you can burn this.
When I was a kid, I was whimsical. I liked walking in gardens, climbing trees, and eating lots of sweets. I used to talk to birds and squirrels, pretending they were my friends.
I wanted many of those. Friends, I mean. Being an only child in a house full of adults and the son of parents who never really got along, I was a bit lonely.
But it was okay. Even if Mom and Dad fought, they still loved me. They put me to bed and read me stories about monsters and faraway kingdoms that I’d repeat the following day to my squirrel friends. Hey, you better not judge. I was a literal kid.
Anyway, things changed when my parents divorced. Mom hated being alone with a passion and told me repeatedly that Dad abandoned us because we didn’t fit his image anymore.
I later learned that she tried to take me to France without Dad’s knowledge out of spite.
Now that I’ve grown up, I realize that neither of them was at fault.
Thing is, Mom was emotional while Dad is, you know, a ROBOT. It wouldn’t have worked between them anyway. As much as I loathe Satan’s lover, aka his current wife, Lilith, she’s more compatible with him because she doesn’t care about his lack of emotions.
Mom did.
She cared a lot and loved too much, and maybe she lost her temper too easily, which I think irked Dad to no end, hence the divorce. After which, he gave her a mansion for the twoof us to live in that was close to the Armstrong residence.
It was too big for us, and Mom, like me, was whimsical and had a tendency to get lonely and overconsume wine. She was an alcoholic, now that I think about it. People have coffee first thing in the morning, but she had her glass of wine.
And because Mom got lonely easily, she always had all sorts of friends over—artists, directors, French socialites. She loved hogging all the attention and being a social butterfly, even if no one cared about her.
I guess we’re similar that way. So sad, truly.
My memories of Mom fluctuate between fun shopping days, sitting by the lake as she smoked and we ate and fed the ducks, and learning to put my fingers in the back of her throat so she’d throw up.
I really, really hated the feel of her throat against my fingers. I knew that the slimy, wet gagging sensation would only be followed by the smell of vomit and the deplorable sight of her tear-streaked face.
But at least I had my mom, right?
She said, “Your dad no longer lives with us because we’re different than him. He can’t handle beautiful people like us, but don’t worry,mon petit trésor(my little treasure), I’ll never abandon you.”
And I believed her. I believed that we only had each other.
But we didn’t.
Mom had a couple of boyfriends after Dad, in a petty attempt to get back at him, maybe, but they were never handsome enough, rich enough, or just…enough. Never having enough was Mom’s problem.
