Letters

Posted by Anonymous


To the wife of my husband's cousin:

You know what, I don't NEED 37 pictures of your children pushing a toy car around on your driveway. Nor did I need that album of party photos that included the out-of-focus shots of tortilla chip bags, or the one with 10 pictures of your bathroom. For the love of God, learn to edit!

To my mother:

I can't believe you just made me feel guilty for not wanting to spend an extra $600 to take a 6 a.m. flight with a 4-hour-layover - with a THREE-YEAR-OLD. During our visit, I'll be telling her to go bug you when she wakes up at 4:30 because of the time change.

To my husband:

If you're so freaked out about us having an only child, how about you make it worth my while to have a second one? How about YOU get up at the crack of dawn with our kid, cook the dinner, do the weekly shopping, do the laundry, take care of the dishes, handle the gardening, paint the house, take on free-lance projects and hold down a full-time job, and see how you feel about another kid. Yeah. I thought so.

To my sister:

After I tell you a funny story about my 3-year-old being bossy, you tell me that you are concerned that she will grow up to be a bully unless she is properly socialized and that I need to have another kid. And when I warn you it's a touchy subject and I'd rather not speak about it, you start crying and hang up on me? Get over yourself.


To my supervisor:

Your obsession with 'buy-in' from the rest of the department on the projects I am working on is co-opting the last remaining shreds of creative joy I took in my job. In case you're wondering, yes, I am deliberately digging my heels to make your life harder. Making you hate your job too is the only power I have left, and I intend to use it.

Cruel Dilemma

Posted by Anonymous

Last summer my 8 year old son was molested by his 12 year old adopted cousin. Thankfully we found out about it right away and we were able to have good discussions with our son... We have not allowed ANY contact from the boy who molested our son. However, now we are getting pressure from the both the parents of the molester, and the grandparents to "get over it", "move on" and let the boys get together again... for the sake of "family harmony".

I just don't know how that would effect my son.

Would seeing the boy who molested him hurt him more emotionally? (We would NEVER let him play alone with him)

Or would it be good?

If we did start seeing them again, I do worry about safety. The molesters parents are very laid back... we have FOUR sons to try to keep safe.

For me, as a mother, the easy answer is never to see this boy who caused so much pain again.

But is that what's best?

Thanks for listening, any advice is more than welcome.

This Ain't A Song For The Broken Hearted

Posted by Anonymous.

My son got dumped yesterday.

Let me start over.

My teenage son's girlfriend of 8 months who started out as his Best Friend Forever and who was the first girl to hold his heart in her hands took his heart and broke it today. Into several little pieces. THREE DAYS BEFORE THE BIG DANCE AT SCHOOL.

Let me start by saying that I gave him some good advice the last few weeks when he and I felt like she might be stringing him along. She started ignoring him for no reason and hanging out with other boys. I told him that I know from experience that this is her way to be passive/aggressive about dumping him. I had been dumped that way many times. So he confronted her, and she dumped him.

I also would like to go on record saying I gave him some good advice about how he should stay friends with her since they've been friends for so long and they'll probably be friends for years. But that maybe it's okay to make her feel bad for a few days since she did dump him three days before a dance.

Now that I've sworn to you that I was a good Mom, at least a little bit. Let me tell you the rest.

I might have spent the majority of last night helping him mend his broken heart by calling this poor girl a frakkin' beeyatch and possibly offering to burn the gifts she had given him. I may have also tried to talk him into rolling her house. There may have been times when I openly mocked her annoying habits by doing exaggerated impersonations of her and then encouraging him to direct horrible insults at me, pretending I was her. And then there was the whole, "Fuck her. You're too fucking good for her anyway," comment I might have made in a fit of desperation when I thought he was going to start crying. It may have been the first time he's ever heard me use the f-word somewhere other than the car. And, of course, there might have been a moment when I told him that if she went to the dance with the boy she's been flirting with, I was going to spray paint the walls of his school declaring that she is a WHORE.

Of course, I wouldn't actually do that.

(Or at least I'll let you think that I wouldn't. But I totally would.)

But - I did threaten it and it made him laugh. Actually - all of my rants where I may or may not have called his girlfriend "THAT SKANK" made him laugh. And it's the only thing I knew to do for him. Make him laugh.

I asked him if he'd still go to the dance, just to hang out with his friends. He said, "No." I don't think he wants to risk seeing THAT SKANK dance with THAT ASSHOLE FUCKWAD. So he asked if I'd go see a movie with him instead.

And now my heart is broken.

I guess I'll just toughen up and enjoy a date night with him since this is probably the last time he'll invite me out to a movie. And then, when he's not looking, I'll totally take her off his top friends in MySpace. It's the least I can do.

Blackbird, Fly.

Posted by Anonymous.

Small Christmas lights, first red, then blue, then green, then white sent small stars of color over the ceiling where she slept. Tiny. Little hands, grasping and flexing tubes that ran into her nose. Warm among blankets that her mother brought for her. Warm among the clothes that her father bought for her. Nurses quiet and reverent in the soft lights, humming wordless songs to small babies in plastic cases.

And me.

Still wearing a scar from her exit from my body, 7 weeks to early and a lifetime too soon, for me; I sat. In the almost black of early morning, in an outside caked in the dirtiest of old snow and sharp winter air, I sat. Alone, with my daughter. For the last time. I sang quietly to her and slid my clean hands inside that incubator, pressing my lips against the side of it, willing her to feel me. One finger tracing the line of her back, one stream of tears tracing the line of my face.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
take these broken wings and learn to fly

My voice became the only one singing, as the room fell silent around me. Me and my daughter. The daughter I had failed to carry to term. The daughter I was going to permanently place in the arms of another woman, to call mother. My guilt was overwhelming in my failures to her. Failing to grow her healthy, failing to raise her. failing to be her mother.

Her dark hair, gently curling around her face, was mine, her softly curling lips, her father's. I would see none of these things day to day. To see them change as she grew, to hear her beautiful voice lilt words for the first time. To hear her cry, until her needs were met.

To be the one she cried for.

Blackbird fly
Blackbird fly

Knowing full well, that this was beneficial for her. For them. For everyone but me. My daughter sighed under my touch and moved closer. For one shining moment, I was hers and she was mine.

Read No Evil...

Posted By Anonymous.

So, I was not at work for a day recently and the guy who subbed for me used my computer. He logged into gmail and didn't log out. I read his email. It was not my finest moment... but I did it.

It became obvious that he was "seeing" several women, including his long-distance girlfriend who is 6 months pregnant. (He commented that he liked the picture that she had attached to her last message because her t*tties looked so much bigger). There were messages from the local women, flirting, sex talk, etc.I wanted to send this long distance girlfriend forwarded messages of what he had sent/received from the other women, but I didn't. I logged him off, instead. I felt a bit guilty for reading his email. Now, two weeks later, I feel guilty that I didn't let the pregnant girlfriend know what was going on.

What do you think? What would you do?

Hold On, Or Let Go?

Posted by Anonymous

My relationship with my husband used to be a source of great strength and comfort for me. We were a team. We could rely on one another and we enjoyed each other’s company. I couldn’t wait to see him at the end of the day.

Then we decided to have a baby and everything fell apart about halfway through my pregnancy. My husband quit his job from one day to the next without discussing it with me and without a back-up plan. When the baby was born we had to move back to his hometown to make ends meet. I had to leave my job.

I stayed at home for a year with my son before starting a freelance business. Eventually I began to overcome my anger with him for what had happened. We were beginning to rebuild our relationship. Then I discovered that he had been lying to me for years – almost since we met – about something to do with his family that had a direct impact on me. Again, I felt angry and foolish.

I considered leaving him, but I couldn’t afford to, and I didn’t know where I could go. I didn’t want to be a single mother, and I didn’t want our son to grow up traveling back and forth between us.

I tried to overcome my anger, to forgive my husband and trust him again, but the resentment is still there. It doesn’t go away, and I don’t know how to rebuild the open, trusting relationship we used to have.

My business is doing well now. I make as much as my husband. Last year I earned more. When my husband suggested we move to a new town closer to where he works so we would see each other more in the evenings and hopefully work through some of our issues, I agreed. I knew that moving would absorb the resources I had set aside as a way out if I needed one and so I committed myself, financially and emotionally, to staying with him.

Things have improved somewhat. I’m in therapy now, and although it has been fairly helpful, there has not been a dramatic improvement. I am still fearful that he will deceive me again and resentful for having this fear.

I just found out that I am newly pregnant. I do want another child, but I am paralyzed with fear that this pregnancy will lead to the complete deterioration of my relationship with my husband and ruin my chances of financial independence for a long, long time. Which makes me wonder if I am really all that committed in the first place.

Why can’t I just let go?

How Do You Know? (What *She* Knows)

Posted by Anonymous; follow-up to 'How Do You Know?'

(Anonymous asked the question, last week, 'How do you know when he's having an affair? If you've been through it, how did you know/find out?' This week she has more to say about why she asked that question...)

I think maybe I am grasping at straws, or catastrophizing things, or maybe I am just trying to make sense of the total disconnect that I feel between us. He never initiates sex and sex is infrequent and not really intimate (more of an exercise than an engagement). We aren't close. He likes attention. There's just something there that I have always felt. Maybe I wonder how he can go through life without being intimate with anyone. He has few friends, by choice. He doesn't turn to me for much more than common conversation and co-parenting.

We started therapy again last week. Things aren't terrible, but they just are flat and not good. I feel no positive reinforcement, no spark from him, although it's totally possible that I am just projecting my dissatisfaction on to his emotional state. I doubt he'd leave our marriage because we have 2 kids and I think it would be a rough parting. That's another thing that makes me say "hmmm....".

Maybe this is all in my head, but I still wonder.

Of course, Mr. Spitzer doesn't help things at all...