Please leave..
9:20 a.m.

Ladies,

Hi, this is his daughter. His eighteen year old daughter who has been smoothing over the cracks since he first met you. Did you even know that he had a daughter? He has two, in fact. Me and my sister - he also has a son that he never sees - did you know that? Did you know his favorite song is Amanda by Don Williams because of me? Did you know that we have a horse here who dumped him once when he was younger because he was waving a yellow rainjacket around. Did you know he used to play in the woods off the side of our house? Did you know that he has always lived in the same place and when he was young, his father owned a big belgian mare named Kit? Did you also know that this is not the first time he has alienated my mother, thanks to you?

I know that he is not completely innocent in all of this, but he is not the only person working against our family right now. You are, as well, every one of you needy, "sick", "depressed" women has contributed by tearing down a stone or two in the wall of my parents' marriage along the years. I'd like to just say that you are taking advantage of his caring nature and that he is totally faultless but I know it would be a lie. And I can't stop looking at the truth just because I don't want it to be true.

I just want to scream at all of you - LEAVE HIM THE HELL ALONE YOU WHORES. It is your selfishness that has started all of this - it's not enough to know that he already has a wife and children, you feel you must continue onward, exploiting what is left of my happy childhood.

And me, the "adult", I either have to stand back and watch it happen or put my blood, sweat and tears into covering over, glossing over every crack that you have created in partnership with him. I'm not sleeping at night, I'm not eating - because my mind is so preoccupied with cleaning up the mess that you make time after time.

It hurt my mother's feelings for me to tell her that she could not live with me in my apartment on weekends - imagine how you would have felt at 18 with your mother asking to live in your new independance once in a while. No matter how much you love your mother, I bet that if she had asked that, you would have said no. Me, I cannot refuse my mother. She's been wronged. And because I no longer have the capability to express feelings, she thinks that I don't care, when I do - I do. Cheating and betrayal are the two unpardonables for me. But everyday I hope that my mother will continue to keep him despite his infidelities just to keep the happiness, to make it so that we are not a statistic, my sister and I. Continue to forgive him for my own selfish reasons.

Please leave us alone.

Aching,

Amanda

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