LETTERS FROM CHARITY

Part 6

Dear Beth,

I received your email yesterday and I honestly can’t thank you enough for your kind and compassionate response.  I know they say you shouldn’t communicate with people when you’re in the middle of intense emotion, but I thought there was a real possibility that my head might actually explode if I didn’t get those thoughts out of my brain somehow.  At least that’s what the headaches seemed to be telling me.

I’m not sure you know what you’re in for, but since you asked for more details about my family history, here goes.  My father and mother were both children of alcoholics and although they were saved at early ages, neither of them seemed able to get beyond their individual upbringings.  For some unfathomable reason, my father was fond of telling the story of how his decision to go into the Marines was made the day his father threw a knife at him.  We didn’t get to meet his parents until my sister and I were in our teens.  My mother never spoke to me of what happened when she was a little girl, but I guess she told my sister.  All my sister would tell me was that it was very bad.  We were never allowed to be around her parents at all.

My relationship with my father can pretty much be summed up in the last time we spoke before he died.  He’d been in ill health for some time and I imagine he was feeling like he wanted to settle his accounts or something because he called me and started rambling about how much his parents had messed him up.  I distinctly remember him mumbling something and when I asked him to repeat what he’d said, he shouted, “You heard me!” and hung up.  A week later, he was dead.

After my father died, my relationship with my mother, which was never stellar to begin with, deteriorated even further.  I was still living with her but desperate to get away and when I told her I was moving out, she wrote me this very long letter detailing how irresponsible I was, hinting that I wouldn’t be able to make it on my own.  That was her way.  She would never come right out and say anything.  You’d get snide comments, looks of disdain, or if you’d really ticked her off, she wouldn’t speak to you for days.  I ended up staying with her for four more years.

I’ve already told you a little bit about my sister.  She was always the golden child in our family who could do no wrong.  She was a dancer with a dancer’s body and grace.  One of my earliest memories is of her twirling around our living room while my mother gazed at her with adoring eyes.  My stout frame and clunky mannerisms never saw those eyes.  When I thought I was going to be married, the only response I received from my mother to the announcement was that she hoped I never had children because I’d look even more like a potato.

You specifically asked about holidays with my family.  I suppose this story will give you a pretty good idea of how those went.  I was probably about eight, so my sister would have been six, almost seven.  It was Christmas Eve and my father announced at dinner that we wouldn’t be getting any gifts because he hadn’t gotten the bonus he’d been expecting.  Me, being the petulant and bratty child I was, gave him a look that absolutely set him off.  He slammed his fist down on the table, demanded that I stop giving him dirty looks, shouted that if I wanted Christmas presents I could darn well go out and get a job myself.  His departure from the dinner table was explosive, to say the least, and the door slam reverberated for what seemed like minutes.  I was used to my father’s violent outbursts but this one took my breath away.  I was too stunned to move.  But I happened to glance at my sister across the table and noticed that she was softly crying.  I don’t know what possessed me because it should have been a moment of sisterly solidarity in the face of our father’s rage, but instead I turned it into a moment of sheer idiocy.  “What are you crying for?!”  That was all that came out of my mouth.  I think maybe that was the beginning of the end of our relationship.

Wow, I guess I’m making my family sound kind of pathetic, aren’t I?  It’s not like we didn’t have any good times together.  But I think for me, in a way, the good times are almost too painful to remember because I never understood why the bad things had to happen.  I mean, I get it now.  My parents were all kinds of messed up because of their own families.  I have to say, though, that it seems to me that being oppressed and abused yourself doesn’t automatically absolve you of responsibility for your actions, and it certainly doesn’t make you the de facto good guy.  Why do the abused so often become the abusers?

By the way, I got a few more details about my firing.  It turns out that one of the three girls I mentioned in my last letter had accused me of looking at “questionable” websites on company time.  The only reason I found out is because someone I used to work with let me know.  They were surprised to find out I’d been fired and started doing a little digging.  This person was really just an acquaintance so I’m not sure why she did that, but it made things make more sense while at the same time making me even more angry about the whole thing.  I can’t believe my boss wouldn’t know what kind of person I am — that I would never look at stuff like that — after almost a decade of supervising me.  I suppose I shouldn’t be all that surprised, though, considering my own parents were the same way.  They caught my sister smoking in the garage and she said it had been me and I’d just given her the cigarette to hold while I went to the bathroom.  They had absolutely no idea who I really was.  Nobody ever has, it seems.  Sometimes I wish that I could see poetic justice at work in real life.  In my life.  I wish people who betrayed the trust I placed in them would know that pain firsthand.

There are so many things rolling around in my head and heart right now.  Disappointment.  Anger.  Rage.  Impotent fury.  Burning resentment.  I’m self-aware enough to realize that all this is not just about losing my job.  It’s about everything.  It’s about my entire life.  But where do I put all those feelings and emotions?  What do I do with them?  If I give them up, what am I left with?  I will be completely empty, desolate.  There will be nothing left.  Nothing but a never-ending abyss.  That’s what it feels like, anyway.  If I stop feeling angry about what everyone has done to me, the suffering of my soul will go unnoticed and unmourned.  If I let go of the resentment, no one will stand witness to the injustice.  I must cry to the heavens for the rest of my life because if I don’t, no one ever will.  And all that I have endured will be forgotten.  Unknown.  Ignored.

The funny thing is, those who have hurt me the most deeply are those who are the most ignorant of the pain they’ve inflicted.  And oh man, do I want them to know.  Why?  So I can see them grovel, beg for forgiveness?  Would that really make me feel any better?  Doubtful.  Maybe for a very short time, but not in the long run.

Sometimes I rage at God and scream at Him that I don’t want my pain to go unnoticed.  I don’t want my suffering to be disregarded or shrugged off, yet that’s what it feels like everyone, including Him, does all the time.  Once, just once in this life before I died, I would like for someone to think that I’m important enough to stand up for, that I actually matter.  I feel so cut off from people most of the time, and I feel completely severed from God all of the time, if I’m honest.  I feel incredibly alone almost constantly.

I am weary to the bone of all the turmoil and struggle and confusion.  I am weary of being so emotionally overdrawn that I can’t even clean my bathroom sink without exploding into a blind rage when I accidentally spray water on the mirror I just wiped off.  Is there something I’m missing?  Is there something I need to confess?  Is God holding something against me?  Why has He dealt with me this way?  I feel like I’ve been praying in the same way that a lot of the psalmists did, so why did they receive positive answers while all I’ve received is more confusion?  I’ve been told for as long as I’ve understood language that we are supposed to ask, seek, and knock.  How long can I do that when it feels like all I get in return is a wounded and weary heart?  Why doesn’t God like me?  What did I do wrong?

Maybe my questions don’t have answers.  I don’t expect you to come up with the perfect fix for me.  I just need to know that someone — anyone — is listening to me.  Because if no one is, my life is utterly pointless.

Can I tell you one quick thing before I go?  It just came to me.  The reason I am so enamored by fantasy novels is not because they’re about escapism, it’s because those authors have created better worlds.  Worlds where people like me might actually matter, where we have a hope to find meaning and a reason for existing.  Narnia isn’t about the joy of talking animals, Middle Earth isn’t about the thrill of daring and heroic deeds, Damar is not about the magic.  All those places are about one thing for me — belonging.  A place I could call home and really mean it.

Well, like I said, I bet you didn’t know what you were in for with this email.  I’m sorry that my letters have been so heavy the past few times.  So many of these thoughts and feelings have been bottled up for so long and while it feels good to get them out in the open, I hope I’m not taking advantage of your kindness.  In all honestly, if you need or want me to stop, I really would understand.

Thank you, again, and I hope that you are doing well and continuing to find the inspiration you need for everything you do.

Blessings,

Charity