April 25, 2014

Emotional Expose


I have been changed for good, and I love you guys with all my heart.

Dear people who were once on a path to being family:

  I know it has been some time since you have heard from me, and I doubt that even yet enough time has passed for it to be a pleasant surprise.  To be most plain, I understand if you refuse to read this and do not wish to hear my side of the story, but nevertheless I wanted to see if something of this sort might make amends for the devastation that has been wreaked on our relationship.
I am sorry.  I apologize for my actions and the consequences that they brought upon your family and life for an extended period.  Truly, if I could go back in time I think I would remove myself and my influence from all of your lives completely, but the good times would be a shame to lose.  In apologizing, I apologize the most for my ignorance.  And, for those who would rather not read on, I will continue without minding for your squeamishness, I will be frank. 
My ignorance in this whole situation was perhaps the chief cause of the pain, misunderstanding, and perhaps mostly, for the eventual lies and betrayal.  I was raised ignorant of love and sex and had no relationship experience to speak of, a fact which I told him most often.  I equated my mental intelligence with that of a pre-teen and made no promises at being easy to integrate.  However, your grace as a family and abounding joy and love made me long to be one of you.  I was accepted and enjoyed; thus I thrived like the withered plant that I was given the invigorating fertilizer of your family. 
Yet I was still strange, an alien creature to you and one that had to be his.  Under steady insistence I decided to give him a chance.  I felt like it was owed for the love and grace shown by his family, and for the constant affection shown by him and sister.  There is the malignant root that eventually rotted this thing, but I foreshadow.  I initiated the words of affection and I sought out a relationship I had no business entering, in the state I was in.  Finally being granted one of his long-sought-after desires, he jumped in head over heels and was willing to do and say almost anything for me.
But the ignorance still crept out of the shadows, leaving the fear and uncomfortableness that poisoned our friendship.  Do you remember, Sir, a conversation had with you, sister, and brother?  I was discussing the lack of education in some homeschool situations, particularly the lessons of sex education.  When you queried me, I acknowledged a personal anecdote about pubic hair and not knowing that it was a natural thing for women, much less for men.  You seemed most confused as to why that was a fact that an 18 or 19 year old woman would need to know and did not seem convinced by my frail attempts to explain something not even I had a comprehensive grasp on.  I was ignorant of that most basic human urge and purposely kept pre-pubescent in soul and mind that it ruined the relationship. 
He often told me he liked the size of my chest, but despite my verbal invitations (in the sunset of our time), he refused to touch them.  I offered services to him that he also turned down, taught as he was by you, his parents, and by his culture and religion to keep “sacred.”  But how can the carnal be kept sacred?  Such an idea is preposterous, as were my attempts to convince my adult body to regress into my mind’s ignorance.  See, I was ready for more than a friendship but at the same time I did not want to be anybody’s stay-at-home wife.  The system we were both brought up in, and he was still stuck in under your roof, made that an oxymoron and an impossibility.  I could not have married him, or gotten engaged, or gone any further with our relationship and gone to school and pursued a career.  There is no way that could have happened.
  Also, I had no physical connection to him.  It took nearly two years into our relationship to do more than hold hands and even so he felt guilt and shame for moving forward in that way.  He had wanted to kiss upon engagement, but I was not looking for a commitment so fast, so he compromised for me.  It was as far as he ever went.  In my ignorance I assumed that a bland “passionate” kiss only meant that I was not someone who “liked” to kiss.  I assumed he enjoyed it, but I felt nothing, and in my ignorance and confusion I did not know how to voice it.  Thus, when I happened upon an individual whose very presence and scent lit me up, I felt ashamed and confused and hid that under a façade of “everything is fine.”  It grew to include fear and eventually engulfed my limited emotional capabilities.  Pursued by this chemical passion, I broke the assumed promises I had made and went in a different direction. 
All this time he was repeatedly mentioning his desire to seal our relationship with a ring and a promise.  Every time he mentioned it I would rebuff him with strongly negative words about my mental, emotional, and personal fitness, or even telling him that he deserved someone better.  As much as I was pushing him away from myself, I was attempting to see if forcing myself emotionally would result in a connection.  In an extreme state of cognitive dissonance, I went on our last “family” vacation together.  Remember how upset you were, Sir and Ma’am, at the levels of affection we were showing eachother?  Before I ever met the other person who tore our pseudo-family asunder, I was consciously forcing myself to be affectionate, hoping that through mental force or through prolonged experience, a physical affection would blossom as the emotional and mental connections had. 
Remember our last night, dear one, when I showed you the things I had written about you and about how you had kept me alive for much of that time?  About how your calls and friendship had given me the strength to survive?  Despite our differing religious convictions and the problems that you knew I would inevitably have with your parents’ worldview, you continued loving me.  I believe that everything you did and said was honest; and I can only wish that what I felt for you had been more than a zombified friendship.  I introduced you to freedom, to alcohol, to kissing, and to relationships with the opposite sex in general.  I wish to someday be friends again, but I doubt that is possible with our complicated and painful past.  Like nuclear fallout, it will take more than time to heal.
Sister, I loved you with all my heart.  You withdrew from me, and in fact began hurting me when you changed.  Instead of acknowledging your own struggles, you painted me as loud, abrasive, and impossible to live with.  I still treasure our good times and when you messaged me last year it meant the world to me.  If you ever need anything, I will always be your friend.
Brother, I know that our acquaintance began in a bad place, and I attempted throughout the rest of our time together to repair that.  Being the youngest I identified with you and I hope that you find your best place in the world.
   Sir and Ma’am, I cannot imagine what words you might have for me.  I have no idea what other things have happened in your family and in your lives since I unceremoniously dropped out of it.  I hope that in reading this you all can understand somewhat how ignorance is a problem that can destroy not only relationships, but families.  I apologize for the pain, the heartbreak, and for the anger that I have caused all of you.  But take responsibility for your part in continuing the ignorance of your children and potential children-in-law.  See how what you are indoctrinating your children with is neither healthy, nor commendable, and most certainly not feasible in the world that we live in today.  I know that this sounds like a rather unceremonious lecture inserted in what might have otherwise been an apology, but I hold to only apologizing for what is my fault.

I hope that the rest of your lives are unmarred by sadness and that you prosper in whatever you seek.  With all my love,

J.