This is part of Jami Attinberg’s annual #1000wordsofsummer challenge. I write a lot. I average about 2,500 words an hour if I’m really in a good flow. Not every word is made to stand the test of time, but the act of writing is as much a therapy as it is simply what I have to do.
While I have a ton of things in mind and larger projects I’m working on, I decided to write letters—suggested by Jami as a sort of if you can’t think of anything to write. Inspired by my re-read of Tara Schuster’s Buy Yourself the F—king Lilies and Glow in the F—king Dark, I decided that I also want to be the kind of person who sends thank you cards and hand-written letters and things like that out into the world.
I was also inspired because I had to return some things to someone the other day, and I decided to include a letter with the objects because what we had was special, and it felt too cold to just drop their things off without a word otherwise.
I always say I want to avoid assumptions—making them, that is, but as my consciousness expands and flows, and as I continue to recover from very severe and real psychological trauma and abuse, I also continue to reframe things. I try to avoid making projections, too, of what other people are motivated by. I try to labor under the belief that most people are genuinely good and are doing their best. Anyway, without further preamble, this is the letter I wrote yesterday for day one. Another one will be coming soon…but who to write to?
Also, just a quick thing—all letters are just going to be addressed as “Dear You”. I’m the only one who knows who I’m writing to, and I suppose, the person I write to might know, but that’s only if they find this little hamlet of the web I call mine…and the plot thickens.
Dear You,
I think about you from time to time, and it’s always with fondness. I know I was a little crazy there in the end. I don’t want to explain, but I hope you understand. The things that I was pressured by created very real issues with my mental and emotional health. I don’t think it’s right for anyone to be stalked. But the reality is that the entitlement that men feel toward women, the lack of concern for who they are as people, the dehumanization…you don’t have to see it. You just have to feel it.
You don’t know about him more than what I’ve mentioned in the past, but there was a guy whose been chatting me up for almost two years, and he genuinely doesn’t believe that there are discrepancies. I didn’t have the energy to argue with him, to help him see something that somehow despite being very intelligent and seemingly decent that he’s missed. Well, I didn’t have the wherewithal to do it without cursing. Because it’s like…I want to pull my hair out.
I didn’t feel it—the entitlement or the belittling when I was married because my husband treated me like I was a privilege, like he was the luckiest man alive to be with me, so I just assumed other men felt the same kind of reverence, but having been single for as long as I have and having dated the devil incarnate (so, if you thought I was writing to him, you’re sorely mistaken), I realize that most men actually take women for granted.
It broke me. It broke my brain to realize in the aftermath of that shitty relationship how many men were happy to treat women as disposable objects of pleasure and as little else. But the thing is…I’m a human being. I’m just as real as you are. I’m just as alive as you are. And I deserve to have my life validated.
Not to say you didn’t. I dreamed about you last night or maybe the night before. You came to the door. You showed up. You seemed to care about my safe passage from wherever I was sailing into your welcoming arms. You made me feel loved. You showed me, but you told me “no”. And I know there has to be an alignment with actions and words, so I let you push me away.
It was fine at first. I was happy to just meet up whenever and to enjoy what we did together, but then I kept falling more for you, and it wasn’t fair to either of us. I had to be the bad guy. I didn’t want to be the bad guy, but I had to. I had to end it. I was going a bit mad with it all, as I’ve said.
Since you, I’ve more less put a moratorium on dating. I just can’t. I’m in the guantlet—a single mom with daughters and knowing that I’m one of the vulnerable ones not because of my attitude but because of my position—daughters who I have to protect. Studies show that women like me are often targets…look for a woman not paying attention, get close to her, and then…get familiar with her kids. It’s easy to traffic from there. It’s easy to introduce girls to situations that are out of their depth and because of that trust engendered through the mother, well…you get my point.
I’m not an idiot. And I’m well aware of how that all works, so I’m skeptical of every potential mate. Especially the ones who show too much interest in my kids. It’s convenient, isn’t it? To paint a good guy as one who is interested in your kids. Look at him! He’s wanting to be a dad. Right.
I tried that. I dated the devil, and he alleged to be interested in my kids, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t even interested in his own kid. And then he denigrated her for wanting to transgender. Such a typical conservative white man move there. But he never tried to get close to his own daughter—probably because she was primarily in the care of her mother. I have said and maintain that she fared better for his lack of involvement, and I mean that.
The biggest lie is that children need a father. No. They need consistency. Support. Attention. They need care and they need something real. You will be a good dad. I know you will. I also know that because of me in some way…I’ve shown that you have to also value the mother of a child. You cannot be a good parent while mistreating the mother of a child.
You have to celebrate that woman. You have to be present for that woman. You have to want that woman, and if you do, it makes her want you. In the brief times we were together, I got to experience that and I got to recognize what I deserve. But because I wasn’t the person you were made to be with nor was I your choice, I had to end it. Because I am not a prop for an experiment. I am a human being who is full of life, love, ideas, dreams, goals, visions, and magic…yes, magic. I am very much deserving of the adoration that I know I justly merit.
And it’s okay that you couldn’t provide that. It’s really okay. I’m not mad. I thank you. I told my friends that I couldn’t have learned such a challenging lesson with such a kinder soul. And I mean that. I did feel adored and cherished at times, and I love that feeling, but I want it to be out of sincerity and desire…not because it’s a means to an end.
We aren’t meant to show every person we encounter what we had. We aren’t meant to be loves and lovers to everyone. I know that I’m a very affectionate and loving person, but it’s just that it lacks a place to land. You were so easy to adore. You’re easy to love. You’re easy to be entertained by. And those are compliments. I want to be easy to love, too.
I feel like my panic with you suggested I wasn’t. But I am. But I also had to learn the long, hard way that what my friend who said they can’t envision what women are so bijiggity about that it’s not always obvious, and that we aren’t always feeling it. I didn’t feel the weight of oppression until after I was widowed, and then all of the sudden, the weight of men’s demands and expectations—even though I didn’t see it at that time, that’s what it was. There was this collective just like, “I’ve shown up, I’m the man!” aura to the experience, and it was like, “No, you can’t just show up and that be enough.”
But that’s very much what the presumption is. And what’s more is that people who aren’t experiencing things can’t see it the oppression because they’re not oppressed and because they haven’t been taught a modicum of empathy, they can’t and choose not to register the reality of the oppression in their own minds and souls.
I wanted to say this was because men don’t have any kind of esteem, but that’s not true. The problem though is that the esteem is artificially inflated. They foolishly don’t realize that they’re, well, full of shit.
I can’t even put it into terms where there’s pressure to force an entire gender to dumb down the age difference on relationships or to look a certain way. I’m so fucking sorry, but if this shit was going to be equal, then there would be very real pressure on men to look hot and ripped like Jesus all of the damn time. No offense, but I can make my own money. I want a dude who has to meet my fucking standards. Washboard abs. Adult vocabulary. A vested interest in the arts. Multiple skills across multiple genres. Is he also a cuisine artist, a photographer, a write, an editor, and a visual artist who can find a place to thrive in any industry? Does he also look years younger than his age and is in peak physical condition? Is he also kind and generous and giving with his time? Is he also capable of being sacrificial? If he’s not, he’s not a man.
Now, may I ask—was that harsh? Did that not exclude you at some point? Well, now you know what the pressure to be a woman feels like.
Because we have been pushed to be physically perfect, to be accommodating, to be kind, to be beautiful, to be talented and skilled but also very humble about that, we have been conditioned to become the things that we have become and because we have outpaced you on every forefront and now have realized that we are entitled to expect fucking same, it’s a problem.
I’m so not sorry to leave behind the balding fat asses who were barely successful at one perfunctory thing (like management) where they did the bare fucking minimum and became increasingly uncreative and illiterate by honing their skills of delegation (there’s a reason you bitches can’t fucking write) all while fully expecting the red carpet treatment in a home they they took out all of the impotent rage and frustration that built over a day’s work in an office toiling for a company that couldn’t care less about them on the only people that ever could love them. And then when they leave and the children want nothing to do with the old fart, they wonder why they left.
Do you really have to wonder, gentlemen? You took and took and took and took until the giving tree was bone fucking dry, and now you’re mad that you can’t bleed a turnip. You have a lot of audacity.
Women aren’t wrong. So, knowing how it goes…I wasn’t wrong to leave. I was just wrong to leave dramatically. Maybe I was wrong to accuse you of being part of the cult. I hope you’re not. I want to be friends again. I miss your friendship. I don’t know how I’ll manage the connection we have, and maybe it won’t happen, and if it doesn’t, that’s okay. I’ll just always remember you fondly and with love. And I’ll hope one day I see you doing great things. I hope one day I’ll see you happy and deeply connected. I can easily see you having a love like I had with Sean. And I couldn’t want anything better for you.
Sorry this went on and got a bit distracted. It’s me. I know you know.
I love you.
Always,
—A