u/ooh-ophelia

My mother was, for lack of a better term, a monster. It's unlikely you saw this side of her. Narcissists are very good at performing for people they want to impress.

I was a difficult baby. Sick all the time, barely slept, wouldn't breast feed. I made her feel like a failure, and she made sure to tell me that. I was a difficult, hormonal teenager. She made sure to bully me about that. I was a hard person to love into my adulthood. She made sure I felt that.

My mother loved to complain. About everything. She complained so much and never changed anything that I learned to keep myself small, and to not take up space, and to accept breadcrumbs as love, because otherwise the shrivel of love or attention I would be given, would be taken away.

She told this story about you as a matter of pride and ego. I also genuinely think she liked you, or maybe you were a safe man who didn't want anything from her, when my father was, also, a monster and a deviant.

I don't know what compelled her to allow you to hold me when she brought me into work that day. It was the height of the AIDS epidemic, and society was villainizing gay people. Had the internet been around to rot her brain, as it did in later years, she probably wouldn't have been so kind to you. But my mother was genuinely intelligent in her youth, if not an evil witch, so she was probably up to date on the science and knew you couldn't make me sick.

She said that when you held me, you were tender with me, and cried.

I know we don't remember things from our infancy and I know I don't recall that moment, but I do think whatever love you felt for me when you held me, was likely some of the only real love I felt when I was a baby.

Thank you. I hope wherever you are, and you'd be in your 70s or maybe even your 80s now - that you've lived a safe and happy life. I hope you found love and were able to marry them. You got to live through a pretty wonderful change. I'm sorry the world seems to be reverting backwards. I have faith that this evil will not endure, and we'll get back to sanity any day now.

But thank you for showing me even the smallest bit of affection. I carried that with me into my adulthood and is likely why I'm friends with so many gays, lol.

Be well.

Just wanted to pass it along!

Heard Adrienne's voice as they were wrapping up the show and it made me feel a lot of feelings! Really well timed placement wise. Absolutely perfect choice.

Dear Mom,

Fuck You.

It was your birthday last week. You would have been 69 or 70 today. I didn’t go to your funeral when you died a couple years ago. I don’t regret it, and I haven’t missed you once since I went no contact. 

Not once. 

You hijacked my life and kept me as a little doll, and then when I didn’t do what you wanted, because you were never about coaching, or teaching, or helping me, and I could feel that - you neglected and abandoned me for punishment, when I relied on you for survival. 

You tricked me constantly and dangled carrots in front of me that never became real. You projected your own desires and thoughts for yourself onto me, instead of truly allowing me to explore what I wanted. 

You’re not in heaven, and you’re not in hell, because that doesn’t exist. But if the molecules that make up the ashes of your body have any power in this universe, you’ll undo your hold on me, and let me go. I never want to think about you ever again. I don’t want to think about how much you abused me, or hit me, or sexually assaulted me. I don't want to think about how you didn’t protect me from my father doing the same thing to me and treating me like an object. 

20 years ago I was supposed to be getting on a plane to Australia to meet the love of my life, and you took that from me because I was naive and kept giving up on myself because you never believed in me to begin with. I made a bad, unfair deal and you knew it. And it’s a hole I’ve been trying to dig myself out of since then, but no one sticks around long enough to support me. You did, but you raised me to be your friend, because you couldn't maintain any of your relationships beyond your siblings, who are just as fucked up as you are.

I feel like an alien. Nearly everyone around me are assholes who think they can get away with harassment, selfishness, thoughtless behavior and just a general lack of self awareness and basic level of care for each other. 

Everyone just thinks about themselves. You raised me by bullying me, so I fawn or freeze in front of everyone, no matter how awful they are to me. And if I try to stand up for myself, I cry, or don’t say anything at all. 

This is because of what you did to me. You gaslit me and made me question my reality. You made me question my worth, and lost your tempter frequently. When you weren’t losing your temper and being violent, you were ignoring me. For weeks. Which was a respite from your villainous behavior. So I had to raise myself, basically. With the help of Disney movies and family comedies and an idealized version of what normal families were supposed to look like. Wandavision felt like a documentary.  

It’s not that I need to develop a thinker skin, or rewiring my brain - you don’t rewire this. All I can hope for is that someone will come along and love me and protect me and take care of me in a way that you never did. Who loves me and doesn’t leave, even when I try to abandon myself. Maybe someone will come along who keeps me safe enough so that I never fall back into the patterns of comfort that aren’t healthy for me when I'm feeling unsafe in my environment.

The most fucked up part of all of this is while I haven’t even missed you for a single day, the pattern you set in my brain makes me crave my abuser. The one person who was momentarily kind to me, consistently for a few years, and pretended to love me, before he did what you did to me. Stonewalled and abandoned me. 

And here I am four years later wishing for some stupid miracle that he didn’t actually break my heart into a million pieces. Fantasizing about how healing it would be to have a man who made me feel so loved and so seen, that even though he hurt me so badly I wanted to die, that if he just apologized and showed up, and somehow had a reason for what had happened - I’d forgive him. 

You are a disease. 

If there’s any magic in this universe - real magic - someone who loves me who will be horrified when they hear about everything I’ve been through, and they’re going to show up, soon, and keep showing up and again and again to take care of me in a way that you never could, nor did you really ever want for me, because you were a selfish, toxic mother.

This is kind of a stream of consciousness post - inquire within, if this resonates with you. 

Sometimes I get these feelings that I don’t know how to identify. Like they’re not mine. 

I don’t mean like, oh I’ve got alternate personalities or I’m disassociating, or something. I mean like I get flashes of feelings and phantom pains that don’t belong to me. I was raised by a couple of abusive narcissists, so that made me a super-empath, and my autism means I take exactly zero bullshit. So I’m real fun at parties and my social battery doesn’t last very long. Gimme the nearest furry baby creature to pet.

So this letter is a shot in the dark; a post to my future person. I know he comes here sometimes. Whether or not of all the gin joints in all the world he comes to this corner of the internet, I don’t know. Even though I know he hangs out in this general space. But seeing a post on Reddit at the right time is like trying to catch fairies in a net, as Marcus Mumford recently explained songwriting (god dammit Marcus, what a line. Wish I had come up with it). 

A ex-friend of mine who ended up being an energy vampire, told me that he believes we get glimpses into other realities in our dreams. I don’t cherish much of our relationship, but I did take that little gem with me. Isn’t that lovely? How we keep the pieces of the people we love and the things we love about them, and adopt them as our own as we move forward in time? I had wished this person would move forward in time with me, but that wasn’t the path for us. 

But the dreamwalking bit. If that’s true, and a large part of me believes it must be, because we create our own realities, then my person has dreamt about me, and is looking for me too. Because in the dream world, we’re married and living an extraordinary, ordinary life together. That DINK lifestyle, haha. Well. The dogs count as kiddos. Must love dogs.  

If I had to sum him up, I’d say he’s a liberal space cowboy who sings. Whether or not he sings well is optional, I guess. 4 years of musical theater and sometimes even I get embarrassed cracking notes during carpool karaoke - because there’s really no better place to belt out Disney Showtunes or your favorite Green Day song (St. Jimmy, for those wondering). I contain multitudes. That's a layered reference.  

But the reason I’m writing this today is I feel like my person might be feeling tired, and trapped. That no one can understand him, or he feels he has to carry it all on his own. 

This message is for anyone reading it, even though I’m holding one person in particular in my mind as I write it - so take this as a blessing, or an offering, or a little bit of love if you need it today, no matter who you are.

You don’t have to do it all on your own. You’re not a bumbling oaf, or falling behind or running late. No one is judging you by these invisible benchmarks, and if they are, they’re not your friends. The people that love you - and I hope you are surrounded by a lot of people who do, want you to be happy. Your successes are not their successes, even though it may feel that way. If nothing else, I want you to know you can start over any time you want, and you’ll be supported by the ones that matter. Most importantly, if something is hurting you, even if that thing is your work - stop. Do something else. 

And stop drinking. Please. I’m gonna try to lay off the cheese and the chocolate, okay? It would sure be easier if we could bounce memes off each other in this digital tin-can, though. And maybe we could start that two person book club we’ve been meaning to. Two door cinema club, too. 

I sincerely hope you’re alright. I hope one day you find me. I’ve got pretty severe rejection sensitivity and I overthink everything, so I need someone to show up fully formed and honestly as themselves, in all of their flaws and all of their wonderfulness.

Even if we never meet, and even though I can tell you now, I won’t reply to every message I get - I love you. Take care of yourself.