Have you ever considered your part in our story? What you did  and why I didn’t choose you or want to be with you? What self respecting woman, or in my case, teenage girl, would choose to invest her heart and her belief in someone who wouldn’t even wake up to go to class in the morning? I was a 16 year old wounded time bomb, fresh off a suicide attempt, who’d been thru more trauma than any person should have to endure in a life, much less by that age, and even I still tried to go to class. I had to leave Hyde Park before 7am to drive up to the very end of LSD to make it to my high school in West Rogers Park, and you complained about me taking your car, so I could make it to school? You’ve been blaming me and allowing your family to blame me too, for all kinds of asinine shit for so long, you’ve forgotten what it means to accept responsibility for your own self destructive choices during a rough time in your young adulthood. I suppose blaming me was easier than owning up to your part in things. so of course you don’t remember the way I tried to encourage you to go to class, of course you don’t remember anything loving or supportive about me…but that’s ok bc it’s been over thirty five years, dude. 

do you have any idea how fucking absurd it is that you still try to make yourself the victim in our story? You could’ve been thrown in jail for statuary rape for fucks sake, how’s that for a hard fact? I was technically a minor. A wounded teenage minor whom you knew was fresh off a suicide attempt and still IN HIGH SCHOOL. Did you think I was gonna marry you when I was 16 while you weren’t even responsible enough to go to class? how the fuck did you think we were gonna survive? What a crock of bullshit you’ve been spewing as though I did anything to you beyond not choosing you. And the worst part about it is, you never even tried to show me a healthier version of yourself so I could choose you. But you have such a high opinion of yourself that you never considered that you weren’t anything close to worthy of me and your actions over the last thirty five plus years have revealed who you truly are, and I was totally right not to choose you. (I’ve never wished myself upon anyone I truly love bc I’ve been way too fucked up and I never wanted to be a part of a relationship unless I could give my A game and my best self.) But we’re very different people and our values are completely incompatible, so it’s a good thing we didn’t end up together. Despite all the slanderous shit you've been slinging, all I’ve ever wanted for you is to be your best self. To be happy and fulfilled in your life. I’ve never talked shit about you or denigrated you to anyone behind your back, but  all the while, you’ve been saying all kinds of inappropriate, violating things to try to paint me into some villainous character, when in fact, it’s you who’ve been the villain in our story. Crossing all kinds of boundaries, investigating my life, attempting to dig up sordid details, hoping to find anything to validate your theory that I’m a bipolar fuck up, who clearly doesn't deserve compassion bc she rejected you when she was sixteen.  No accountability on your part for the fact that you weren’t living up to anything close to your own standards, much less mine. 

I wonder if you've ever had the depth of character to consider if you would want your daughter to be with a man like you? Who was behaving like you were back then. What would you do to a man who did to your daughter what you've done to me all these years? If only my father was alive to lend some perspective on what his daughter deserves in a partner. You have many wonderful gifts, and I've missed your voice and insights very much thru these years of silence between us, but I won’t play pretend with you and attempt to placate your fragile ego about your shortcomings. You've been a dick to the absolute max and it's too bad you don't get it about yourself.

And btw, you do know you are a raging ego maniac, right? I don’t know who you are in your actual life, but you’re a diabolical fuck in mine. I don’t have to play pretend bc I have your emails and messages from years back. I don’t need to lie about the times we met for drinks at Danny’s and beyond, or our long drives, or my first taste of Jim’s, which I loved, btw, or anything else we’ve done thru the years. I’m not the one who was deceiving anyone, that was you. I have lots of reasons to be furious at you for the way you’ve tried to poison people against me, as though exposing me as Wendy or anything else was some heroic act of valor instead of a pathetic ploy to quite literally turn people against me at the dog park like we're in high school and not our fifties. You just couldn't leave well enough alone and live peacefully and respectfully at a distance. But I don’t care about the sheeple part of it bc anyone who was swayed by your antics wasn't worth my attention anyway. What I do care about is how malicious you’ve become. It makes me sad that you allow yourself to be so small. That you've become a man who says such awful things about your own flesh and blood with no filter to other people with no filter. There's no hyung in you. The light I used to love in you, the love and care and kindness that made me choose to be with you during a vulnerable time in my life, is so far removed from the man you've become. I don't have a clue who you are anymore and I guess it's just as well bc I don't like this version of you. It seems you're in perfect company with your chosen partner and you clearly deserve each other.  

Anyway, I’ve started to write this yuck out of my head and heart in these preliminary vignettes. Too much suppressed hurt, anger, and resentment has been festering and I need to release decades of bilious corroded funk thru these exercises in courage and candor. I know my writing is rough as fuck but Im not gonna let my pride thwart my progress. I haven’t been able to string a sentence together for over ten years for fear of finally being honest and exposing my true self to mean people like you, but fuck it, I’ve gotta start somewhere, right? I'll keep journalling out loud and continue to detoxify myself until I flow clearly and authentically. No more compromising my healing or well being...

I’m sorry I hurt you when I was a teenager. I wish I w/could’ve been more emotionally responsible back then but I was still a child who was nursing my own wounds and trying to make sense of my complex reality. I was not ready to commit to anything serious at sixteen, and neither were you in your early twenties.

I hope you find a way to adjust your perspective and see your realistic part in things. It may help you to see clearly and understand who the actual heartbreaker is in our story.