Letters (1)

Dear Simon
I am writing to forgive you (no well actually i can't forgive you, I am in fact writing to blame you for stealing my life, in the hope that by the end of the letter I will be able to forgive you)

Simon, I forgive you for altering the course of my life so utterly that I lost 20 years of my life with my precious family. I forgive you for holding so tightly onto the purse strings that we completely failed to get on the property ladder. I forgive you that even as you held those strings it was me that was earning the money. I forgive you for letting me support you as you went through graduate school and for showing no gratitude. I forgive you for emotionally abusing me for 15 years, and I forgive you for denying me the opportunity to have a large family of our own.
Simon I forgive you for casting your estrangement from your own family as a virtue "We don't live in each other's pockets" I forgive you for mocking my homesickness. I forgive you for not understanding just what my family meant to me. I forgive you for taking me to the other side of the world, and tying me down there.

Simon, I forgive you for that time you said we didn't have enough money for me to buy new shoes for a job interview, and for spending the money on yourself when I got the job regardless. I forgive you for baulking at all the perfectly good houses we could have afforded that now would be worth twice their value.

I forgive you for two years into our marriage telling me that if I got pregnant you would expect me to have an abortion. I forgive you for being so unready to commit to parenthood that by the time you were ready I was already almost too old. I forgive you for becoming resistant when I was trying to get pregnant. I forgive you for saying that "the best babies are born naturally" when I was (we were?) doing IVF. I forgive you for expecting me to go hiking in 30C when I was seven months pregnant. I forgive you for seeing my shaky pregnancy as a weakness. I forgive you for the time you went of climbing when I was losing a baby and let me take myself bleeding in taxi to the hospital. I forgive you for seeing my miscarriages as something you needed to control by curtailing your own fertility and ultimately curtailing the relationship. I forgive you for freezing me out and ignoring me when I was in pain over losing babies. I forgive you for then going and attempting to have children with other girls.

I forgive you for blaming connor's learning difficulties on the means and circumstances of my pregnancy when their source could just as well be your dyslexia. I forgive you for seeking to extract yourself from his life when he becomes behaviourally difficult.

I forgive myself for my naivety in thinking that love would find a way. I forgive myself for believing in marriage so utterly and blindly. I forgive myself for thinking I had to stick with it no matter what. I forgive myself for not standing up to you in so many ways. I forgive myself for letting you run my life. I forgive myself for squandering my hard earned money on you, as though you were my child. I forgive myself for not letting you be a man. I forgive myself for going ahead and having a baby because by that stage it meant more to me than you did. I acknowledge that in my drive to recreate my family of origin I pushed you away and created a situation in which I am for ever separated from them. I acknowledge the part I have taken in bringing my life to this stage.

Sincerely

Fiona