Letter to my Sins

Trigger warnings: domestic abuse, swearing, mentions of gore and animal abuse.

Dear ma,

Sometimes, I wonder if I’m a sociopath, or if I’m just painfully apathetic. It seems like a cowardly move to write this now that you’re gone, but speaking to your ghost meant I didn’t have to face your disappointment. I know you tried your best, and it’s hard raising a child on your own, but I have no more excuses for you.

In first grade, we had scheduled rotations to take home Judith, our class pet. Remember her? She was a small brown-spotted bunny that I volunteered to keep on Tuesdays; my 7-year-old self eager to have company. You weren’t home those days, out working or gambling or whatever you did. I don’t remember the moments in between, only taking her home in an old, rickety cage and then a period of complete darkness. Ma, I still don’t know if I killed her or if the car did, but I’ll never forget the moment I turned and found her on her side, red streaming from the tip of her ears to the inward curve of her mouth with her intestines laying dormant on the curve.

That night when you came home and discovered her dismantled body on the kitchen counter, you screamed. I didn’t know she was dead, didn’t even know the concept of death at that age, only that something horrible must’ve happened for you to react that way. I remember smiling at you, showing off my red tinted fingers as if I had just made art with my own hands, only to be met with your anger.

Truth be told, I was scared. I was terrified. I remembered its beady eyes, so devoid of life and thinking, did i do this? There were no tears in my eyes like the other kids when they heard the news, no sadness or guilt or even remorse. There was only a single ache in my chest that told me I should be feeling more right now. It’s such a lonely feeling, knowing that I should be something I’m not at such a young age. You always lectured me about maintaining my masculinity, preaching about how burdensome emotions are and our inability to grasp it. You taught me to feel nothing in order to be something.

So one night, when I came home to you sitting on the couch, head in your hands as you held your body closer to yourself, almost as if trying to disappear into your own shell, I thought you deserved it. I felt that familiar pang of anguish, but realized it was because I recognized myself in you at that moment. There were so many nights I recreated your position, maybe to feel sympathy or some kind of emotion, but I couldn’t. Instead, I grabbed my journal and just wrote until my wrist ached for my heart that couldn’t. I felt so much guilt for you, ma, for how much of it that wasn’t there.

As I grew older, I began bringing girls around to our apartment; the message that I must marry young to be successful young engrained in my mind. This was when our relationship began to mend. You started talking to me, lurking outside of the room you holed yourself in to meet every new woman.

But ma, you never told me loving someone was so hard. I guess I should’ve figured after years of trying to love you and failing, but I never realized it was more than midnight scheming, shattered cups, and make up sex after silent dinners. I didn’t know the feeling of wanting and being wanted, stolen kisses through little window frames of time, someone warm to hold. You taught me love was hair pulling, stifled crying, and praises after something so incredibly mundane. Your world intercepted mine and skewed it until i could no longer recognize the cities in my own self-destruction.

When I came home to my ex-girlfriend after spending the night with another woman, she could smell it on me. I can’t explain how, or maybe I don’t have to explain it to you at all… most women seem to just know. She quietly sat me down, and we stayed there for another hour or two, just talking. It didn’t feel like a goodbye, maybe more of a mutual understanding, though I could tell she was hurt inside. There was no remorse, no empathy. I did what I did and I accept the full consequences. I can’t tell you how many more relationships I messed up before and after that, just that truthfully, I didn’t feel anything for a single one. Or rather, I never allowed myself to.

You really fucked me up, and I hate you for that. I hate how you raised me to be this unlovable, empty shell of a person, and I hate how you’ve never made me feel special. I hate the presence you still have on me, the weight that’ll never leave my mind, and I hate how exhausted you make me feel. You never understand me, twist my words out of context, make me do things i’m not comfortable with, how can any of these be love to you? I hate that i couldn’t tell anyone anything out of fear that you’ll find out. I hate you so goddamn much I felt nothing when were finally out of my life.

But of course, I don’t mean any of that literally. I hate you sometimes. Other times, you’re okay.

You wouldn’t be proud, but I met a guy at college. He makes me feel special, something like a sweet lavender haze drifting along my skin with every touch. I loathed him for it — for sparking this desire within me to understand myself, hidden by years of internalized toxic masculinity. But ma, he is the first thing in my life that has made it complete.

Every morning, I open my eyes to a feeling of dread, a fear that you’ll come back and take him from me. But then I see him and he seems so content, so full of trust while laying across from me and I feel my heart brim with love. There are no words to describe it, no proses poetic enough to summarize his presence as anything other than just love. I never realize when my eyes begin to water, so emotional at the thought of being wanted by someone so perfectly whole. It was as if the years of silence suddenly thawed, and every emotion I hadn’t felt before consumed me. I looked at him in a way that meant “I love you”, a way I never looked at anything else before him.

I realized I wasn’t completely apathetic, wasn’t a sociopath or a kid with a couple of loose screws in his head. I was just lonely, protecting myself from the unfamiliar, just like you, ma.

Maybe one day I’ll find you again in the stars, but for now, come meet me at midnight. I’ll be the light you always wanted me to be.

Yours no longer, 

Lucian