It's a Cold and It's a Broken Hallelujah
and it's not a cry that you hear at night;
2:58 A.M. Monday, March 15, 2010
Dear Nate,
I’ll start with this:
I’ve had a lot of bad days lately. For that I’m sorry.
I apologize profusely. I write this with no intention of ever giving it to you.
I know you’ve told me that there is no need to apologize, but I’ll say it anyway—
I’m sorry.
Now, I’m not really one for writing letters—it just isn’t my thing—but I feel the need to explain a few things that I just cannot make myself say out loud. I’m sorry. And you deserve to hear everything in a better way than the tattered pieces I give away on a need to know basis when I’m upset; when I need you to talk me down from hysteria.
I don’t exactly know what to tell you first—how I’m supposed to begin—because there has always been someone who knew most of, if not the whole story. I’ll say this: you, Ava and myself all have different ideas about where exactly my problems originate. You, I’m sure—not to say what you think, because quite honestly I haven’t a clue; probably something like this girl is fucking crazy. You probably think that the problems start with my parents. Ava, as far as I know, thinks they start with Jason. I, personally, think that they start with myself—they’re my problems, so therefore my brain must be the epicenter. I know, however, that it isn’t just one of those things, but rather a combination of the three.
What to mention now, I’m not sure; I’m uncertain.
I’ll say that I should probably talk about why it would be my parents. It would continue in the order it was introduced—like an essay; like it was mechanical.
I love them to death but I hate them with every fiber of my being.
My father is the biggest problem.
I know he never exactly wanted me; I know I was never exactly written in his plans, but I really feel like there are times that he tries to act like I don’t exist at all. The minute he walks in the door after work, anything that belongs to me either gets neatly piled in a corner or thrown on my bedroom floor—usually the latter. I should know by now that it’s just to “neaten up the house,” but I just feel like it’s his way of erasing me and my presence.
Even if only for a little while.
He is an alcoholic and I hate him for it.
I hate that stupid grin he gets when he’s drunk and the stale smell of the alcohol. I hate that “the switch flips” and his eyes glaze over and become clouded and demonic, and home turns into a living hell. I hate that I’m the first person he takes his anger out on. It’s never physical, but sometimes I wish it was, because then there would be evidence.
Evidence would get rid of him.
When he’s drinking, everything I do is simply, automatically wrong.
Everything he says is one giant Freudian Slip—he’s been thinking it, but holding back from saying it because it’s inappropriate or hurtful.
He hangs out at some cheap, crappy, local bar that his father used to frequent.
He prides himself on being a “regular” there. He spends a majority of his paycheck there, leaving my mother with the burden of everything else.
He befriended a twenty-six year old personal trainer.
She’s a she. Her name is Leanne. She was at our house on Valentine’s Day. He came home late last week. He took forty-five minutes to get Chinese food for dinner. He said she was upset and needed someone to talk to. He was that someone. He stayed with her because she was fighting with her boyfriend. This week on Chinese food night, also known as Thursday or cleaning day, he was gone for an hour and fifteen minutes. Mom was pissed and he had no excuse.
I have no idea what she’d see in him, but none of us trust him.
He isn’t exactly what I’d call supportive.
My entire childhood he begged me to take an interest in music, and when I finally did, he wouldn’t cut back on his drinking to pay for piano lessons. He told me to choose: piano lessons, or dance class and violin—through school of course. At eleven that wasn’t my priority so I chose dance and violin. At eleven I wanted to do it all; to broaden my horizons. Instead I was handed a check for school for instrument rental and a check for insurance and tuition at dance. Did I forget to mention the dusty piano book from 1970? Now, it seems my career choices are limited to the medical field. Now, it seems my college choices are limited to Stony Brook.
Everything causes a fight.
My mom means no harm.
I could leave it at that, but it wouldn’t make much sense to you.
She hates my father.
She wishes she never married him. She only stays because she’s in too deep and can’t afford to leave. She only stays because there’s nowhere else to go. Her mother had to sell her house because of my aunt. If there was a way, she’d be gone in a heartbeat—maybe less. Sometimes I think she resents me because I tie her to him. I don’t blame her—I’d resent me too. Sometimes I resent her for letting me exist.
She’s part of the problem too, though.
She doesn’t understand how I feel. She always turns it into a fight. She won’t fix the problem, she doesn’t care enough, maybe. She can’t see the pain, the physical pain. She’s always angry and cranky and crabby when my dad’s around, and she’s about as reliable as a groundhog—take it however you like because it varies by the week.
The next part, logically, is Jason.
Logically, the next part would be to explain why Jason is a part of the problem.
It doesn’t exactly seem to fit, does it? Good. It shouldn’t.
He was there when it all started, that’s how it fits.
Maybe not the very beginning, but soon enough after. He was, at first, the only friend I needed; the only one I had. Then he became the problem. He became the one, indirectly, pushing me to cut myself.
He knew and didn’t do a damn thing to try to stop me.
He let me continue to hurt myself.
He chose to only acknowledge me as a friend when it was convenient for him.
When I needed someone to talk to he was never there, leaving me alone with nothing to turn to but the stupid piece of metal that became my best friend. Worst of all, he turned it all into some sick joke. He still asks me sometimes about how I’m doing with my “issues” or my “problems.” He knows me well enough to know that the “I’m fine; I’m just tired,” that I give is a lie, but he just lets it go.
I need him to call me on it.
He knows that I need him to tell me that I’m full of shit and point out how much I suck at lying, especially to him—unless of course I really have gotten that much better.
Everything I’ve told him, I’m sure hasn’t stayed between just us.
I’m sure he’s told Deanna everything and I’m sure she’s just waiting for an opportunity to use it against me, like she always is. The two of them together—Jason and Deanna—is like setting the devil loose.
Everything I’ve told him, he’s used, in one way or another to mock and to hurt me.
I realize that the biggest source of the problem is myself.
I shouldn’t let things bother me.
Especially the small things. I should just let them go, but I can’t. I don’t know why, but it’s almost like I let people hurt me. It sucks, because when I get like that, like when I call you, I feel selfish and ungrateful, because I know I should just be thankful for what I have and I should just suck it up.
But I can’t.
My problems with myself started at eleven.
I spent hours begging my parents to just let me die. Before I was diagnosed as a diabetic, I thought I was dying. I thought I had cancer and I was just wasting away. My mom thought the same thing, but it was like this unspoken thing; it was the eight hundred pound gorilla in the room.
I wouldn’t go to a doctor because I just wanted to let myself slip away.
After I was diagnosed, my mother put me on a figurative leash—it was so tight that it felt more literal than figurative. I couldn’t do anything. I should have just been thankful that I wasn’t dying, it was stupid to get upset about. Instead of just dealing, I fought them because they didn’t let me waste away and die. I didn’t want to be different. I didn’t want to be considered to be medically handicapped. It’s stupid. I shouldn’t have let something so stupid send me in such a ridiculous downward spiral, but I did.
So now I’ve reached a point of incessant rambling about I’m not even sure what.
What I should say is that I’ve been hurt.
What I should tell you is that by being hurt so many times, my ability to trust has been pretty much destroyed. Between my parents and their yelling and fighting and a ton of shit that’s happened with Deanna and Jason that started back when we were freshmen, I’ve learned that I trusted too easily.
Now, going to you when I needed someone to talk to was something that petrified me.
Ava, I know will always be there for me no matter what. I can depend on her and not have to worry about being let down because that’s just how it is—if I need her I can count on her; if she needs me, she can usually count on me.
But you, shockingly enough, give better advice.
You help me more. You dig me out of my rut. She tells me a simple, “you’ll be out soon.” You actually agree, or at least say you agree, that some of the situations are absurd.
She knows my family and she, like myself, likes them on their good days.
You don’t really know them. She feels some kind of loyalty to them, perhaps. You don’t, or at least you shouldn’t. But that isn’t my point.
My point is that talking to you about all of it scares me.
I’ve been let down before and I’m afraid that I’ll start to depend on you and then, for whatever reason, when I need you, really, really need you, you’ll just abandon me.
It’s stupid, I know, but sometimes I’m just too afraid to push away all the pessimism.
You are a better person than Jason, but I’m still afraid to trust you completely. That is a huge part of why I cannot actually say this all out loud.
And why I can’t even think to put it all on paper.
I’ve been used too many times before.
I’ve been broken too many times before. And sometimes I just need a friend, you know?
Sometimes I’m a little dramatic and overbearing, but that’s just me.
I try to be quiet and blend in, because it just isn’t as bad if no one can see.
I don’t know why I’m writing this.
I think it’s mostly for my own sanity. It could really be addressed to anyone, but you’re the one person who really deserves an explanation.
Again, I have minimal intentions of showing this to anyone, least of all you.
I guess the point of this was to, if you ever read it, make sense of some of the things I say to you.
I guess, maybe, it was to ask you if you could please not abandon me out of nowhere like he did, because I wouldn’t be able to deal with that.
I loved him and he destroyed me worse than anyone.
I think I love you so talking to you about it is just so much harder.
Explaining how Jason messed with me and ruined me is so much harder.
He played mind games. He shattered my confidence and left me with pure diffidence.
I can’t function because of him.
He makes me do everything that you hate. The self-image issues. The cuts. The sleepless weeks—not just nights.
I guess it was to ask if you could pay attention.
I guess to ask if you could acknowledge the problem like no one else does, because even acknowledgement is help. It makes me realize that maybe, just maybe I’m not entirely alone in this crazy world.
I ask that you continue to listen to me even when I’m rambling and even when you want to choke me to death and when you’re absolutely sick and tired of hearing it, because feeling abandoned is what makes me do the things you hate.
Like November twenty-fifth when I hid in the stall in the girls’ bathroom so I could cut myself, only to spend the rest of the say stressing out trying to hide the wounds so I wouldn’t have to lie. Like November twenty-fifth, the day I went home and cried over nothing for hours; when my mom called and I lied on the phone saying I was tired and that was all. Like November twenty-fifth, the day that I really felt like the world was falling apart around me and I felt so alone—like I would always, always be all alone.
I hate the cuts, because I hate the lies.
I hate lying about them and having someone believe that the cat scratched me, or that I fell.
It’s the worst feeling in the world.
I don’t know what else I’m supposed to say.
There’s so much to say—so, so much.
So I’ll leave it at Thank You for being there.
And I’m Sorry.
I’m sorry for all the bullshit.
Thank You,
Love,
Jaylee
Dear Nate,
I’ll start with this:
I’ve had a lot of bad days lately. For that I’m sorry.
I apologize profusely. I write this with no intention of ever giving it to you.
I know you’ve told me that there is no need to apologize, but I’ll say it anyway—
I’m sorry.
Now, I’m not really one for writing letters—it just isn’t my thing—but I feel the need to explain a few things that I just cannot make myself say out loud. I’m sorry. And you deserve to hear everything in a better way than the tattered pieces I give away on a need to know basis when I’m upset; when I need you to talk me down from hysteria.
I don’t exactly know what to tell you first—how I’m supposed to begin—because there has always been someone who knew most of, if not the whole story. I’ll say this: you, Ava and myself all have different ideas about where exactly my problems originate. You, I’m sure—not to say what you think, because quite honestly I haven’t a clue; probably something like this girl is fucking crazy. You probably think that the problems start with my parents. Ava, as far as I know, thinks they start with Jason. I, personally, think that they start with myself—they’re my problems, so therefore my brain must be the epicenter. I know, however, that it isn’t just one of those things, but rather a combination of the three.
What to mention now, I’m not sure; I’m uncertain.
I’ll say that I should probably talk about why it would be my parents. It would continue in the order it was introduced—like an essay; like it was mechanical.
I love them to death but I hate them with every fiber of my being.
My father is the biggest problem.
I know he never exactly wanted me; I know I was never exactly written in his plans, but I really feel like there are times that he tries to act like I don’t exist at all. The minute he walks in the door after work, anything that belongs to me either gets neatly piled in a corner or thrown on my bedroom floor—usually the latter. I should know by now that it’s just to “neaten up the house,” but I just feel like it’s his way of erasing me and my presence.
Even if only for a little while.
He is an alcoholic and I hate him for it.
I hate that stupid grin he gets when he’s drunk and the stale smell of the alcohol. I hate that “the switch flips” and his eyes glaze over and become clouded and demonic, and home turns into a living hell. I hate that I’m the first person he takes his anger out on. It’s never physical, but sometimes I wish it was, because then there would be evidence.
Evidence would get rid of him.
When he’s drinking, everything I do is simply, automatically wrong.
Everything he says is one giant Freudian Slip—he’s been thinking it, but holding back from saying it because it’s inappropriate or hurtful.
He hangs out at some cheap, crappy, local bar that his father used to frequent.
He prides himself on being a “regular” there. He spends a majority of his paycheck there, leaving my mother with the burden of everything else.
He befriended a twenty-six year old personal trainer.
She’s a she. Her name is Leanne. She was at our house on Valentine’s Day. He came home late last week. He took forty-five minutes to get Chinese food for dinner. He said she was upset and needed someone to talk to. He was that someone. He stayed with her because she was fighting with her boyfriend. This week on Chinese food night, also known as Thursday or cleaning day, he was gone for an hour and fifteen minutes. Mom was pissed and he had no excuse.
I have no idea what she’d see in him, but none of us trust him.
He isn’t exactly what I’d call supportive.
My entire childhood he begged me to take an interest in music, and when I finally did, he wouldn’t cut back on his drinking to pay for piano lessons. He told me to choose: piano lessons, or dance class and violin—through school of course. At eleven that wasn’t my priority so I chose dance and violin. At eleven I wanted to do it all; to broaden my horizons. Instead I was handed a check for school for instrument rental and a check for insurance and tuition at dance. Did I forget to mention the dusty piano book from 1970? Now, it seems my career choices are limited to the medical field. Now, it seems my college choices are limited to Stony Brook.
Everything causes a fight.
My mom means no harm.
I could leave it at that, but it wouldn’t make much sense to you.
She hates my father.
She wishes she never married him. She only stays because she’s in too deep and can’t afford to leave. She only stays because there’s nowhere else to go. Her mother had to sell her house because of my aunt. If there was a way, she’d be gone in a heartbeat—maybe less. Sometimes I think she resents me because I tie her to him. I don’t blame her—I’d resent me too. Sometimes I resent her for letting me exist.
She’s part of the problem too, though.
She doesn’t understand how I feel. She always turns it into a fight. She won’t fix the problem, she doesn’t care enough, maybe. She can’t see the pain, the physical pain. She’s always angry and cranky and crabby when my dad’s around, and she’s about as reliable as a groundhog—take it however you like because it varies by the week.
The next part, logically, is Jason.
Logically, the next part would be to explain why Jason is a part of the problem.
It doesn’t exactly seem to fit, does it? Good. It shouldn’t.
He was there when it all started, that’s how it fits.
Maybe not the very beginning, but soon enough after. He was, at first, the only friend I needed; the only one I had. Then he became the problem. He became the one, indirectly, pushing me to cut myself.
He knew and didn’t do a damn thing to try to stop me.
He let me continue to hurt myself.
He chose to only acknowledge me as a friend when it was convenient for him.
When I needed someone to talk to he was never there, leaving me alone with nothing to turn to but the stupid piece of metal that became my best friend. Worst of all, he turned it all into some sick joke. He still asks me sometimes about how I’m doing with my “issues” or my “problems.” He knows me well enough to know that the “I’m fine; I’m just tired,” that I give is a lie, but he just lets it go.
I need him to call me on it.
He knows that I need him to tell me that I’m full of shit and point out how much I suck at lying, especially to him—unless of course I really have gotten that much better.
Everything I’ve told him, I’m sure hasn’t stayed between just us.
I’m sure he’s told Deanna everything and I’m sure she’s just waiting for an opportunity to use it against me, like she always is. The two of them together—Jason and Deanna—is like setting the devil loose.
Everything I’ve told him, he’s used, in one way or another to mock and to hurt me.
I realize that the biggest source of the problem is myself.
I shouldn’t let things bother me.
Especially the small things. I should just let them go, but I can’t. I don’t know why, but it’s almost like I let people hurt me. It sucks, because when I get like that, like when I call you, I feel selfish and ungrateful, because I know I should just be thankful for what I have and I should just suck it up.
But I can’t.
My problems with myself started at eleven.
I spent hours begging my parents to just let me die. Before I was diagnosed as a diabetic, I thought I was dying. I thought I had cancer and I was just wasting away. My mom thought the same thing, but it was like this unspoken thing; it was the eight hundred pound gorilla in the room.
I wouldn’t go to a doctor because I just wanted to let myself slip away.
After I was diagnosed, my mother put me on a figurative leash—it was so tight that it felt more literal than figurative. I couldn’t do anything. I should have just been thankful that I wasn’t dying, it was stupid to get upset about. Instead of just dealing, I fought them because they didn’t let me waste away and die. I didn’t want to be different. I didn’t want to be considered to be medically handicapped. It’s stupid. I shouldn’t have let something so stupid send me in such a ridiculous downward spiral, but I did.
So now I’ve reached a point of incessant rambling about I’m not even sure what.
What I should say is that I’ve been hurt.
What I should tell you is that by being hurt so many times, my ability to trust has been pretty much destroyed. Between my parents and their yelling and fighting and a ton of shit that’s happened with Deanna and Jason that started back when we were freshmen, I’ve learned that I trusted too easily.
Now, going to you when I needed someone to talk to was something that petrified me.
Ava, I know will always be there for me no matter what. I can depend on her and not have to worry about being let down because that’s just how it is—if I need her I can count on her; if she needs me, she can usually count on me.
But you, shockingly enough, give better advice.
You help me more. You dig me out of my rut. She tells me a simple, “you’ll be out soon.” You actually agree, or at least say you agree, that some of the situations are absurd.
She knows my family and she, like myself, likes them on their good days.
You don’t really know them. She feels some kind of loyalty to them, perhaps. You don’t, or at least you shouldn’t. But that isn’t my point.
My point is that talking to you about all of it scares me.
I’ve been let down before and I’m afraid that I’ll start to depend on you and then, for whatever reason, when I need you, really, really need you, you’ll just abandon me.
It’s stupid, I know, but sometimes I’m just too afraid to push away all the pessimism.
You are a better person than Jason, but I’m still afraid to trust you completely. That is a huge part of why I cannot actually say this all out loud.
And why I can’t even think to put it all on paper.
I’ve been used too many times before.
I’ve been broken too many times before. And sometimes I just need a friend, you know?
Sometimes I’m a little dramatic and overbearing, but that’s just me.
I try to be quiet and blend in, because it just isn’t as bad if no one can see.
I don’t know why I’m writing this.
I think it’s mostly for my own sanity. It could really be addressed to anyone, but you’re the one person who really deserves an explanation.
Again, I have minimal intentions of showing this to anyone, least of all you.
I guess the point of this was to, if you ever read it, make sense of some of the things I say to you.
I guess, maybe, it was to ask you if you could please not abandon me out of nowhere like he did, because I wouldn’t be able to deal with that.
I loved him and he destroyed me worse than anyone.
I think I love you so talking to you about it is just so much harder.
Explaining how Jason messed with me and ruined me is so much harder.
He played mind games. He shattered my confidence and left me with pure diffidence.
I can’t function because of him.
He makes me do everything that you hate. The self-image issues. The cuts. The sleepless weeks—not just nights.
I guess it was to ask if you could pay attention.
I guess to ask if you could acknowledge the problem like no one else does, because even acknowledgement is help. It makes me realize that maybe, just maybe I’m not entirely alone in this crazy world.
I ask that you continue to listen to me even when I’m rambling and even when you want to choke me to death and when you’re absolutely sick and tired of hearing it, because feeling abandoned is what makes me do the things you hate.
Like November twenty-fifth when I hid in the stall in the girls’ bathroom so I could cut myself, only to spend the rest of the say stressing out trying to hide the wounds so I wouldn’t have to lie. Like November twenty-fifth, the day I went home and cried over nothing for hours; when my mom called and I lied on the phone saying I was tired and that was all. Like November twenty-fifth, the day that I really felt like the world was falling apart around me and I felt so alone—like I would always, always be all alone.
I hate the cuts, because I hate the lies.
I hate lying about them and having someone believe that the cat scratched me, or that I fell.
It’s the worst feeling in the world.
I don’t know what else I’m supposed to say.
There’s so much to say—so, so much.
So I’ll leave it at Thank You for being there.
And I’m Sorry.
I’m sorry for all the bullshit.
Thank You,
Love,
Jaylee