A letter to … my mother, who doesn’t know about the divorce yet
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Version 0 of 1. I sit writing this letter while you’re asleep upstairs. Tomorrow is going to change all of our lives, but mostly it will change yours. You don’t know it yet, but tomorrow night when he gets home from work, Dad is going to tell you that he is leaving. He wants the house sold. He wants a divorce. I know it; my sister knows it. And we are trapped in the most heart-breaking, gut-wrenching countdown of our lives. We have been used as our father’s confidantes because he needed someone to talk to. But who can we confide in? We can’t speak to anyone. We can’t ever let on that we knew. Does that mean we have betrayed you too? What am I supposed to do tomorrow night? Sit on the bed I share with my fiance, in the room we rent from you, and hope that whatever ensues once Dad gets home doesn’t wake the baby? What can I do but hide away and wait for the initial blow to be over? My fiance has been firm on this point; this is your life event, not ours. We can’t let it affect us. We can’t wade knee deep into whatever Dad leaves in his wake. Our daughter must come before anyone else. You are eight weeks away from your 25th wedding anniversary. Your wedding photograph is gazing down at me from the top of the piano opposite where I am sitting now; I don’t recognise the happy, hopeful people in it as my parents. Though I wish so much that they were. I am eight months away from my wedding. All I feel about it right now is fear, in case we should ever put our daughter through what my sister and I are currently experiencing. I want you both to be happy. I honestly believe that you will be. But I am apprehensive about what we will all have to face between now and then. I don’t want either of you to suffer, but I can’t do anything to prevent it. I don’t want our family to be broken into pieces, but I can’t prevent that either. You and Dad could have prevented it. The warning signs have been there for long enough. But maybe this will all be for the best; despite the fact that I am far closer to Dad than I am to you, I know that you deserve better. He has burdened me with the heaviest, most painful secret. Which, in the interests of saving you from more heartache, I can never tell anyone. In a few words he has shattered everything I thought I knew about him and changed my perspective of his character so drastically that I can’t look at him. Yet I am determined that I will save my relationship with him, and rebuild my relationship with you. It is just not clear how yet. Despite everything, I will be there for you and you will be all right. I love you. Anonymous |