The Signs

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are:

brink ~ stultify ~ brief ~ gobble ~ right

They were submitted by: https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/

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The nightstand on her husband's side of the bed held another bank card and driver's license from a woman she didn't know and didn't recognize. Third time, now. Third time was definitely not the charm here.

She'd been able to write off the other two as some sort of mistake. The first one she found was an accident. She was actually honestly looking for some tums or something that might help with a raging case of heartburn she had. She knew he kept some in the nightstand in case it woke him up at night. She'd forgotten all about the heartburn when she found the ID and card though.

She'd sort of defaulted to thinking it was a mistress who'd, she didn't know, left it with him? For some reason? Or something he found when he went out drinking after work and planned to return? It didn't really make sense to her no matter how she tried to frame it at the time but who would have thought...well what she thought now felt insane to be honest.

She hadn't found a way to bring it up to him yet without risking one of his little episodes when that woman's name was in the news a couple days later as having disappeared on am early morning run. She was pretty sure it was the same woman because the ID pic had kind of been emblazoned in her memory and it was very similar to the photo shown on the news. Same long dark hair, same piercing blue eyes... Neck tattoos and deep red lipstick. This woman was just his type. Not herself though. Oh no the woman he married was petite and blonde and quiet and wore clothes 2 sizes too big... When she accidentally found his porn stash on their computer that time it had all been women who looked like the one on the news.

Anyway that had been 2 years ago. She'd looked ever so often in his nightstand and then one day last year after she'd come back from visiting her parents upstate, there was another ID and card. And another news story. Another woman missing after a night out with friends in the downtown area near the art school campus.

And now 6 months later, here was another one. This time she hadn't been with her parents though. This time, she'd been in the hospital from a ruptured ectopic pregnancy that had nearly killed her. She'd spent nearly 2 weeks laid up in that bed alone and miserable and wishing she would have died.

He'd shown up once, flipped through his phone for the entire half hour he bothered to be there, then left again without so much as an "I love you."

It hadn't always been like this. She really didn't think it had. Meeting him had felt so serendipitous...a fairytale. She'd often wondered if she was dreaming the sweetest dreams imaginable in the beginning. He brought her flowers. He made her feel like she was the only woman on earth. They'd dated for a year before he asked her to marry him, and at the time, there wasn't a single red flag she could name. He was attentive and supportive. He didn't go cold on her back then. He'd been passionate and gentle and couldn't get enough of her it seemed.

Now though she wondered what he was doing on those weekends he took boys trips with old college chums and didn't speak to her for days not even to check in. Were there actually business trips he went on and came back with a cut under his eye or scratches on his arms? Things lined up now in a way they hadn't back then. Why would she suspect him of anything at all when he'd gone so far to make her feel loved and important?

But then the wedding happened and things...things were off. He'd taken a job transfer without talking to her about it and basically forced them to move almost overnight away from her family and friends and her teaching job. He'd wanted her to wait on finding a job to see if maybe they could try for a baby only, well, he wasn't doing much trying and hadn't for years now. Their 5 year anniversary was coming up and she could count on her hands how many times they'd been intimate in that time. But he'd wanted her almost every day before the marriage and the move. Some nights he didn't even come home. There she'd be with dinner ready and plated looking like a dumbass with no work from him. She'd learned not to even bother calling. He wouldn't answer, and he'd accuse her of being clingy and insecure about it when he finally did show up.

She hadn't been to a single work function or let his coworkers. He never bothered to come back home with her and controlled when and how long she would go. If she wanted to stay 3 days he would insist on 2 weeks and not a minute sooner, but there were also times he'd forbidden her to go.

It's like the dream prince she married turned into a controlling nightmare with the flip of a switch when he said "I do."

So of course she'd long suspected affairs. She was sure he was at least having one night stands. But these IDs and bank cards? She understood now this was something much, much darker and she couldn't ignore it any longer. What would people think of her? That she must have known? That she turned a blind eye to it all? The thought of it made her throw up what little breakfast she'd been able to eat. She still wasn't feeling 100% after the lonely hospital stay... And she definitely hadn't had any more support once she'd gotten home.

What was she even going to tell police? My husband had this woman's ID but I was too scared to keep it? It's happened 3 times at least but I was too scared to call? She slid the items in a Ziploc bag, walked out to her car, and knew she'd never ever be able to set one foot back in that house. She'd have to figure out the rest along the way.

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Links to the other “Use Your Words” posts:

Baking In A Tornado https://www.bakinginatornado.com/

On the Border https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/

The Diary of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver https://thediaryofanalzheimerscaregiver.com/blog

What TF Sarah https://crazymamallama.blogspot.com

Part-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/

Like Father Like Daughter

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are: disguise, darkness, treats, street, thankful

they were submitted by: https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/

If we are friends on social media, you might have already seen the bones of this post there. My birthday was on sept 26, and with my dad having been buried on my birthday, every year it's a lot. i spend too much of it reflecting on difficult things, honestly. but i wanted this written on my blog, so I adapted it for this post. thanks for reading. 

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Sometimes I wonder how I turned out this way-- far left, outspoken, loudly queer, and nonreligious. I wonder how I could've grown like a dandelion in a sidewalk crack, flourishing despite the madness of everything around me, despite everything that tried to kill me, in spite of those things. How did I find my own way in bumfuck, georgia? So many people I know walked around in disguises to fit in, and I never could not when it came to being proud of who I was. How did the queerness peep its lovely head out and never stop pushing for the beauty of a life outside of the darkness? How did it find just the right bit of brokeness in the sidewalk that was my outer shell and break it wide open?

Maybe it was my dad...which is hard to admit since I hated him for so long with everything I had in me.

No exaggeration.

I've talked at length about how being a kid was for me. I've reaped the benefits of analyzing, publicly, The Things I Went Through shining a light on the abuse and the drug use and the Trauma™ and young me fighting for life and wanting to die all at the same time. It's kinda cliche but his dying left a lot for me to figure out with zero closure. I'd hold up a bit of myself to the light and wonder if these characteristics were tricks or were they treats? Somewhere along the way I realized this person, my dad, gave me so many trauma responses and complexes AND some of the things of love best about myself.

Like maybe how i exist in spite of what everyone believes about people like me.

We're country folk. Rural is a word people might use, but rural doesn't encapsulate the experience of the vastness of land and cows and coyotes and the relative absence of people. I grew up on a plot of land and a house my dad built himself with the help of friends and with some of my grandparents' money and the rest he got from selling cocaine. That land was bordered by a pair of dirt rows and a couple fields. You had to travel a few miles to get to paved road that even still really couldn't be called a street. Two cars couldn't fit without rolling on someone's yard a little. Land still yet untamed especially when darkness fell much like this man that helped shape who I would end up being and wanting to be.

I still meet people in the area--Im still in the general vicinity--who knew him and regale me with tales of him being the first person to have consistent supply of coke for these kinds of folks. He was the man to go to if you needed a fix, and it didn't matter too much what it was. If he didn't have it, he could probably get it. Look at that hairstyle and tell me they're lying.

 

My grandma told me stories about him hating school, about getting in trouble...about how she found a weed plant drying out in her backseat and just drove on to town to get groceries anyway, about the first time they got an antenna installed, and she had to ask the man to leave because when she went to check the shop roof by ladder, she could see the pot plants up there before she even made it to the top.

This cop hating, moonshine distilling, weed growing, coke selling, shroom loving, hairy son of a bitch raised me, and I reckon it shows. He defied standards and expectations. He broke the law when he wanted to make a buck or to have a little fun. He did everything in his power to not be his parents--country folk who pretended they weren't, perfectionist walk-the line parents, "what will people think" parents. Amazing to think someone like my dad could come from that.

I know how it must have felt all those years.

He fucking sucked at being a good father, but he did show me how to carve my own path and laugh in the face of anyone who stood in my way. I learned from him when to harden myself against a world that wanted to break me even though I had to learn on my own when it was ok to be soft. He taught me that laws aren't always just, that cops can't be trusted, the best wine comes from grapes you grew yourself, and corn whiskey ain't good unless it's made illegally at 3 a.m. on your carport while your kids pull peanuts off the plants you took as part of your payment for welding some shit on a farm. He also had a day job.

Sometimes I struggle with the memories I have of the man, but the older I get and the deader he is, the more I can separate him from the nightmares and appreciate what I did have instead of longing for what I didn't get. We buried him on my birthday in 2006. It's impossible to separate my birthday from my dad, and for the last couple years at least, that hasn't been a bad thing. Sometimes I might get to thinking I'm not so broken anymore.

Just gonna lean into it and be thankful I had someone to teach me to be my own person, always.

There's no shame in being my father's child. Not anymore. Not ever again. 

______________________

Baking In A Tornado https://bakinginatornado.com/

Wandering Web Designer https://wanderingwebdesigner.com/blog

On the Border https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/

The Crazy Mama Llama https://crazymamallama.blogspot.com/

Part-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/

Free To Sign

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are: showers, rock, notary, mailbox, highlighter, pinwheel

They were submitted by: https://sarahsbrandcrazy.blogspot.com/

*not autobiographical*

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The papers had to be signed in front of a notary...which was fine of course. Even the thought that she would finally be free made her feel lighter, capable of a smile for a change. As soon as it was done and filed, she could start over, rebuild, figure out who she was and wanted to be.

Just one more step and a little more waiting...

For the last 13 years being married to Brian she'd felt like a pinwheel. She was at the mercy of his temper, blown by the winds of his moods, beaten down by his storms, unable to stop the showers of his rage or his punishments and their effects on her. For so many years she was treated like a pet not his wife at the best of times and a punching bag at the worst. Every small problem in their life would send Brian spiraling into hurricane season ultimately ending in a category 5 storm she would never outrun. There was no way *not* to rock the boat no matter how many times over the years she told herself if she just kept quiet, kept out of his way, kept the house spotless and made all his favorite meals everything would be fine.

It hadn't started that way. He was perfect when they were just dating. They were still babies really...fresh out of college with their whole lives ahead of them. She worked to put him through grad school for the first few years, then came marriage and what was supposed to be her turn at getting her master's, but Brian had other plans. He'd darkened by then. One by one her friends slipped out of the picture. She couldn't go out. She could barely answer their calls without weathering a Brianado. He interfered with her relationships with family, refused to let her work anymore even on her degree, and never let her out of the house after dark without him. GPS on her car tracking her movements, security cameras in the house... Once upon a time she had a full life, her independence, friends, a loving family then one dat she realized she had no one but Brian. And according to him, no one else would want her anyway.

She took the blame as belonging solely to her because what else could explain the change? For so long she thought it must be her own doing for not being enough or being too much...

Until she didn't.

Maybe it was a slow evolution happening in her subconscious that she wasn't quite aware of in her waking world, but it felt like it sprung on her overnight--she was absolutely NOT going to do this anymore.

He'd stopped allowing her to say "no" to sex a long time ago...but when he started getting violent with it ramming inside her in the middle of choking her out, something inside her woke from a dead sleep like Godzilla rising from the depths. The first time it happened she was so numb it hardly registered, but the second time? She was filled with a blinding rage burning so hot it terrified her. She clawed his face screaming at him to get the fuck off her. He was so used to her complacency that the shock was enough to get him to step away. Before she even realized what was happening, she felt her knee connect with his still exposed crotch, and when he doubled over in pain, she dropped to one knee and shot her fist into a sort of uppercut right into his nose.

That's it? she remembered thinking. All this time and that's all it takes to knock this motherfucker out? She didn't dwell on it for long though before she was up and out the door. She ran screaming to a neighbor's house, clothes torn, lip split, and eye already bruising from the beating she had been taking when he... when he... she couldn't bear to even form the words in her mind.

It was over now though. Done. She was done. The police were called. She DID press charges. She DID stick with it even through the nice guy routine, even when some of her friends and family believed his bullshit and took his side. She kept going even through the weakest moments, even when she no longer recognized herself in the mirror, even when she felt her most lost. She found that little bit of herself that refused to be beaten down hidden in the deepest pit and unleashed it. This beast, this new version of her, would be her new beginning.

She didn't expect the divorce papers in the mailbox that day. She really hadn't expected him to give in without a fight, but he'd already moved on, found himself a new sweetheart, Tracy, who promised to love him the "right" way so his monster never showed its face. Maybe this new girl would learn Brian was the monster. There was no soothing it into peace like it was just a part of him that needed pacifying. Brian and his monster were one and the same even if he wore a nice guy costume when it suited him. And maybe Tracy would learn that before it cost her life.

Either way, the papers would be signed and initialed on every line marked with neon highlight in front of a notary as soon as she found one--an end and a beginning.

___________________________

Links to the other “Use Your Words” posts:

Baking In A Tornado https://www.bakinginatornado.com/2018/05/pomp-and-circumstance-use-your-words.html

On the Border https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/2018/05/hold-onions.html

The Bergham Chronicles https://berghamchronicles.blogspot.com

Southern Belle Charm http://www.southernbellecharm.com

The Blogging 911 http://theblogging911.com/blog

Cognitive Script https://cognitivescript.blogspot.com/2018/05/brunch-at-cafe-uyw-may.html

Part-Time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.com/2018/05/use-your-words-international-festival.html

My Brand of Crazy https://sarahsbrandcrazy.blogspot.com/

Indigo Blues

This is my very first time ever participating in the Use Your Words challenge. I think I'm going to have to keep this up. Despite what you're about to read, I had a lot of fun with this piece and with making the words fit together like a puzzle. So, this is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words were submitted by  http://berghamchronicles.blogspot.com and are: 

Indigo ~ graphic ~ hindsight ~ fountain ~ thirst ~ under the bridge

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Sometimes I feel

Like I don't have a partner

Sometimes I feel

Like my only friend

Is the city I live in

The city of angels

Lonely as I am

Together we cry…

She hears the song playing on a nearby radio and is immediately thrown back to the past in graphic, vivid detail. Her former husband loved this song, Under the Bridge. Every time it came on, he’d blare the radio until the speakers would nearly blow and (often drunkenly) belt the lyrics at the top of his lungs out of sync and off key. As annoying as it was especially when she was trapped in the car with him and thought surely he was going to rupture her ear drums with the higher pitched parts, this is one of her better memories of the man. Hearing this song makes her nostalgic for the good times, for the man she knew before the booze took over, before the pain, before she ended up here. When she remembered him singing along at impossible volumes to his favorite tunes, she was remembering what it was like to be loved and to love someone more than she ever thought possible.

In hindsight, she should have known that things weren’t good when he stopped turning the radio annoyingly loud and singing along, when he stopped telling her to listen to this motherfucker play during his favorite parts. When the music stopped giving him chill bumps, he stopped being himself. No one who loves music that much could ever turn it off like a light switch; no one could go from full on to nothing at all without it indicating a deeper problem. Somewhere along the way, though, that’s exactly what seemed to happen.

Surely, it must have been a slow progression, but it seemed to her to have happened all at once. One day he was the same old man she had loved since high school. One day he was a completely unrecognizable monster. It was impossible for her to pinpoint the exact moment the beast erupted from her husband’s skin in a Kafkaesque metamorphosis. But, that monster was all she had left one day--a human-like creature with a short temper, a penchant for violence, and an unquenchable thirst for alcohol. Music didn’t resonate with him anymore, and she became more or less a metaphorical and literal punching bag. Her own metamorphosis left her a shell of her former self covered in blacks and blues, scars both mental and physical, and an overall deflated quality that spoke volumes about her state of mind.

She looks down at the faded indigo jumpsuit she’s wearing with a frown on her face. The song she heard that took her back down the road to the past has long since faded, but her travels have yet to be over. Remembering the good times conjures memories of the bad as well which always leads her to think about why she’s here locked in this prison every day hustling to get a few stamps to write home and maybe for an occasional piece of candy. Being in prison blues didn’t do a thing to curb her sweet tooth.

Her mind is flooded with fuzzy Technicolor images of fights that ended with broken bones and shattered teeth, nights of name-calling and fear. No matter how hard she tried to forget the thrown ashtrays, the cigarettes stubbed out on her skin, the names hurled like daggers in her direction, those memories wouldn’t leave her. There was no point even attempting to forget the night that led her to where she’s standing right now, where she had been for years now, where she would spend the rest of her life. There was a big part of her that hoped she’d be able to erase it forever, but there was an even bigger part of her that felt the torture of these memories was the universe punishing her for what she did. Maybe her whole existence was meant as a punishment for transgressions in a past life. It sure fucking seemed that way.

She doesn’t even realize that she’s weeping openly, a no-no in this place, when she thinks back on that night. She had spent a couple hours in the kitchen putting together her recipe for shepherd’s pie, his favorite meal. It was his 43rd birthday. She wasn’t working and couldn’t afford a gift (not that she could have gone out to get him one without consequences) so she decided to make him his favorite for him to make up for what she couldn't buy. He was supposed to be at work that day. He was at work that day until he was canned for coming in hungover again. After that, who knows…but obviously he had been drinking. He came in stumbling and slurring hours after he should have been home with a huge fountain drink in one hand and a burger in the other. He seemed so jovial for once, laughing and joking around with her. And, after a few shared laughs, she let her guard down. Mistake.

“I don’t know why I bothered making this huge shepherd’s pie if you were just going to go get fast food, Tommy.”

That’s all it took. Just that one little sentence to set him off. He whirled around on her then and before she knew what happened, he had thrown the entire drink in her face before pelting her with the remainder of his burger. From the smell, he had definitely poured out the soda in favor of far more booze than mixer.

She has replayed this moment in her mind over and over and over again. He had done so many things to her over the years that she had never quite been able to figure out what made her snap that night, what finally pushed her over the edge, but there’s no reasoning that makes total sense. She guesses now that in part it’s because she wasn’t much of a drinker at all. The reek of cheap bourbon in her face mixed with the ketchup sliding down her faded black tshirt after she’d worked so hard in the kitchen that afternoon followed by the sound of his booming laughter sent her into a rage she’d never felt before. He tottered off into the living room to pass out in his chair like he always did, but instead of getting cleaned up and letting it go like she’d done time and time before, she sat there stinking of booze and grease, seething.

This is where her memory gets tricky. She remembers standing in the kitchen and feeling that rage take over her whole body. She remembers gritting her teeth and finally wiping her face dry, but after that everything is a blank until she was standing over him covered in blood with the largest knife from her kitchen in hand.

She shudders there in her cell thinking back to him laying there lifeless. Her Tommy.

Her attorney tried to fight for her saying it was self-defense. She had been in the emergency room for falls and for “walking into doors” more times than she could count. The neighbors had called the police so many times when things had gotten really bad, on nights when she couldn’t stop screaming from the pain. She never filed charges though. She never admitted to the cops what Tommy was doing. Hell, she couldn’t even fully admit it to herself. This was the man she loved,after all, for her whole life. They’d been together since she was only 16.

But, the prosecutors contested self-defense. If she was really in danger, they said, she would have gotten out. If she was really being abused, she would have had the man thrown in jail. Why would anyone stay, they asked, if it was really as bad as her attorney made it sound. They painted her as a mooching nag that finally had enough when her husband was fired from yet another job and let him have it. The jury bought that version of things. Obviously, given her prison blues.

She stands there a moment longer, remembering. For a long time she was bitter about things, but that wasn’t going to change anything, so she learned to let it go like she used to let things slide with Tommy.

She loved that man—despite what she did. That’s what made her stay, part of the reason anyway. There was always a piece of her that could hear a song and remember the good times or look at him across the table and get a glimmer of the man he was before things changed.

That night, though… that night was the end of her hope. And, she guesses that spending the rest of her life in prison is better than the prison she was in.

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Hope you enjoyed it. I've really been focusing more and more on my fiction lately. Be sure, too, to check out all the other bloggers who linked up today to see how everyone has interpreted their words. Thanks for reading!!

http://www.BakingInATornado.com                                 Baking In A Tornado

http://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com/                          Spatulas on Parade

http://stacysewsandschools.blogspot.com/                        Stacy Sews and Schools

http://berghamchronicles.blogspot.com                      The Bergham’s Life Chronicles

http://batteredhope.blogspot.com                                   Battered Hope

http://eileensperpetuallybusy.blogspot.com/                    Eileen’s Perpetually Busy

http://www.someoneelsesgenius.com                             Someone Else’s Genius

http://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch                    Confessions of a part-time working mom

http://www.southernbellecharm.com                            Southern Belle Charm

http://singlemumplusone.blogspot.com                        Searching for Sanity

http://sparklyjenn.blogspot.com                                  Sparkly Poetic Weirdo

http://climaxedtheblog.blogspot.com                             Climaxed

 http://www.eviljoyspeaks.wordpress.com                       Evil Joy Speaks

Sunday Confession: Dear X Love

Today’s Sunday Confession is about Dear X Love. It was open for our interpretation which means it is not necessarily an open letter to an X. Mine is not. It’s a letter to my childhood self. I’m not that same girl anymore. It’s an ex-me. A former me. Even though I never really succeeded in loving myself during that time in my life, I tried to, so I think this is still fitting.


Dear child-me,

You’re beautiful.

No one ever tells you that, but I know from experience that you need to hear it. All the times your daddy has called you “fatty,” “Crisco,” and “lardass” have already made you start hating the way you look even as a young girl, and let me be the one to tell you that none of those names are true. You’re not a fatty or a lardass, Jenniy. You’re a normally developing girl. Nothing is wrong with your weight or the way you look, but there is most definitely something wrong with a parent who will constantly put down his own child to the point where she wonders if he even knows her real name. You wonder that don’t you--whether he has any idea that your name is something other than Crisco? I don’t know why I’m asking. I already know the answer to that question. There’s something wrong with a man who sees you walking through the house, a normal 10 year old girl, and drunkenly sings: Fatty, fatty two by four. Can’t get through the bathroom door before erupting into maniacal cackles. There’s something wrong with grandparents who tell you to eat then tell you to diet. There’s something wrong with a family who tears you down at every turn without ever building you up. They’re the ones who are fucked up. It’s not you. You’re not the one with a personality disorder. You’re not the one who lives for emotional denigration. It’s not you; it’s them. That’s a promise.

As you get older, everyone will tell you that it’s not what you look like anyway and that it’s about what’s on the inside. But, you know, we know, that’s not entirely true. It’s good to be beautiful on the inside and important, but the hard truth is that what you look like does matter to people. You’ll learn that along the way. People do care. People do make a big deal about it. And, people will miss out on getting to know you because of your appearance. I just want you to understand that it’s not because you’re ugly or repulsive. You’re you and you express you in ways people don’t understand. They’re not getting past the way you express yourself to notice that you are, in fact, actually a pretty girl both inside and out. People aren’t getting passed how you choose to look to investigate more about what’s under the makeup and running through your mind.

In the end, though, people will see it, and they’ll tell you all the time, but after so many years of bullshit, you won’t be able to take the compliments to heart. How’s that for fucking irony?

It’ll get better eventually. I promise. That’s where we’re at right now…the getting better part. It’s not easy, but it’s worth the work. We’re worth the work, and that’s why this needed to be said.

It’s not about how much you weigh, what dress size you wear, or even your actual physical features. You can be beautiful at any size, and you will find things about yourself that you love and hate….just like anyone else.

I just want you to know that you’re brave. You’re stronger than you realize. You’re tough, and you’re too smart for your own good (if that’s even possible). People are going to hurt you over and over again--not in relationships as that is to be expected, but your friends and family will (especially family). You know that all too well already, but you don’t deserve any of it. You didn’t do anything to make this happen. You’re not to blame.

And, I want you to know this above all else:

You’re going to be just fine.

Love,

j