Dear Karen,
And so, we’ve arrived. We’re all out of memories now. But time marches on, and you will inevitably create new ones in your own future. Will that future be with Hank? I don’t know.
I don’t know. I’ve talked a lot about what I don’t know throughout these letters. It’s become a refrain, one whose time is up. What I want to talk about now is what I do know.
I know that things are not good between you and Hank right now. Not being able to have kids is driving a wedge between you two. He doesn’t want any kids that aren’t biologically yours and his. That means no adoption. No surrogacy. The two of you are in counseling right now to see if you can work past this issue.
I feel like an asshole, but I really hope that you can’t.
I know that you’re not happy now. You may say that you are, just like you say that you want to be with Hank, but your spirit tells a different story. Every day, my warrior, my St. George, fades a bit more. Every day, you’re quieter and quieter, and the bags of stress living under your eyes like leeches sucking you of all your energy get fatter and darker. And every day, the sighs escape you. Sometimes, they’re so deep that I wonder if they’re not really your last breath, broken up over time in increments as some sort of subconscious cry for help, sighs that are actually truncated pieces of one last scream for someone to grab you and hold on to you before you disappear for good.
I know that domestic abusers have a high recidivism rate. High. Ever since you told me you got back together with Hank, some part of me has been waiting, fearing the next day that you wear too much makeup. And that’s what scares me the most. The not knowing. The uncertainty. When he hurt you before, it was horrible, but it was also new. It was novel, unexplored pain, which perversely dulled some of its terror. You had to learn how to react, how to deal with it, and how to fight back. That learning process occupied your mind. It gave you goals to overcome the suffering you had been dealt. Now, we –and you will always know it more vividly than me– know just how intimate that horror can be. And that knowledge makes this dreadful anticipation all the more ominous. If he hurts you again, the pain will be exponentially more intense because it will be familiar. It won’t be just a shock to your system, it will be a slow rot returning to your body and soul. An interminable decay laced with the sting of broken trust and vicious hindsight. It will eat away at your very being. Recidivism often spikes during periods of intense stress. Not being able to have kids must be one of the most stressful experiences that a couple can encounter.
I know that I am scared right now because I don’t know if I can go through it all again.
And that’s the heart of the matter right there, isn’t it? What I’ve been trying to get at over the course of three letters. My great shame. My great guilt. My great fear.
Ever since Hank hurt you, I’ve wondered if I didn’t somehow victimize you as well. If I didn’t damage some part of you, just like he did, only more insidiously and disguised by a friendly smile and a ready ear. I’ve wondered if I didn’t co-opt your narrative to fulfill my own desire to matter. To be a hero. Did I become invested to the point where I wrested the authorship of your story away from you? If I didn’t, wouldn’t I have just told you how I felt about Hank when you mentioned you were back together with him instead of avoiding confrontation? Wouldn’t I have told you how I felt at any time since then, instead of just writing letters you’ll never see? Even these letters are part of an exercise for class. An assignment. Am I reducing you to nothing more than a means to my own peace of mind, not to mention a grade? Hank used you as an outlet for his rage and his frustration and his drunken, bruised ego. Are you just a means to an end for me as well?
Am I the real dragon?
That’s what I really don’t know. What I’ll never know.
All I know is that, despite my doubts and fears, I am in this with you, some way, somehow. Regardless of how this situation came to be, whatever my motivations, it has happened.
And because of that, when he hurt you, I think he also broke a bit of me as well. And I don’t think that I’ve ever healed from that, even if it was never my right or my place to be hurt in the first place.
Maybe that’s me being selfish. Again, as I’ve said far too many times already, I don’t know.
But I couldn’t bear it if he hurts you again.
I keep calling you my St. George, the dragon-slayer of legend. That’s not a mistake. There’s a reason for that. Even though he’s one of the most popular saints of Christendom, there’s not much historical evidence to back up the story behind the legend. St. George may not have even been an actual person. He may be just a tale told to the faithful. But, there’s something to that. You see, the only thing that really matters is that they believe in him. That belief makes him all the more real.
And I so desperately believe in you.
You have so much potential. It’s a cliché, but it’s so true that you can be anything you want to. You can go anywhere. Hank is not your world. That big, exciting planet that you started to explore is still out there, waiting for you. Go live in it, and never look back.
Go be real.
Because there’s one thing (maybe the only thing) that I know in all of this.
You should never, ever have to wear too much makeup again.
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