Dearest Em,
I guess I understand what you’ve done. The way Mother treated you was certainly cruel and inhumane. I suppose if I think about it I can recall quite vividly any number of times when she was belittling, abusive, and abrasive. I’ve dealt with it for so long that I guess I just stopped seeing it when she’d act that way to other people. She’d been like that for so long to me that I couldn’t see how she was treating others.
When we were first falling in love while you worked at the house, I felt better than I have for a long, long time. I didn’t really start feeling the pain and anger of her oppression until after you were gone and she forbade me to see you. I recall all of the lunches we shared, and the long talks in the evenings after Mother was asleep and you bared your soul to me. I feel like such a heel. You sat there and told me how small she made you feel, and how insignificant. I felt such a connection to you. It was almost as if I was happy to have someone with whom to share my misery. It never occurred to me that my misery had been built up over a span of decades since my father had died. You had to be plunged right into the center of her hatred and viciousness mere days after accepting the job.
Maybe it’s narcissism to think that you have done this terrible act for me, but I believe it. My love for you is unmarred by the moral and legal morass you find yourself in today. All I can think is that you must have truly loved me with incredible depth to commit yourself to freeing me of the maternal yoke which I could not get out from under. I hated Mother. She had twisted my life at every turn so that it always faced her, rather than toward the world at large. Ironically, now that I finally find myself free of her, I am also faced with the much more tragic loss of you.
I forgive you. I am grateful to you. I love you.
Martin
This concludes the Emily series. I hope you’ve enjoyed it. If you’re inclined to critique, feel free. I’d appreciate your input. Stay tuned for more frivolity shortly.
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