The Words I May Never Say

July 23, 2020

Dear-Lover

I’m not really sure when you will be getting this letter, considering I don’t know when I will send you your birthday gifts, but I hope no matter how late this is, you will still love it. I have tried to pick out items I know you will love (all of the NBC items) I have also tried to pick out meaningful gifts for you as well. Mostly, to show that I still care and love you. I mean I always will, you were my first love. Even though we didn’t turn out as we both may have hoped, I’m still happy with how things are. You are still in my life. You’re in my life in a much different way than most people would have thought. I never thought we would be as close as we are now even though we are not together.

When I moved from Oklahoma, Eight years ago, I always thought I’d lose connection with you. You were my ex, not one of my best friends. I always thought I’d stay close to Elizabeth. I mean she and I were sisters pretty much. More than me and Sonja ever would have been anyways. I also thought I would have stayed close to Daniel, I mean he was my male best friend for years. He was the one I would go running to, to talk about me and you. He and I fought over boys (Alex and a guy named Conner from our grade). Sometimes I got the guy (Alex) and sometimes he got the guy (Conner) but we would never let any of that come between us. However, to my surprise distance practically ended all relationships except for ours, which is kind of Ironic considering our dating history. I’m glad it’s you. I miss Daniel and Elizabeth but things won’t ever be the same with them, they haven’t gone through the same shit as me and you have. I’m not just talking about from when we were together but just life in general. I’m happy that I still have you. Even if they were in my life I feel like you would still be my go-to.

I never really talked about this with anyone, I guess because it’s depressing, maybe because it’s more of, you and I, kind of thing. A big part of the reason I always get depressed on my birthday, outside of always being alone, is because I remember that day leaving Oklahoma. I remember it perfectly clear. When we woke up and got ready to leave the trailer to come to Arkansas I would kind of stare towards y’all’s trailer expecting to see you come out of the trailer to say goodbye or something. You were planning on doing that but we just left to early in the morning. In some ways I’m happy you didn’t do that, it made leaving just a little bit easier. I was trying my best to hold myself together for everyone’s sake, I was doing good for an entire three minutes. Once we got to the front of the trailer park about to drive out, Mr. Scott and Elizabeth were standing there. Mom stopped of course. She wanted us to say our goodbyes, Mr. Scott wasn’t planning on saying goodbye tho. He was trying to convince mom to stay. He was even in tears. That’s when I broke down and realized even more of what I’d be losing. Mr.Scott told mom that we don’t have to leave, that we could move in with them. He said that they didn’t mind and would love to have us stay with them. After he said all that mom started to bawl. He actually almost convinced mom to stay, but in reality, it was too late to change her mind. Our trailer was already sold. We wouldn’t have fit in Elizabeths’ trailer very well. That was the moment I had realized that Mr. Scott was the closest thing I have ever really had to a dad. To this day he is still the closest thing I’ve had to a dad.

I remember crying on the floor of the Uhaul because for some reason even though it was my birthday and the worst day of my life I didn’t deserve to sit in a seat, I got the floor. *eye roll* Anyway, I remember crying over half of the drive to Arkansas. My mom kept talking bad about you and assuming you were the only reason why I was upset. *Eye roll again* You were a very big part of the reason why I was upset but you weren’t the only reason. I tried to tell her this but to this day she would still claim that you were the only reason why I cried. I swear I actually hated her for a while. The entire drive to Arkansas she would tell me that we were too young to be in that serious of a relationship. Maybe she was right about that. She would also say that we weren’t really in love. After so many years of us not talking I started thinking maybe she was right, that what we had wasn’t love, but at the same time if it wasn’t love then why did it hurt so bad? I started believing that I didn’t really know what love was, that I just had a lot wrong with me and that was it. Every relationship after you wasn’t the same in anyways. I loved Alex, I could tell that and him cheating on me and randomly disappearing from my life torn me up, but it wasn’t anything like what I felt leaving you. So I figured it was just puppy love or maybe some kind of bad boy phase. During the in-betweens of dating Alex, I dated this guy named Matthew, I never loved him, was never puppy love, Hell I never even liked the guy. I had dated him for all the wrong reasons. Most people figure sex reasons but I never went that far with him. I have only gone that far willingly with you and one other guy. Anyway, his father worked with my mom. Hid Dad and Me had a weird bond. Not in a bad way or anything. It was like almost a father-daughter bond but wasn’t quite there. Anyway, Matthew’s dad had asked me to try and keep Matthew in school because Matthew wanted to drop out. The only way I could think of to do that was by dating him. We were together for three months. I would go over to his house to try and spend time with him, but all we would do is sit on separate ends of the couch and watch the flash on Netflix. I remember always thinking why is it like this? Why don’t we talk or kiss? Or even sit near each other. I finally gave up after three months and broke up with him. He didn’t take it well... He started trying to open up to me more after I had broken up with him, but that only crept me out. He was giving off a weird vibe. I ended up blocking him on everything you could think of. That wasn’t enough though. I guess you could say he became obsessed. He started going through my friends to try and get to me. When that didn’t work he went to my mom. He tried to get to me through her and she wouldn’t allow it unless he had a really good reason. He told her that he was in love with me. At the time I believed I didn’t really know what love was but I knew it wasn’t that. My mom didn’t fall for it so he started telling her that it’s true he loves me and we even slept together. Which wasn’t true. Thankfully my mom didn’t believe him. My mom went to talk to his dad about it and his dad, of course, believed him and started telling my mom that she raised a little slut and that my mom was wrong for letting me go anywhere near Matthew. So this just started drama at work for my mom. I felt guilt over her having problems at work but I thought that was actually the end to it all. It wasn’t. Matthew started walking from school over to my house. I only lived like a mile from the school. He would hide out in our backyard until I was home and everyone was asleep except for me. One night my mom was at work and Marva had fallen asleep with the door unlocked. Joey was in his room playing some games. Matthew came into the house. I heard the door open but I assumed it was Marva doing something so I just stayed in my room writing an essay for school. When he came back to my room he broke my door down and grabbed me trying to force me to come with him. Thankfully my brothers’ room was really close to my room. He heard a loud noise, which was my door breaking and me screaming. When he saw what was going on he got me away from Matthew and put pushed Matthew through my mom’s bedroom door. All of our rooms were really close together. After Marva was finally up the cops were called and my mom had to come home to it and Matthews’ dad had to come to our house to get Matthew. I remember thinking that this isn’t right. This isn’t love. Hell, this isn’t even obsession. I don’t know what it was but I definitely didn’t like it. I constantly kept thinking back to our relationship during this time. I knew if we stayed in Oklahoma, weather me and you stayed together or not, that you wouldn’t of let something like that happen to me. That’s when I started thinking you really did love me. I ended up looking you up on Facebook that night, but I figured there was no point in trying to get in contact with you. I had already lost contact with literally everyone else. Anyway that next day I found out that Matthew had gone to the mental hospital over trying to kill himself. I felt like shit for it, like I thought it was actually my fault. I know now it wasn’t but that’s when I started talking to William. He helped me through all of that and after a while of just being friends and talking he kissed me out of nowhere. Which had me all confused, cause I liked him, I liked him a lot but I thought he liked my “Friend” instead. She wasn’t actually much of a friend. Anyway, I’ll spare you the details of our relationship cause… well, it’s a complicated one. A few of the events from when William and I had gotten together made me think of you, well your entire family but mostly you. I started hanging out at Williams’s house literally all the time because his house was my safe haven away from Marva. Plus I loved/love William. When his sister Julie started coming around with all of her kids was when I started thinking of you. His sister was a drunk and a drug addict. She would always cause fights, leave her kids with us with nothing to feed them, no diapers for the youngest ones or anything and we would never know when she’d be back. William and I tried to hide from her a lot. Even William’s stepmom tried to hide from her. She would always find us and make William discipline her oldest son Weston. He was only three and never deserved the life he had with his parents, but it was horrible for all of us. One day Brenda, Julies Motherinlaw called needing our help Julie and her husband had been drinking and strung out on drugs and fighting, like physically fighting. Julie had left all the kids at Brendas’ house with no way for Brenda to care for them, what makes it worse is Julies’ youngest daughter at the time was a newborn. She was strapped in her car seat one of those ones with the handle that you can pull out of the car and carry around. Julie dropped her newborn daughter. She was maybe a week old… She was okay but I was the one having to care for her after she had been dropped. Have you ever took care of a hurt newborn? It’s horrible. The baby girl was most likely hungry, god knows when they had been fed last, she was scared, and hurting from the impact of the fall and all I could do was hold her and try to soothe her. Standing in front of an air conditioner window unit helped a little but not much. During that time I was desperately wanting you. I knew y’all had been through Hell and back with Sonja and taking care of her kids. I was thinking maybe y’all would have known what to do, but I had no way to get ahold of you. I couldn’t get on my phone while trying to comfort the baby, William was trying to take care of the other three toddlers, and Brenda was gone to get groceries and diapers for the kids. After we got everything under control I figured you probably didn’t want to hear from me, I figured if you did you would have looked me up on Facebook as well. Anyway back to the point, What made me realize that what we had was true love even with us being young at the time was when my mother forced William and me to separate. Sound familiar? At the time I had thought that I would never get to be with William again or even see him. When I was in pain over all of that though the pain seemed familiar. That was the same pain I had when everything went bad with us once Sonja had snitched us out for sneaking out and everything. That is also when I knew I loved Willliam, I never questioned loving him, I just questioned if it was real or not. I’m not sure why I am saying all of this, but I feel like it’s something that needs to be put out there. I guess in short I’m just letting you know that I never stopped caring for you and I have thought about you a lot over the years.

I’m sorry this letter is so long. Once I start typing it can be difficult to stop sometimes. Anyways, I hope you have/had a great birthday. You deserve it knowing you though, you probably got stuck working. I love you and always will. You kind of just have a special place in my heart, not sure if it is because of you being my first love or because of you being one of the few good men left in the world, but either way I’m happy to still have you in my life.

Love, Destiny.