June 06, 2005

11:35 a.m.

Letters to the Dead and the Living

Dear Mom,

I was looking for something in my personal file this morning and I found the letters and emails you'd saved from me during the 90s, and gave back to me before you died. The folder opened in the middle, in the late summer of 1996. I had sent you that scathing, accusatory letter that Ed insisted I write, defending him, after discovering the "hidden dialogue" that had been going on between you and Rose. The letter I opened to was actually the one after that, after you had responded. I almost threw it away; I'm still embarrassed about that exchange, though I understand it now, and I know I was coerced into acting the way I did... as was the case in so many events in those days. Your instincts were right, and though Ed meant well in many respects, he was mentally ill and always had an agenda that would mean trouble to someone.

It's interesting that I found the letters now, as I am still thinking a lot about forgiveness and observing the ways in which Reiki is informing my ability to resolve old, tumultuous relationships. Last night I asked myself again, "Do I forgive him?" and I still felt the slight resistance. It's fear that he'll then have access to me; that I will no longer have any defense. But is non-forgiveness really a defense? And I knew that the day I no longer need to create a defense, the day I'm whole and peaceful and centered enough to just be here with it and not need a contingency plan, knowing that no harm is imminent, is the day I'll be able to forgive him. It's the first time I saw that.

Anyway the letters went on to the Fall, and I hinted to you that things had blown up and we were trying to repair them together; I didn't write about how on alternate days he would be conciliatory, kind, and loving, and then bitter, cruel and abusive. This went on for months. We went to therapy and I saw how he manipulated the therapist -- though it was only later that that was clear to me -- and in the end nothing was resolved. He suddenly got religion and threw away two big boxes of porn he'd had stashed in his room. Yet his addiction to deviation persisted. Simply making love was no longer an option. I hated those months; I hated not being clear, wanting to just get out and seeing him at every turn try some new form of manipulation: anger, threats, stealing my keys, holding my album tapes hostage, playing the little boy lost, saying I was the only one who wouldn't leave him, reeling me back in and then abusing me some more -- then calling me a lying bitch when I tried to leave again. It was hell.

Then we did break up, and I was willing to let him have everything -- the apartment, the tapes, I said I'd pay him money for the tapes, even though he hadn't put out cash for their making and he owed me rent. Anything to get him away from me. I had no money at all. It was the bottom line. He found it impossible to stay in the apartment; in a fortuitous upswing, he cleaned it, repaired the holes he'd punched in the wall and the broken door, and moved out. I moved back in from my sister's where I'd been staying.

Then he stalked me for a few months, and after the drunken episode at midnight where he tried to slash his wrists outside my door and I called 911, I took out the relief from abuse order, and you pretty much know the rest.

I read, then, about his death in 1997 and the work I did in theatre afterwards; how Carol and I finally got together to talk, about the band breakup and how Chris had tried to help Ed through the last months, because Chris is that way; how neither of us could get many gigs for a while. Then I didn't see them again until some time had passed. The last letter in the folder was New Year's Eve of 1998, two years after I got out of Hell. I was writing again and so happy. My feet were mending from the surgery. I had plans. It was a good time.

From where you are now, I'm sure you can see all the stuff in between the lines, perhaps more clearly than I. It comforts me to know you're my guide and protector, someone I can invoke when I feel unsafe. Perhaps that knowledge is enough to let forgiveness in. I will think on it.

Love,
Your Daughter

Dear Ed,

It's been a long time since I wrote to you. I've written about you some since you died, in particular the songs When You Were King of Me and Gathering Dark, as well as a few poems. I did have that interesting dream last November where we were walking down the street in the spirit-place, talking as if everything were all right. I hope that was really you; I hope my idea about how this is just the play and everything up there is outside the script is the defensible reality.

The thing is, I may have had enough, soon, of nonforgiving. I've been thinking that for a while, and asking for guidance, but every time I inquire within whether it's time to forgive, I tighten up and refuse because the consequences seem too scary. Remember that you were still finding ways to annoy Alice, your ex-wife, years after you divorced -- even when you were with me. You just never could let go. And all you told me about Rochelle, painting her in such a brilliant light, and the way you parted where she'd found someone else and insisted that you never contact her again... and then she and her husband came to a gig once and I met her in person, and said, "Ed has always spoken of you so well," and she looked utterly perplexed. That was a sign to me that I didn't read. Perhaps her version of your relationship and its termination would be quite different from yours... I found later that your versions of things were unique in many ways.

So anyway, about the forgiveness issue, hate and resentment have provided me this barrier that keeps you out. But lately I'm wondering, a) is it really a barrier or a see-through mirror that goes one way, and b) is it really necessary to have a barrier anyway? Aren't I protected by white light anyway? And aren't you in a place of knowing (better)?

And besides, I'm intrigued by what life might be like if I just embrace forgiveness, soften to the past and let it fade from my now. Because I'm liking now very much. It's been a long road since you died -- over nine years now -- and frankly, you really don't deserve so much attention from me any more. I gave you a couple of lifetimes' worth of it when you lived here. Remember how you insisted that I LOOK at you the whole time you were talking? How controlling was that, hnm? Especially since you almost never stopped talking. And all those mean and bruising notes you'd leave for me on the kitchen counter, ALL IN CAPITAL LETTERS, as though you had to continually shout.

My clairvoyant friend said she saw something in my lower abdomen having to do with a past life conflict that sounded a lot like you. Someone controlling. Apparently in a battle situation (although we seem to have been on the same side) you wounded me in a way that didn't heal. She suggested it would be a good thing to resolve all this so that we didn't have to play out this crap any more. Going on the possibility that this really did happen, and that it was probably you, can we just say that the war is over? I'm not sure why you felt you had to come back and abuse me again, but you certainly seemed to believe that I perpetrated sins against you, and I know cutting myself off from you was something you found it impossible to resolve (among many other things), at least in the short time you let yourself live afterwards. Let me state once again that I did it for my own survival. There was no other way to save myself, and no other way to fight back in the war that we continued to wage.

I don't want to come back and fight you again. I won't say I don't ever want to encounter you again if we find ourselves on Earth together (as I have been insisting all these years), but I don't want you to stab me and I refuse to pick up a sword. If you approach me with a gauntlet, I will walk away. I'm putting this in writing because words are powerful and I think you can see them. And I don't want to talk directly to you.

I hope this releases me, and you, from some percent of shadows. You weren't very good about our last agreement (the tapes), but maybe you're in a better place now. You don't have to sign this, and there's no expiration date, as you're not where there's time. But I'm signing it and putting a power symbol into it, and when I upload it into my diary, it will be a contract. And then, I hope, forgiveness will follow.

May you be surrounded with divine love and wisdom.

Bornearly

Dear Lovely Readers,

Thank you for being witnesses to this, what I may call a reading of my Will. Not a will for dying of course, but an Intention. I didn't plan on the day presenting this, but I have found that it is all right to be, often, in the place of not-knowing. Bless you.